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Incredible, Undestructable Titan of Terror

April 26, 1956 -

Godzilla: King of All Monsters debuted in America on this date (Gojira premiered in Japan on November 3, 1954) :



With the ashes of World War II only recently cooled, Japan is plagued by a sudden wave of maritime disasters: Without warning, ships are exploding into flame and sinking beneath the waves. The few survivors are able to shed little light on the situation, as they quickly die from radiation and strange burns. (Hmmm, sound familiar) A group of investigators, including prominent paleontologist Dr. Yamane and American reporter Steve Martin (who was detoured from his trip to cover the Suez Crisis,) are sent to Odo Island to investigate. The natives warn that the ships are being destroyed by Gojira (Godzilla), a legendary monster. These claims are verified when a gigantic, dinosaur-like creature comes ashore and demolishes the native village. Dr. Yamane concludes that Godzilla is a prehistoric creature that has been awakened and mutated by atomic bomb tests. It's just the same conclusion you'd come to having just seen the ruins of a Japanese fishing village.

The military decides to use depth charges on the monster. However, the attack is unsuccessful, and Godzilla follows the ships back to Tokyo Bay. (Again, probably just what you would do - annoy a giant radioactive monster.) Coming ashore at night, Godzilla razes Tokyo. The destruction left in his wake is comparable to an atomic bomb. Military firepower proves useless against the monster. It is feared that Godzilla will continue to lay waste to the cities of Japan, and perhaps the entire world.



It is up to Emiko Yamane (Dr. Yamane’s daughter) to convince her former fiancé, Dr. Serizawa, to use his Oxygen Destroyer against Godzilla. Serizawa is skeptical; he fears that this terrible device might be more dangerous than the monster. However, he finally decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to rid the world of Godzilla.



So here in a nutshell, you have the greatest fever dream movie ever re-edited - a very good Sci-Fi film intercut with, the undisputed king of deadpan delivery and nipple rouge entrepreneur.

(We take Godzilla very seriously in our home.)

Today's Word:

Dionysiac ( die-uh-NIS-ee-ak ), (Latin Dionysiacus, from Greek Dionusiakos, from Dionusios.), adjective 1. Of or relating to Dionysus, the god of wine and of an orgiastic religion celebrating the power and fertility of nature. Of or relating to Dionysia, ancient Greek festivals held seasonally, chiefly at Athens, in honor of Dionysus. 2. Often dionysiac. Ecstatic or wild; Dionysian.

Keep it in mind (we'll come back to it.)

April 24, 1184 BC (this is an approximated date.)
Most of the people who could have verified this date were too busy smearing olive oil on each other and inventing Greco-Roman wrestling in the nude, so the creation of an accurate calendar wasn't a high priority.

Think Dionysiac

... Is this the face that launched a thousand ships? ....



OK kids, here's your quick Lit Hum course.

Once upon a time, a pretty naked Greek girl was lolling around a limpid pool (lots of pretty naked Greek girls were doing that back then) and she saw a beautiful swan.



Before you could said By Zeus, Leda lays an egg (psst, don't tell Rick Santorum but bestiality was involved) and out pops Helen - another pretty naked Greek girl. But Helen wasn't just any pretty naked Greek girl, she was the MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD.



So when it was time for Helen to marry (at about 12), literally everyone who was anyone wanted to marry her, including Odysseus (who doesn't marry her but Penelope but that's another story), Menestheus, Ajax the Great, Patroclus and Idomeneus, Agamemnon (who doesn't marry her but her sister, Clytemnestra and lives (or dies) to regret it, but that again is another story). It doesn't hurt to mention at this point that her 'father' was the King of Sparta or the fact that he never noticed that she was hatched from a egg.



Yadda, yadda yadda, Helen marries Menelaus. Yadda, yadda, yadda, three more naked Greek goddesses, handsome naked Greek youth named Paris (how the French got into this story even I can't explain) and a golden apple.



Also, I bet you never realized how much nudity plays into this story.

Yadda, yadda yadda, an abduction and a promise extracted - bang zoom, you have the Trojan war. I have just saved you from reading Edith Hamilton's Mythology and most of the Iliad.

The Greek siege of Troy had lasted for ten years with no end in sight. The Greeks devised a new ruse: a giant hollow wooden horse. It was built by Epeius and filled with Greek warriors led by Odysseus. Meanwhile, a Greek spy, Sinon, convinced the Trojans that the horse was a gift despite the warnings of Laocoön (who gets to utter the line, "Beware Greeks bearing gifts" moments before being strangled by sea-serpents with his two sons - but that's another story)



and Cassandra (who has the gift of prophecy because of the God Apollo as a token of his love has snakes lick her ears clean but that again is another story) ;



Helen and Deiphobus (who won Helen in a game with his brother after the death of Paris but let's stay on course here) even investigated the horse; in the end, the Trojans accepted the gift on this date. In ancient times it was customary for a defeated general to surrender his horse to the victorious general in a sign of respect.



It should be noted here that the horse was the sacred animal of Poseidon; during the contest with Athena over the patronage of Athens, Poseidon gave men the horse, and Athena gave the olive tree. It should also be noted that after living ten years under a siege, one's reasoning seems to go out the window.

The Trojans have a huge orgy, I mean, party (think sodomy but on a grand scale - think dionysiac) to celebrate the end of the siege, so that, when the Greeks emerged from the horse, on this date, the city was in a drunken stupor. The Greek warriors opened the city gates to allow the rest of the army to enter, and the city was pillaged ruthlessly, all the men were killed, and all the women and children were taken into slavery.



And so ends the Iliad. Oh yeah, Brad Pitt ends up dead but Orlando Bloom is alive.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

My poem in a pocket

Sex Goddess

 I am THE SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
so don't mess with me
I've got a big bag full of SEX TOYS
and you can't have any
'cause they're all mine
'cause I'm
the SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.

"Hey," you may say to yourself,
"who the hell's she tryin' to kid,
she's no sex goddess,"
But trust me,
I am
if only for the fact that I have
the unabashed gall
to call
myself a SEX GODDESS,
I mean, after all,
it's what so many of us have at some point thought,
we've all had someone
who worshipped our filthy socks
and barked like a dog when we were near
giving us cause
to pause and think: You know, I may not look like much
but deep inside, I am a SEX GODDESS.

Only
we'd never come out and admit it publicly
well, you wouldn't admit it publicly
but I will
because I am
THE SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.

I haven't always been
a SEX GODDESS
I used to be just a mere mortal woman
but I grew tired of sexuality being repressed
then manifest
in late night 900 number ads
where 3 bodacious bimbettes
heave cleavage into the camera's winking lens and sigh:

"Big Girls oooh, Bad Girls oooh, Blonde Girls oooh,
you know what to do, call 1-900-UNMITIGATED BIMBO ooooh."

Yeah
I got fed up with the oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh
I got fed up with it all
so I put on my combat boots
and hit the road with my bag full of SEX TOYS
that were a vital part of my SEX GODDESS image
even though I would never actually use
my SEX TOYS
'cause my being a SEX GODDESS
it isn't a SEXUAL thing
it's a POLITICAL thing
I don't actually have SEX, no
I'm too busy taking care of
important SEX GODDESS BUSINESS,
yeah,
I gotta go on The Charlie Rose Show
and MTV and become a parody
of myself and make
buckets full of money off my own inane brand
of self-righteous POP PSYCHOLOGY
because my pain is different
because I am a SEX GODDESS
and when I talk,
people listen
why ?
Because, you guessed it,
I AM THE SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
and you're not.



Maggie Estep
(1964 - 2014)

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Today is believed to be the birthday of William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-on-Avon, England (1564). He was a playwright and poet, and is considered to be the most influential and perhaps the greatest writer in the English language. His tragedies have been celebrated for centuries. For example, there’s the Tragedy of Julius Caesar, in which a Roman general thinks he’d like to be emperor, other people disagree, and everyone dies in the end. There is the Tragedy of Macbeth, in which a Scottish Thane thinks he’d like to be king, other people disagree, and everyone dies in the end. There is the Tragedy of Richard III, in which a hunch-backed noble thinks he'd like to be king, other people disagree, and everyone dies in the end. There is even the Tragedy of Hamlet, in which a young prince thinks and everyone dies in the end.



(That last is naturally set in Denmark, where the relationship between thinking and dying has been most famously chronicled by Soren Kierkegaard, who called life itself the sickness unto death. He was a very happy fella.)

He gave us many beloved plays, including Romeo and Juliet (1594), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), Gay Boys in Bondage (1601), Othello (1604), and King Lear (1605). Only a few scattered facts are known about his life. He was born and raised in the picturesque market town of Stratford-on-Avon, surrounded by woodlands. His father was a glover and a leather merchant; he and his wife had eight children including William, but three of them died in childbirth. William probably left grammar school when he was thirteen years old, but continued to study on his own.



He went to London around 1588 to pursue his career in drama (or to sleep with actresses or men who dresses like women) and by 1592 he was a well-known actor. He joined an acting troupe in 1594 and wrote many plays for the group while continuing to act. Scholars believe that he usually played the part of the first character that came on stage, but that in Hamlet he played the ghost.



Some scholars have suggested that Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays attributed to him because he had no formal education. A group of scientists recently plugged all his plays into a computer and tried to compare his work to other writers of his day, such as Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and the Earl of Oxford. The only writer they found who frequently used words and phrases similar to Shakespeare's was Queen Elizabeth I, and although Shakespeare had been seen in women's clothing several times, the Queen was eventually ruled out as well.



Shakespeare used one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, almost 30,000 words, and he was the first writer to invent or record many of our most common turns of phrase, including foul play, as luck would have it, your own flesh and blood, too much of a good thing, good riddance, in one fell swoop, so is your mother, play fast and loose, up your nose with a rubber hose, dyn-o-mite, I know you are but what am I and in the twinkling of an eye.



Shakespeare wrote a lot of other plays and died in the end—on April 23, 1616. His accomplishments are all the more remarkable when you consider that he died on the same day he’d been born.

Stations of the Cross

The old ladies you usually pester with questions of a religious nature are busy today: they are doing the Stations of the Cross. Since you probably have not been to church since at least Christmas and more like than not, have completely forgotten your entire religious training (ACME will extend a Papal Dispensation to all non-Christians on this test) -

Here are the Stations of the Cross:

First Station: Jesus is condemned to death

Second Station: Jesus carries His cross

Third Station: Jesus falls the first time

Fourth Station: Jesus meets his mother

Fifth Station: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry his cross

Sixth Station: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

Seventh Station: Jesus falls the second time

Eighth Station: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

Ninth Station: Jesus falls a third time

10th Station: Jesus clothes are taken away

11th Station: Jesus is nailed to the cross

12th Station: Jesus dies on the cross

13th Station: The body of Jesus is taken down from the cross

14th Station: Jesus is laid in the tomb

Absolve me, pater, quia peccavi.

I became an Altar boy because you could get out of school early twice a week. You did have to do an early mass (7:00 AM) once a week but what the hell. The priest that ran the program was a frustrated football coach. We would have our weekly meeting and he would roll a blackboard out onto the altar and diagram what we were supposed to do.

He also told us that when at rest, we should keep our hands loosely clasped at our waist not at crotch level. "You boys do not have balls big enough to walk around holding them," he would warn us.

The duties of an altar boy are vast and complex. You had to set up before mass – you making sure there was water and wine and enough hosts ready for mass. If you ever wanted to have your little mind blown, open up the jumbo bag o' Body of Christ and fill up the receptacle like so much cocktail peanuts.

Since these are not yet been consecrated, you are permitted to handle them. But you had to guess how many parishioners would attend mass because the priest hated waste and if he didn't have mass later that day, he had to consume the remaining hosts (nothing worse that stale Eucharists). But God forbid you didn't have enough and you had to run back in to get some more – that got you a smack to the head.

Yes, priests were allowed to smack the altar boys around. The priest was holy and you were a snot nosed kid, so if the priest hit you – you must have deserved it.

Then there was the issue of the 'Blood of Christ'. Each priest had his own special mixture of wine and water to create the sacrament. One priest liked sherry. Another liked white wine. The third like the traditional red wine. But monsignor liked his scotch, with just a splash of water for his `Blood o' Christ'.

"Boyo, don't be stingy with the scotch this morning, tis cold and you didn't pay for it," monsignor would hiss under his breath. "And not too much water. Christ wasn't anemic boyo."

Besides having to dole out the sacraments, Altar boys had to hold the bible for priest during mass. You had to mark the appropriate space for the daily mass and be prepared to open to that page when called upon to do so. Woe was you if you forgot to mark your place or didn't hold the book steady enough or close enough when the priest had a hangover and his sight was blurry. That got you a smack to the back of the head.

You also had to ring a special set of bells at a specific point in the mass. God forbid you rang them too enthusiastically (to get your friends attention) or worse, missed the cue and rang them too late. That got you another smack to the head.

You also had to lay out the correct vestments for the day's mass. The little old ladies, who were the handmaidens to priest, would tag them for you and you had to take them out of the garment bag. Sometimes the old ladies were running late or they forgot and you had to guess which garment. That could be you a boot in the ass for the wrong guess.

One of your main tasks was to play catcher for fallen hosts. For those of you who remember (or know), the priest had to place the body of Christ directly on the tongue of the receiver. The altar boy walks next to the priest, holding a small paten (serving tray) on a stick (salver) under the chin of the receiver, just in case, the priest dropped the Eucharist or it slipped from the receivers mouth. In that horrific case, the priest had to consume the host himself. Also if someone throws up right after receiving communion, the priest had to re-ingest the pre-digested communion wafer. (Yes, you know where we're going with this.)

Altar boys would practice the secret art of flicking the salver, so they could force their friends to spit up the host and watch the priest have to eat the pre-moistened host. But you had to do this, without the priest catching you – it meant instant dismissal from the ranks of altar boydom. Yes, I got one or two of my friends in the throat and never go caught.

Now we come up to the another important function of the altar boy – towel boy. At the end of communion, the priest cleans his hands and finishes the wine (Blood O' Christ) in the chalice.

The altar boy's job is to pour water for the priest as he rinses his fingers of the Crumbs O' Christ into the chalice and then offer him a hand towel before he finishes off his holy drink. Unlike the attendants in washrooms, no tips were offered for your services. It was just, `hurry it up, we're not washing my dick here' or `Not too much, that was the good sherry you poured today. I'm going to kill you when we get back into the sacristy'.

At this point, mass was nearly over and if you were lucky so was your torture. Either you had the beatings hanging over your head or you know you could make a quick get away. Once mass was over, you have to stow away the various items that were used during mass and hang up the priest's vestments. If you weren't in trouble or one of the little old ladies were there – you could make a mad dash by to school or to home. If you did something wrong or the priest was already deep into his cups – there could be hell to pay.

You'd hope for the quick smack to the back of the head. You could get the slow torture of thumbs against the wall. Place you hands straight in front of you then step back about a foot. Then lean against the wall with just your thumbs while the priest busied himself around the altar and sacristy after mass.

Have a good Holy Thursday

Home at last

Two of King Odysseus’ old friends recognize him, his aged nurse, Eurycleia, and Argos, the only dog to whom Homer gave a name. 

 ... Now, as they talked on, a dog that lay there lifted up his muzzle, pricked his ears... Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect, here lay the hound, old Argos.
But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped, though he had no strength to drag himself an inch toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side and flicked away a tear, hiding it from Eumaeus...

... That was the scar [Euycleia] was then holding in her hands.
She traced it out and recognized it.  She dropped his foot.
His leg fell in the basin, and the bronze rang out.
It tipped onto its side.  Water spilled out on the ground.                          
All at once, joy and sorrow gripped her heart.  Her eyes
filled up with tears, and her full voice was speechless.
She reached up to Odysseus' chin and said:

"It's true, dear child. You are Odysseus, and I didn't know you,                                
not till I'd touched all my master's body."

Things you just didn't expect

This morning on WNYC, Mayor Di Blasio say one of his favorite songs was Black Uhuru Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

Madame Bovary, c'est moi

... At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes.

But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow....



Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

People living alone get used to loneliness.

... It was as if for the remainder of his life he was condemned to carry with him the egos of certain people, early met and early loved, and to be only as complete as they were complete themselves. There was some element of loneliness involved--so easy to be loved--so hard to love....

Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

kitchen god

... Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope

... Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.




The Great Gatsby was published on this date in 1925.

Welcome to New York

Whose Dream Is this Anyway?

... The site that used to be the local palais

That's where the big bands used to come and play

Roseland Ballroom closed today

Over There

April 6, 2012 -
US enters the Great War (for the first time)

On this day in 1917, the United States formally declared war against Germany and entered World War I. At the time, the war had been going on in Europe for three years, but there was no real immediate threat to the United States. Up until then, Woodrow Wilson had been opposed to the war. His campaign for president in 1916 included the slogan, "He kept us out of the war," though Wilson never used that phrase himself.



But two things changed Wilson's mind. The first was that Germany had declared unrestricted warfare on American merchant vessels, and began torpedoing any ship they thought was carrying munitions to the British and the French. At that point, the United States was the biggest supplier of munitions to the British and the French. And the second was that the United States intercepted a telegram from Germany to Mexico, asking for an alliance against the United States. If Mexico was willing to attack the U.S., the Germans said they would help Mexico regain Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.



The war was extraordinarily expensive for the United States, costing about $1 million per hour in the last 25 months of the war. The amount of money the U.S. government spent on World War I was more than the combined total of what it had spent in the previous 100 years. Woodrow Wilson hoped it would be the war to end all wars, but instead it was just the beginning of the United States' policy of military intervention in world affairs.

Something to ponder

Yet another one of life's tragedies

Things Change

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change. - Richard Bach

(Thank you St. Joseph - I have become a little old Puerto Rican man - I buried the statue in the front yard of my late father-in-law's house to help with the sale.)

Those of you in the know, may notice that the Christ child has come off the statue.  I'm not going to take that as an omen but I couldn't find it when I dug up the statue.

Another one of life's tragedies

Mr. Arthur Lappan's portfolio took a downturn during the Great Recession.  He thought he could save a buck on a home vasectomy. Unfortunately, Matilda Flabitian, the only traveling nude surgeon he could afford, was cross-eyed; tragedy ensued

And me, without a quarter