Category Archives: 50s

Mao’s Bird Fetish

October 8, 2017 – 10:24 pm

Chairman Mao has been dead for forty-one years. China’s glittering shopping malls, high-speed trains, ultra-modern skyscrapers, super highways, and expansive airports have transformed the Middle Kingdom into a workers’ paradise. Mao Tse-Tung’s statue overlooks Tiananmen Square with stern serenity. His followers praise him every May Day, but nothing can stop the birds from shitting on […]

By Peter | Also posted in Asia, revolution | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

17 Cents Per Gallon

July 23, 2017 – 1:42 pm

Shared events are recorded differently in individual memories. No one in my family recalls my mother sending her two sons, ages 7 and 6, solo on a train from Portland, Maine to Boston. Collective amnesia has erased the recollection of our family watching brown bears dine on garbage at the town dump. I am our […]

By Peter | Also posted in america, Driving, myth | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

SWEET LITTLE SIXTEEN / Chuck Berry

March 19, 2017 – 7:31 pm

Back in December 1959 Chuck Berry invited a Apache girl from Yuma, Arizona to work at his club in St. Louis. Police arrested the rocker on charges of violating the Mann Act i.e. transporting a minors over state lines. The girl was charged with prostitution and testified that she and Berry had had sex numerous […]

By Peter | Also posted in Crime, hip, music, race | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

February 10, 2017 – 8:11 pm

I’m not a church-goer and if I hear church music I turn off the station, but banning Sister Rosetta Tharpe from my ears would be a sacrilege. This guitar-playing churchlady was credited with the first rock song in 1942. She was ahead of her times and everyone else too. Sister Rosetta weren’t no beauty, but […]

By Peter | Also posted in race, religion, rock | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

TOUCH OF EVIL Opening Scene

August 25, 2016 – 12:51 pm

According to Wikipedia many critics considered Orson Welles’ three-minute, twenty-second tracking shot in TOUCH OF EVIL as one of the greatest shots in cinematic history, especially considering that it’s the opening scene. Here’s the synopsis. On the U.S.-Mexico border, a man plants a time bomb in a car. A man and woman enter the vehicle […]

By Peter | Also posted in Magic, Movies / TV | Tagged , , | Comments (0)