Before Lena Dunham (Girls), There Was Lena Nyman (Yellow)

The slow-building surge of publicity for the third season of HBO's Girls is beginning, with ads, cast profiles and soon, no doubt, magazine covers. Lena Dunham knows how to capture an audience. I find Girls' characters sometimes tedious, but the series is compulsively watchable -- and I can identify with some of their concerns? After all, I spent my 20s in Brooklyn, fresh out of college and scraping for work and romance as a creative type, back in the Jurassic Age.

While I'm waiting for the new season, I'm wondering about the significance of the show. The NY Times can scarcely go a day without mentioning it in some context. So daring, so of the era it is.

But how controversial and pathbreaking is Lena Dunham compared to another Lena -- Lena Nyman, who starred as "Lena" in the 1967 Swedish movie I Am Curious (Yellow), which was banned from being imported into the U.S. for being obscene. I remember reading about the obscenity case as a kid and I was always, well, curious about the film. The movie posters with the pouty, direct gaze of Nynam said nothing about the content, other than it featured a pouty Swedish actress.

Time passes. Courts rule the movie is not obscene and it becomes a huge art-house hit in the U.S. Forty-four years after the movie squirms its way into the U.S., rocking the moviegoing public with its boldly uncompromising Euro-New Wave style, I finally get my sweaty, trembling paws on a copy of what must be a sizzling piece of cinema -- at the Westport, CT, Public Library. There's the history of American morality in one movie, from banned in the U.S. to a safe little nook at the library (I expect Deep Throat will show up one of these tolerant days).

And that brings me to Lena and Lena. For all the hats thrown into the air in celebration of what Lena D. does with Girls, Lena N. paved the way for her on the sexual front in the 1960s (albeit in black and white). Topless meditation? Check. Sex in her father's apartment? Check. Public copulation? And she did it all without a lot of distracting, skanky tattoos. The two Lenas even bear a physical resemblance, in the bare sense. They're not beauties, fleshier than the scrawny model types, but they're ready to make the most of what they've got and put themselves out for their art. Both are fearless in front of the camera.

The degrees of different in the limits of sexual expression between late 1960s and now are instructive. Yellow has full-frontal nudity, which Girls hasn't yet leaped into yet. That must be a taboo Dunham can't quite break. Yellow has also more roughly physical sex, enough to trouble the sensitivities of modern viewers, although Girls has its share of uncomfortable couplings. The men of Yellow and Girls show lots similarities -- sneaking around and keeping their relationship secrets, working on their careers, wheeling and dealing emotionally.

The two works differ most sharply, tonally, in the ferociously political world of Yellow versus the withdrawal from politics in Girls. The first part of Yellow, to the point of tedium, involves Nyman interviewing Swedes, like an investigative reporter, about income inequality in Sweden, class issues, even their thoughts on vacationing in Francisco Franco's Spain. She's quite the fearless interviewer, going right into the labor union headquarter to pepper leaders with her questions. How much is real, how much is scripted?

That's part of the film's charming mix of fact and fiction; it even includes interviews with Martin Luther King Jr., (interviewed by director Vilgot Sjöman on civil disobedience during a trip of his to Sweden), a backyard interview with Olof Palme, who later became the Swedish prime minister, and a presentation by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Nyman and her friends protest against the Vietnam War, the Swedish military and other issues. The film is a time capsule of its era.

And Girls? I've seen every episode and I can't recall anything political, unless you want to say the personal is political. The ailing economy looms over the characters, Wall Street financiers are loathed yet longed-for, real estate prices are in the background (how can marginally employed characters live anywhere?), but my impressions is that Dunham and friends live in a time warp slightly distant from the realities that surround them. That's OK with me, I'm not looking for political lectures, but the contrast is stark.

For all the differences, I'll always link Yellow and Girls. They get people talking and stirred up, they reflected distinct visions, I was sorry to learn than Nyman died in 2011 at the age of 66. A meeting between the two Lenas, pathbreakers in their own ways, would have been enjoyable, two women talking about their times.

From the Good Men Project

This contribution to a site that's new to me, the Good Men Project, came together quickly and amounts to all of two sentences. Still, I say a lot, from my heart on something that gives me happiness. Read it here. I'm essay no. 14.

My Favorite Oswald

[I wrote this in 2005. It has never appeared until now. I've updated some references but otherwise it still holds up.]

Classical actors are judged according to how well they play Hamlet. After seeing for a second time Gary Oldman’s bravura turn in 1991’s JFK, I’ve decided that modern actors must be judged by how well they play Lee Harvey Oswald.

What other character in recent American history, other than Richard Nixon, has been more complex and confounding, bullying his way into our nightmares and turning history? With his bayou-coonass and Bronx accents and shifty-eyed demeanor, Oswald presents physical and psychological dimensions that would challenge the most accomplished actors.

I was barely six years old on November 22, 1963, so I won’t claim I shared the nation’s grief and shock, other than being peeved at the pre-emption of Saturday morning cartoons on KRGV and KGBT in the Rio GrandeValley. Still, I grew up knowing Kennedy’s assassination was an intensely Texas affair and taint. I followed the twists and revelations in the case over the years, usually around anniversaries. My attention spiked when Oliver Stone directed JFK and I found myself both repulsed and fascinated by Oldman’s Oswald. Who was this guy? A few years later, Gerald Posner’s epochal investigation Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK satisfied most of my questions.

But different questions arose after I recently watched JFK for the first time since the movie’s release. I knew the facts about the assassin, yet I wanted to see what I call “Oswaldiana,” the cultural interpretations of Oswald, beyond Stone’s movie. I was curious about the bizzaro-world version of all the films and books about John Kennedy, from PT 109 to the latest revelations of his times and floozies. How does the entertainment industry view Oswald?

Stone’s movie was frustrating, as it left me longing to see a lot more of Oldman’s Lee Harvey Oswald and a lot less of Kevin Costner’s New Orleans DA Jim Garrison in smoke-filled rooms. Stone teased the audience with fragmented McNuggets of Oswald, and left me panting for a big juicy steak of the Marine-Commie-Castroite-defector-killer.

Using the Internet as a resource unavailable in 1991, I clicked and trekked to discover my favorite Oswald. There must many films about Oswald, I thought, beyond the Kennedy biographies and factual records of the assassination. Oldman set a very high thespic bar, but I was determined to find challengers to the throne of Oswald interpreters.

To my amazement, almost nothing exists. Nada; zip; bupkis. While bookshelves groan and the Internet crackles with details on Oswald and the whole sordid mess, the creative film effort is pathetically small. Fortunately, the creative catalog grows when books and other art forms get thrown into the mix. Thus, the Oswaldiana shelf of a well-stocked library would minimally contain these works:

Oswald, Up on the Silver Screen
Here's the rundown of Oswald performances or appearances by the mid-2000s; others no doubt exist but these caught my attention.

• Gary Oldman, JFK (1991). It covers the highlights of Oswald’s assassination-related life, some that really happened and others in dream-like uncertainty. Whatever one thinks about Stone’s politics, he created a hard-charging film brimming with colorful characters. Thrill at the opportunity to hear Oswald say, “I emphatically deny these charges;” “I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir;” and of course, “I’m just a patsy.” Plus, Stone made good use of cute-as-a-button Quitman, Texas native Sissy Spacek as Liz Garrison. And in one easily missed line, I think I found a South Texas connection to the intrigue, when Costner refers to McAllen as a center for gun-running.
• Willie Garson, Ruby (1992), Willie Garson plays a colorless throwaway role as Oswald, while Danny Aiello stars as Jack Ruby. Oswald doesn’t appear until an hour into this sluggish but sporadically entertaining piece of speculation, in which Oswald isn’t even the shooter. Forget about any major Oswald angle here. Watch for X-Filer and Princeton graduate David Duchovny in a minimal role as Officer Tippit, the Dallas cop killed by Oswald after the assassination. Sherilyn Fenn (post-Twin Peaks, pre-anorexia) is as delicious as her name as fictitious Carousel Club stripper Candy Cane. Aiello’s Ruby gets some amusing lines. In one scene, Cane’s abusive rodeo-rider husband attacks her at the club. Tough-guy Ruby intervenes and then beats the tar out of the husband, bellowing, “You make that the last time you take out your disappointments in life on Jack Ruby!”
• Two movies bear the proud title The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. The first appeared in 1964. Director Larry Buchanan explores whether Oswald was mentally ill. The film appears in video with another Buchanan take on Texas terrors, titled The Other Side of Bonnie and Clyde. Specialty house Something Weird Video in Seattle marketed this twin bill. The other The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald appeared on TV in 1977 and clocks in at an agonizing three hours and 12 minutes in length with John Pleshette as Oswald.
• Love Field (1992) deserves mention not so much for its Oswald presence (just the standard TV scenes to scoot the plot along) but the way it uses the assassination as a mechanism to propel a Jackie-obsessed Dallas hairdresser played by Michelle Pfeiffer on her odyssey to Washington, D.C., for JFK’s funeral. On her trek she meets Dennis Haysbert (he plays President David Palmer on the Fox series 24) and they eventually enjoy some amor prohibido. The film shows nothing more explicit than a hug, but Pfeiffer does appear with a lovely post-coital glow on her face.
• The PBS program Frontline did an episode in 1993 called, “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” Frontline rebroadcast it in November 2013 with an extensive website with more details about its content. While it’s a documentary, the teacher’s guide on the PBS website suggests that students watch the program and then stage their own trial of Oswald. The guide helpfully notes, “The teacher should allow some latitude in legal tactics. The purpose of this exercise is not to teach courtroom strategies. It is to explore the motivations and life of Lee Harvey Oswald.” I hope some of the trials were filmed. I fantasize the videos show students hamming it up as Oswald, while no doubt defended by Johnny Cochran-wannabees shouting, “If the Mannlicher-Carcano don’t fit, you must acquit!”

 By default, Oldman wins the nod as my favorite Oswald, in the acting category. Oldman’s a great performer in a tough role. Challengers will be minimal until, oh, 2060, when some bright-eyed director, now in diapers, decides the 100^th anniversary of the assassination will be a swell time to finally film an Oswald biopic.\

The Books of the Dead

Beyond the big and little screens, Oswald’s malign presence festers and sloshes. On the printed page and Internet, anything goes. Norman Mailer wrote the non-fiction Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery, while Don DeLillo wrote the novel Libra. Hard-boiled crime novelist James Ellroy’s American Tabloid explores the down and very dirty side of organized crime and the FBI and much more in the years leading up to November 22, 1963, with conspiracies, Oswald, and lots of Cubans. Fans of stomach-churning sadism will especially delight in Ellroy’s novel; consider yourself warned.

All Singing, All Dancing, All Dallas
Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman added music to the mix with Assassins. Oswald joins other killers and contenders, such as John Wilkes Booth, John Hinkley, and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, the Charles Manson acolyte who tried to kill President Ford, to do a little song and dance. (Interesting note: Squeaky Fromme was released from prison in August 2009 after 34 years in prison and lives in Marcy, New York, east of Syracuse. )

Staying on a musical note, Dallas musician Homer Henderson wrote one of the great transgressive songs of all time, “Lee Harvey Was a Friend of Mine.” The only rival inn outrage is Kinky Friedman’s “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Any More.” Henderson’s lyrics include:

I was born in Dallas in 1952,

Lee Harvey moved across the street on Bentley Avenue,

He used to throw the ball to me when I was just a kid,

They say he shot the president---I don't think he did.

And Lee Harvey was a friend of mine,

He used to take me fishing all the time,

He used to throw the ball to me when I was just a kid,

They say he shot the president but I don't think he did. 

Staring at Shadows
If you wallow in Oswaldiana for any length of time, the ambiguities and slippery connections start to play games with your head. Shadows and coincidences merge into confounding patterns. For example, Willie Garson of Ruby also played Oswald in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Mad TV.” John Pleshette of 1977’s The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald also had roles in the 2004 version of Helter Skelter (about Charles Manson) and the 1998 TV movie The Day Lincoln was Shot. Coincidences, you say?

The strangest dot-connecting pulls together JFK, Field, and the terrorist-battling series 24. Hang with me here: JFK cast Donald Sutherland in a pivotal role, as the ghostly government operative who steers Costner’s Jim Garrison toward the conspiracy. Then, Dennis Haysbert plays a lead role in Love Field. Finally, in 24, Haysbert played President David Palmer, while Donald’s son Kiefer Sutherland plays the anti-terrorism operative Jack Bauer, who works for Palmer.  President Palmer was assassinated on 24's fifth day. You figure out what it all means, there in the shadows.

Head On Back to Tennessee (Williams)

Lately, people have been talking about their binges of watching Breaking Bad. I’ve never seen a minute of it. Instead, here’s my binge-lite story.

I recently saw Blue Jasmine and liked Woody Allen’s reworking of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Having seen the play at least twice, I could pick up on the references. Last night I went back to the cultural output of Williams himself with The Night of the Iguana, directed by John Huston, with Ava Gardner and teen hottie Sue Lyon melting the DVD with fine support from Richard Burton.

This marked yet another checkmark on my list of Tennessee Williams’ plays and movies I’ve seen. Over the last six months, I’ve done my own slow-mo binge watching of his films and found them all riveting. I didn’t set out to do this; the works just crept up on me like a sinuous southern vine wrapping itself around my Netflix list and, with a drawl and flirtatious glance, beckoning me to abandon myself.

The addiction must have begun in my early years, as so many addictions do, when I saw a high school or college production of The Glass Menagerie. I’ll pay it the highest compliment I can for a literary work: I remembered part of it almost verbatim, the lines that say,

“The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass.”

The current Williams kick began about six months ago when I pulled Suddenly, Last Summer off the shelf of my local library, mostly because I was going through an Elizabeth Taylor movie binge. While I didn’t know what to expect, I was familiar with the iconic beach photo of La Liz, with her wind-tossed hair and tight one-piece swimsuit.

What a treat awaited me! The film’s over-the-top Southern atmosphere (always appealing to me) with high-voltage performances by Taylor and Katherine Hepburn, haunted by the mysterious death of Hepburn’s son on a European vacation, drew me in. Mental illness, asylums, lust-crazed patients, the final confrontation that explains everything and plenty of shrieking and emoting by Taylor made the movie appealing.

I checked out other movies as some buzzer went off in my head in response to external stimuli. When Scarlett Johansson played Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway, I decided to see the original film with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. This was one of those plays and movies I had always heard about but never seen. The title and general outline are so much a part of American culture that I had a sense of deja vue—like I had seen it, but I really hadn’t. And as I did see it, I felt I wasn’t seeing what I expected. Taylor delivered all the voluptuousness I expected, but the undercurrent of childlessness deeply moved me, as her yearnings collided with her husband’s drinking and unspoken feelings about a friend’s suicide.

Night of the Iguana took the basic elements of regret, alcohol, confusion, male dissolution and repressed female yearnings in a Mexican setting, with Richard Burton the fallen minister leading a tour group from a Texas Baptist college on a tour of Mexico. He’s got a troubling penchant for young women, and Carroll Baker steps smartly into the role to show that you don’t have to be unclothed to be steamy.

She soon leaves the stage as Ava Gardner’s Maxine, a hotel proprietor, takes the stage. I had never seen Ava Gardner in a movie before, and let’s say she made a big impression with her tousled hair, forward style and glimpses of longing and vulnerability. She plays off another female character, Deborah Kerr, as a hotel guest. I had to chuckle at the scene where Gardner romps in the Mexican surf with two shirtless Mexican houseboys at her hotel – the scene reminded me of Kerr’s aquatic embrace with Burt Lancaster in the Hawaiian surf 11 years earlier in From Here to Eternity.

Iguana rolls to an explosive end (typical for Williams material) with Burton trussed up in a hammock as he roars through his alcohol addiction. The romantic hopes and tangles sort themselves out and the movie concludes with a tentatively hopeful note.

I’m already looking forward to the next entries in my Williamsfest s drawn from this best-of list – Baby Doll, Summer and Smoke, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. I may not score many points in the pop-culture department, but I know what I like when I see it. Call it the writing, the late 50s-early 60s acting style, the Southern settings – whatever it is, I’m ready to curl up with some more Williams. And based on what I’ve seen, I’m going to spin off into more of Liz Taylor and Ava Gardner.

The Jong Show, Lust Made Flesh

Author Erica Jong is now marking the 40th anniversary of the publication of Fear of Flying. She has sold 27 million copies of it. She can probably be published anywhere she wants, on any topic. She's been a media celebrity since the Nixon era and she's working on a new book called, daringly enough, Fear of Dying (it's not a sequel). She's written 22 books, is 71 years old and looks and sounds great and she likes to write and talk about sex.

When I learned she would be speaking at the Westport Public Library last week, I knew I had to drop everything to get there to hear her. After all these decades of quietly, politely lusting after her, our moment of spiritual communion had arrived.

Actually, I didn't pine for her so much as for the concept of her. Erica the lusty (those early pictures of her!), Erica the educated, Erica the Jewish -- she fit into the image of women that fascinate me. I wasn't a groupie, wasn't a big reader of her non-Fear of Flying works, she just hovered in my imagination more so than, say, Mary Higgins Clark. And the fact that Jong and I live in adjoining towns means that we share even the same physical space--if she likes to go to the Stop & Shop in Westport, CT, that is.

After a slowww commute home from Manhattan, I raced to the library and found the meeting room jammed. I squeezed in and leaned against the back wall, camera and notebook in hand.

"It's an amazing event that Fear of Flying is 40," she said in a wry tone. "I wish I was 40." The sales went far beyond any possible expectation. She aimed for sales of 3,500 given the literary nature of the book. Instead, it found an audience and now three new editions are in the works, along with the digitization of her back list and decades-long discussions about a movie version (big-name actresses like Goldie Hawn and Barbra Streisand have aged into their golden years waiting for the role to materialize).

She gave the audience, mostly middle-aged and above suburban women, a shiver of naughty delight by reading passage of Fear of Flying about the world-historical concept of the zipless fuck. She read,

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.

"Nowadays they call these things 'hookups.' Are they better for today's girls? I don't think so," she mused.

Whatever Fear of Flying accomplished, it did not herald an ongoing surge of sexual delight. Forty years on, she says with dismay, she's hearing from young women that "the sex out there is not that great," what with men so exhausted and disoriented by computer sex that, come the opportunity to engage with a real-life woman, they just can't perform. Yes, impotence casts its fierce and flaccid shadow across the land.

I was surprised by the amount of time Jong and the audience spent slagging 50 Shades of Grey (soon to be a major motion picture, which Fear of Flying has yet to achieve). She called it "unreadable" and repetitious, badly in need of a copy editor. Not only the writing but the characters came under her harsh commentary. The main character, the young and sullied innocent Anastasia, disappointed Jong with her eager acquisition of stuff, a long, long slide from the enlightened women of the early 1970s, when Fear of Flying raised hopes that "we were new kinds of women" and nobody would have sex for money.

(Jong's comments echo a past theme of hers. In 2011, she edited the anthology Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex, which in one online ad compared itself favorably to 50 Shades, as if the two were in some kind of psychic, feminine competition.)

Time flies, and flying (a reference in part to Jong's literal fear of flying) will soon share space with dying in Fear of Dying. The book, 10 years in the works, is about a 60ish actress, Vanessa Wunderman, who can't get good parts and has to deal with the ageing process, made more painful because of her beauty. Death surrounds her, even her dog, a "Jewdle," or Jewish poodle. Still, "sex and death dance well together."

Asked by an elderly wag who yelled from the back of the room, "Is there sex after death?", Jong quipped, "I hope so. It's supposed to be the ultimate sex."

At 71, Jong knows about mortality, involving lives lived long and deeply. Her mother lived to be 101, and her father into his 90s -- she noted that the day after the Westport presentation was the yahrtzeit, or Jewish anniversary, of her father's passing.

Jong made her politics very clear through the evening. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the Tea Party, even the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg -- all the personifications of pure evil. Scandinavian democracies and progressive politics -- all good! I wanted to ask her if she had any political views that deviated even one iota from the standard progressive thinking, but I kept quiet. I didn't want to wreck our special time together with a dumb statement (I'm a master of that, you know) and, anyway, I didn't want to be mauled by the suburban matrons who clearly agreed with everything Jong said. She delivered her message and answered questions with grace and energy and the polish you'd expect from a veteran of decades of readings, interviews and appearances.

I'll check out some of her other books and see how they sound now that I've seen the author in the flesh. Maybe I'll pick up some good writerly ideas.

I should be so blessed at 71 as Jong is.

Listening in on Manly Men, at the Gym

I've belonged to the New York Sports Club since 1996, except for a four-year stretch in the early 2000s. I've always enjoyed the chain, which provides a very consistent experience -- I've used probably 10 locations in New York State and Connecticut since I joined, and I liked all of them.
Being the observer of human behavior that I am, I always keep my ears open for snippets of conversation. Locker rooms are good for that, better in Connecticut than in New York. On the other hand, the weightlifting areas at the New York clubs excel at providing manly conversations, since so many muscular studs are busy flexing their pecs and abs there at lunch.

Case in point, from the Rockefeller Center gym I now visit on weekdays. I was in the weight area downstairs, doing arm curls and other moves with modest weights, 10 lbs., enough to keep toned but not rupture anything. I was the exception. Two men were down there slinging the 105-lb. hand weights (that's 105 pounds in each hand). They looked suitably bulked up.

One man next to me told another, "They lifted 31,000 lbs."

"You mean, 3,100 pounds?" asked his friend.

To clarify, they asked one of the men.

"Yeah, we lifted 31,000 pounds together. It took about two hours," he said modestly. They must have kept a running total of weights x repetitions x men.

The two observers were in awe of this manly accomplishment. 31,000 pounds!

One said in amazement, "Not even A-Rod could do that!"

Hearty male laughter followed. And that's my tale from the sweaty inner sanctums of the New York Sports Club for today.

The Jewish Name Game

Ace feature writer Lenore Skenazy kindly quoted me in an article in the new issue of the Forward titled, "When a Name Screams 'I'm Jewish!'" I finally made it into the fabled Forward, which has printed my acerbic letters on stories before, but this is the first time I cracked its editorial pages. Skenazy writes,

But then there are those who wouldn’t give up the identifying moniker for anything. “I enjoy having a Jewish last name because it much better identifies me as a Jew than does my first name,” said Van Wallach, a proposal writer at an accounting firm. His dad was crazy about racecars, so he was named for a British car from the 1950s, the Vanwall. (His brother Cooper was also named for a car.) “If I was a girl,” Wallach added, “I would have been Jaguar.”

The part of the article that amused me the most were the quotes from one woman (I won't say which) whom I had met on Jdate in the mid-2000s. We haven't had any contact in years, but if I can dig up her email address I'll drop her a line and say, "Hey, we'll always be connected through Lenore's Jewish-names article in the Forward. Small world, isn't it?"

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/181152/when-a-name-screams-im-jewish/?p=all#ixzz2aOclvETC

The Bobby Pickles Podcast

Podcaster extraordinaire and t-shirt design maven Robert Piccirillo, a/k/a Bobby Pickles, interviewed me on the steps of the New York Public Library recently for his podcast program. This marked the first interview I've done in a public setting and it went well. Bobby had the questions, the technology and the knack for connecting that makes for a fun give-and-take.  Give it a listen -- it's one of the best (and unlike my last interviewers, some radio shock jocks, no Holocaust jokes!).
Who the heck is Bobby Pickles? I'll let him explain:

Robert Piccirillo, better known by his nom de plum, Bobby Pickles, is a professional podcaster/tee shirt peddler. Pickles began his rise to prominence in 2013 when he appeared on the TLC reality series "America's Worst Tattoos". Bobby is Co-Founder and CEO of FAT ENZO, a brand of satirical graphic tee shirts depicting people of history, literature and pop culture, which he peddles at Union Square in New York City. He is the host of The Bobby Pickles Podcast, which can be downloaded for free on iTunes. And he has a BA in English from the University of Florida.

So give my interview a listen, check out his other programs, and if you want to be really fashion forward, buy some of his t-shirts. Support Staten Island entrepreneurship.

An Imagined Meeting of Two Very Old Men, and One Forever 29

One of my favorite mental exercises is arranging meetings among people who were in proximity at some point in their lives, people who would have compelling conversations. Here is one example of three men who covered some of the same life territory. Who are they?

Louis Zamperini. One of the greatest books I’ve ever read was Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. It tells the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner from Southern California who was shot down over the Pacific in World War II and survived seven weeks at sea, only to be captured and tortured by the Japanese for two years. Masterfully researched and written, Unbroken renewed my faith in the power of the written word. Zamperini is still alive at the ripe age of 96.

Scotty Bowers. This morning I finished a rather different book, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, by Scotty Bowers. Published last year, Bowers’ book slides through his early years on an Illinois farm, a move to Chicago during the Depression, enlisting in the Marines and combat on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, and his post-war move to Los Angeles as a gas-station attendant, hustler, bartender and no-fee arranger of sexual liaisons for the rich, powerful and famous. Bowers is still alive at the ripe age of 89, soon turning 90.

John Basilone. I learned the story of John Basilone through watching the HBO mini-series “The Pacific,” about the Marines in World War II, told through the experiences of several actual soldiers. Basilone won the Medal of Honor for his actions on Guadalcanal, holding off 3,000 Japanese troops with a squad of 15 men. Only two survived, along with Basilone. He toured the U.S. selling war bonds, married a member of the Marines Women’s Reserve. He requested a return to combat and after several tries was granted that request. He was killed on the first day of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Also killed on Iwo Jima: Bowers’ brother Don.

I knew about Zamperini and Basilone, but I needed Bowers to spark the imaginary discussion of two very old men and one who is forever 29. Bowers’ book, which had a thundering wave of publicity and a counterwave of questions about his veracity and lack of self-insight, interested me for reasons different from those who wanted to dish the dirt on secretly closeted celebrities and royalty. What I found most compelling was the early section on his wartime experiences. He glides over them, with some real tears shed for his brother and others killed, then gets back to the serious business of sex.

Bowers rides through life on the surface, bouncing along on waves with seemingly no harm done by anything in life. But combat in the Pacific is a very different experience from sex in the mansions of Hollywood. How did the war change him, what did he experience? Could his path have crossed with that of John Basilone, as they both fought on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima?

Bowers wrote with maddening lack of detail about Guadalcanal,

We Marines shared a camaraderie that is unique in America’s fighting forces. We went through so much together that watertight bonds were formed. We thought of each other as brothers, and those deaths affected us all on a very personal level . . . I was fortunate to still be alive and unhurt. I was one of the lucky ones.”

For all his sexual libertinism, Bowers was a confirmed teetotaler, never touching a drop. Zamperini, however, back in Southern California after the war and drifting, became a serious alcoholic. Unbroken details the terrible impact of alcoholism on his relationships and marriage. A turning point came when he attended a crusade held by evangelist Billy Graham in late 1949 and became a dedicated Christian who walked away from the drinking. The conversion led to a career as an inspirational speaker and manager of a camp for troubled youth. He still lives in Hollywood, and can’t be far from Bowers on Kew Drive in Los Angeles. So for almost 70 years, Zamperini and Bowers have practically been neighbors, the Christian and the hustler, two men who did their duty and then pursued very different paths in life. What would they talk about? Their health, maybe, their experiences in the 1940s. From reading about them, I doubt either has regrets in life.

They would provide good company to John Basilone, winner of the Medal of Honor, who left a safe position stateside and a loving wife to be with the Marines in Iwo Jima, including brothers Don and Scotty Bowers. He will be forever 29. Perhaps a day in the company of men in their 90s would be enjoyable, three old soldiers sitting in the sunshine above the California hills, putting aside any differences to share their bonds and respect. While Zamperini and Basilone might have some qualms about Bowers’ career decisions, I could see them agreeing with Bowers’ reflection on the troop ship home in April 1945. Let’s give him the last word:

During the entire voyage I could think of little else but the desire to play as hard as I could. Needless to say, that included getting as much sex as possible. I wanted to do anything and everything I could to put the horrors and miseries of battle behind me. Like just about every other soul on board that ship I needed to purge myself of all that had happened. Every single of us was impatient to go ashore. Life took on a new dimension, becoming more precious than ever. The war had taught me an incalculably valuable lesson. After I had seen all those young guys stacked up dead or blown to pieces in that vicious conflict I realized that one of the most important things of all was to stay alive and to rejoice in the gift of every single day.

Whatever Bowers did in the rest of his life, those thoughts show a human touch that could connect him to his fellow soldiers, enjoying the sun.

Gov. Rick Perry, Live and Civilized

You can take the reporter out of journalism, but you can't take the reporter out of the boy, or something like that. This evening I donned my camera and notepad and trekked to the Ferguson Library in Stamford, CT, to hear Texas Governor Rick Perry speak as part of his economic development swing through the Northeast. Tax- and regulation-plagued Connecticut businesses (especially the ancient gun trade) are prime targets for Perry's appeal, so I wanted to hear him.

Perry visited Stamford with another agenda. He spoke as part of a series on "Civility in America," with his topic being civility on the campaign trail. He reflected on his 2012 run for the Republican nomination for President, but also slipped in some tangy reminders of Texas' success at attracting businesses and creating jobs.

"I thought I'd take a break from poaching all your jobs to talk about civility," he said.
Perry pointed to the 24-hour news cycle, technology and the permanent campaign for higher office as factors behind the "coarsening" of public discourse, but said, "civility is a choice." Asked about how a candidate can reinforce a message of civility in his campaign, Perry said the candidate's conduct in public and private, with a "pleasant, decent and civil approach." He pointed to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as presidents with that approach. Democratic politicians that impress him include Gov. Jerry Brown of California, Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Connecticut's own Gov. Dannel Malloy and California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom.

On the GOP side, Perry mentioned Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, adding that Scott "very competitive" in representing Florida's interests.

Warming to his theme of states and economic development, Perry said that governors' key role is to "create a climate" where businesses will want to invest. He favors competition among states for business, and would like to see more power devolving to states for decision making.

"I'm here to help stimulate a conversation about policies to make Connecticut and the United States more successfully economically," said Perry.

He also touched on Texas education topics, including the $10,000 college degree and -- bringing back my memories of junior high school—the year that seventh graders in the Lone Star State spending studying Texas history. I remember it well and it must have stayed with me, because here I am writing about Texas 40 years later.