Iskander and Roxanne by Constantine Gochis

This short piece of my dad's would have been written in the late 90s or early 2000s, when Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles still had the tone and tenor of the decades before---although in the 1980s, the younger, not particularly religious folks had begun to move into the area, this street and its surroundings were largely the home to Orthodox Jews. Persians/Iranians had begun to move in as well. I always had the sense that it was an interesting mix of the New York from whence I had come in 1981, and a touch of the LA vibe. Hard to explain. You had to have been there walking up and down the various still mom and pop stores. I bought my first dishes at the corner of Fairfax and Beverly at Bargain Fair, which was next door to the then still open Fairfax Theatre. Now, there is a hulk of a frame of that building. The historic place did not make cultural preservation status, and then whoever was going to build some fantastic condos (so they said) must have run out of money. Last I heard it is still for sale, the frame battling the graffiti vandals people stupidly call "artists"--always mitigating bad behavior--a habit that has landed our whole society in the proverbial civilization toilet. But I digress. In dad's time, and mine, with him, this was a neighborhood full of vegetables stores, and kitsch stores. It was a rough hewn jewel. And a true place of diversity in the best sense, a sense now lost to us. Dad preserves a bit of it in his story.

                                                              Iskander and Roxanne

I like to shop on Fairfax Avenue.  The products and the atmosphere are reminiscent of the exoticism of the Mediterranean, loud, teeming, viscous multitudes clamoring for sustenance in the marketplace of life.

There is always the aura of the "Bazaar" about the shops and their patrons.  No deference is given to those misconceptions of Western mythology, manners, politeness, decorum.

Short, squat, testosterone laced women move about the shop like mini sumo wrestlers, relentlessly unconcerned about those importunate enough to impede their purpose.

On one occasion, I selected a bunch of parsley from a bushel basket filled to overflow.  A woman, suddenly, pulled it from my hands.  I was stunned.

"Why did you do that?" I asked in anger.

"For eat," she said.  I could not identify the accent. The explanation was short and without logic. I burst into laughter.

The British queue up as a matter of standard practice.  We Americans are more obstreperous, but we do recognize, reluctantly, that the other guy might be "first".  For the amble ladies of the Agoura there are rules of shopping behavior that surely must have roots in the customs of some obscure Mesopotamian Village, or Slavic steppe. These ladies place their baskets on the ground at the cashier location, thus claiming that by this action, it represents their "place in line". They then proceed to shop the premises, filling their baskets one item at a time, to a cornucopia of repletion.

I have long ago given up the sense of outrage at this practice, particularly when I have only one or two items but must await the servicing of a series of overfilled containers arrayed in a line before me.

Today, I found myself in such a line of overstuffed baskets. Two young women, perhaps 18 or 19, preceded me each with a full container, which they advanced periodically by pushing it with their feet. 

They were obviously friends as the sound of their chatter suggested. Their tongue was foreign to me. I recognize other languages immediately, Russian, Hebrew, Spanish.  This one had overtones of the Middle East. I asked, "What language are you speaking?"

They answered simultaneously, "It is Persian."  

"Farsi," I offered.

"Yes."

I told them about my military training in the 1950s in which I hosted four of the former Shah's officers. At that time, the United States was training Iranian officers.

"Before you were born," I added.  "They all had pictures of the Shah and his wife, Soraya."  No photos of their own wives, or girl friend or mother.

One of the girls did not know anything about the Shah or Soraya.  The other had heard something about them.

I was amazed, but then it occurred to me that the Ayatollah, like Ramses the Great, would have obliterated all inscriptions on any monuments of his predecessor.  Such is the manner of greatness.

"What is your name?" I asked the girl nearest myself.

"Miriam," she said. I thought this odd.  Miriam is a form of Mary, a Christian name.  Hardly something an Iranian would call a daughter.  Then I realized it was originally a popular Hebrew favorite.

"Why not Roxanne?" I quipped.  There was not a flicker of reaction.  Roxanne is the name of the Persian princess that Alexander the Great married as a gesture of Greek one worldism.

"Do you know who Roxanne was?" I asked.  Neither did. 

"Do you know who Iskander was?" I tried.  Iskander is the Persian name for Alexander the Great.

Another blank stare of non-response. Clearly they were as uninformed about their own history as any of our own college level students. 

"I don't like history," came the chorus.

"You are students?"

"Yes," offered Miriam, "Santa Monica College."

"You have a boy friend?"

"Yes," she said. 

"Will you marry?" I continued my importunate questioning. 

"No," she said, "he is not rich."

"Does he at least. . ." I made the appropriate suggestive expression.

"Sometimes," she said, her facial reaction indicating perhaps, not even "sometimes."

"If he doesn't, don't marry him even if he gets rich."

"I went to Santa Monica College," intervened a sandy haired young man who now entered the conversation.

He was some ten years older than the girls, and clearly attracted to Miriam. I decided to find out if Santa Monica College had taught him anything of substance.

"Do you know who Roxanne and Iskander are?"

"No," he said, "I hate history."

"No doubt," I concluded, "your major was in the Social Science area?"

An elderly man, very tanned, dressed in an expensive looking tennis type outfit, was smiling broadly at our exchange. Despite his age and highly wrinkled face, he was trim. He had the look of a once well known aging Hollywood actor. I was about to address him when the young man interrupted. The girls had just departed.

"That Miriam was cute," he said. 

"Why did you not make a move?" I asked.

"I don't do well with girls," he said.  "Besides she wants a rich man. I hate the rich.  Anyway, she was a cold fish."

The cashier, a Latin, was enjoining the break in the monotony of bagging vegetables.  "Senor," I said, "was that mujer a cold fish?"

He laughed.  Clearly he did not think so.

"You see," I address the young man, who I realized was quite pudgy, "it is a matter of clear vision.  What do you do to attract the girls?"

"Nothing, consciously," he answered.

"Do you dance?"

"No," he answered.

"Start there," I said.  "Is there an Arthur Murray Studio in your area?"

"Who's Arthur Murray?"

I began to feel my age.  "Doesn't anyone know anyone I know?" I thought.  I looked for reaffirmation from my ancient peer.  Surely, he would know Arthur Murray.  "Are you a tennis player?"

"No," he said.  I decided not to ask about the very much late Arthur. 

I hope you did not mind the meanderings of an idiosyncratic old man," I said.  "These lines of vegetable baskets are wearing.  Gotta do something to dull the pain."

"Idiosyncratic," he noticed, "that's a very large word."

"I have several others primed. I just have difficulty finding people to use them on."

A woman carrying a single bunch of celery interrupted our discourse. She looked at me imploringly.

Only vunn item," she pleaded, holding up the rather scrawny bunch of celery. 

"Sure, go ahead," I said. 

She smiled gratefully.

At least she did not have a basket. 

Iryna and Logan: You Were Only Here a Minute and That Thought Puts Faith Through the Ringer

I recently ran across a You Tube compilation of talks given by an author, Brian Doyle. I will probably do a separate entry on him; no, I WILL do a separate entry on him, because his writing speaks to me.  It  makes me laugh, and cry--he is so skilled.  Alas, I will never be able to tell him because he died of a brain tumor at the age of 60 in 2017.  He was two years younger than I am. He said something in one of those talks, not likely original to him, but which but which we avoid facing in our daily lives. 

We are only here a minute. You are only here a minute, on this earth. And the stories of Iryna Zarutska and Logan Federico, and even Brian, many get less than that minute. 

The truth is, I can't get Iryna, in particular, out of my head. I only recently found out about Logan, via her heartbroken father who is on an existential crusade.  In the middle of the night an intruder with multiple priors broke into her lodging where she was visiting a friend, dragged her out of her bed naked and shot her to death. She was 22. And, unlike with Iryna, perhaps mercifully, we don't have video of her execution.

I have never watched the full video, but I have stared at the frozen frame of her looking up at her attacker in shy astonished terror knowing she was about to be dead, my stomach churning every time. And there is another freeze frame, with the phone she had been mindlessly scrolling thinking her new life was an improvement on the one in Ukraine where she had escaped a war still in her hand. She is crying while she bleeds out. And three or four other passengers who were there when she was stabbed ruthlessly had just walked away. People have made many excuses for them, but the killer had already left, and perhaps the least they could have done is try to staunch the life blood ebbing from the 23 year old's body. Or perhaps comfort her if they could do nothing else. 

I thought about Iryna, in particular, today when I was at the Farmer's Market in Los Angeles. It wasn't super crowded. I have been there a million times since I moved to Los Angeles, and I never felt unsafe. I didn't today while I was eating an Onion Soup, and scrolling my phone mindlessly. I wasn't paying attention to anyone around me. And then I realized, my moment feeling safe, was no different from the moments Iryna and Logan had just before some--what shall we call them---spawns of the devil perhaps--dispatched them from this life with no more thought than if they were having a piece of candy. 

I found myself looking around. The tables around me were empty. All the voices I could hear were friendly. 

I found myself angry. Angry that our leaders have allowed so many dangerous people to be next to us, and behind us, with all sorts of justifications and rationales that simply do not rise up to the most basic logic, or basic humanity, when it comes to that. While they fail to protect us, they tell law abiding citizens who see the marauders in plain and rewarded sight among us, they ought not have anything meaningful to protect themselves with. 

But those two girls. Just starting in life. I come up against the fact that God "allows" this. He "allows" bad people to do bad things to other human beings--after all He allowed His only begotten Son to be murdered by His own creatures. It's the cost of giving us free will and wanting us to return to Him with and in love. And what a cost when I think of Iryna and Logan. And when I dare to think of the multitudes from the beginning of time to now purposively tortured, gassed, starved, experimented on because of human concession to the Devil himself, what a cost. 

It becomes harder and harder to accept that God can make the incomprehensible comprehensible. But, of course, that was the lesson of the Crucifixion. What seemed an end was only a beginning. 

But oh, boy, it puts faith through a ringer. And forgiveness? I am not really the one who is tasked with forgiving the murderers--who must never be allowed to walk free (and is it possible the fools who let them out again and again have learned anything? I despair even of that). Good thing. I am having a hard enough time not hating them and every miserable creature who ever took a hand deliberately to hurt another through the course of history. 

They should have had their minute. Every one of them. 

Dad's Political Jottings from an Earlier and Prophetic Time

Among Dad's fictional stories, there are a series of notes/jottings he'd make about the political landscape of the 1990s and 2000s. Many I can't put on here because he was often so angry at the direction our country was taking, a denouement we are all seeing now. He saw it then. I had no idea that his predictions would come true so quickly, and with such a dramatically evil turn. Anyway, here is one. I am not sure of the exact time frame, but as Hillary ran for Senate in 2000, it is from about then. 

From the "All the News That's Fit to Print" Department:  The New York Times will no longer refer to our periwigged political ancestors as "our Founding Fathers". Hence, their identity will be reduced to the status of "founders."

William Safire is usually intransigent when it comes to true progress.  He is said to have observed that "none of them were mothers." Sacrilege, indeed.

He might have observed that "these are the times that try men's souls," an aphorism in keeping with the era, but not sufficiently inclusive. 

The Army, Navy and Marines have made enormous progress in integrating the distaff side into their programs. The Navy is having a severe problem getting its equipment to conform to female contours.  The atomic submarine is not designed to accommodate unusual protrusions in its crew members.  Space is at a premium in these conveyances; thus the corridors are too narrow for crew members going in opposite directions to pass without backing to the walls and sidling forward.

Many crew members--male-have noted the problem, but express no particular potential inconvenience.

A noted radio commentator--highly sensitive to significant trends--has suggested that the Navy staff a proportionate number of vessels with a full and exclusive complement of women crew members.

Americans are no longer the prime defenders of the ladies.  An LA Times article announces that a Japanese poll has revealed that ". .  . in a startling reversal of Asian values, that for centuries put a premium on male heirs," shows that 75% of young Japanese parent now prefer baby girls.

"Boys don't listen and are harder to raise" said Yumi Yamaguchi, to which I can only say, "Banzai!"

And "Shalom" to Hillary.  I hear she has discovered she is partly Jewish. Of course Hillary hardly has shown the proper attitude towards her apocryphal lineage. Supporting a Palestinian state, and sitting silent while Mrs. Arafat castigated Israel for grievous offenses, does not play well in Flatbush, Brooklyn or Miami, Florida.

Dick Morris, who has advised Bill so expertly, stated on Fox TV that had Hillary left the room at the diatribe she would be ten points ahead in the Senate Race in New York.

Do not despair. There is still Education, and the Children, and Healthcare. And there is Bill, pictured last week on the front page of the LA Times looking downward reverentially and holding hands with Arafat and Barak. 

After all, he is the man who has brought peace to Haiti, Kosovo, Ireland, the Middle East, just another 1.5 billion for Haiti, added to the 2 billion already spent. Albanians killing Serbs instead of Serbs killing Albanian.  Russia killing Chechyans and advising the world it's none of their business.

Worry not.  Foreign policy is not in the hands, yet, of upstarts who don't know who the leader of Pakistan is.  Did I say "Is?" That is for another column.

For now, there's more foreign policy.  Bill has stopped in Cyprus to "cheer" the peace talks between the Greeks and the Turks. The Athenians are rioting since they did not enjoy his victory in Kosovo.

It's all for the spreading of "democracy".  Bill is in Turkey on this quest.  He has come at a most opportune time.  Two 7.2. earthquakes within three months can make one amenable to anything. 

Charlie Kirk. . .And then there were Four

A few days ago, I wrote an entry about the cruel, the despicable, the evil, deaths of Iryna Zarutska, and the two young children of Ascension School. 

The Devil is never done with his effort at destruction and his invasion of souls. Alas all too many souls open themselves up to his corruption, thinking they will find light, when they will find only hell. They are smug--so many faces on Facebook can we even see them--until it is too late. 

Only two days after my lamenting entry about three individuals, another vile episode. Whether it was actually committed or planned or both by this wispy young man from an apparently Republican family turned transgender ideologue or the result of a dark oligarchic plan, the Devil was there, helping to aim the bullet by which Charlie Kirk was assassinated. 

I pray that the Devil and his human tools miscalculated. The Devil is only a Creature. Surely God's Grace will touch, and has already touched, more souls than that benighted beast ever could. 

There are signs, signs that, as it always does, evil oversteps and does itself in--though its spewing makes it hard for us to see how desperate it is in its last gasps. We have to hold on. 

Today is the Feast of St. John Chrysostom in the Catholic Calendar. He was a priest in the fourth century, then a Bishop in Constantinople. He censured a rich empress for bad public behavior (in contradiction of the faith). He was banished for speaking the truth, exiled. But, speak the truth he nonetheless did.

There is a prayer in the Magnificat, today, which speaks of the gift of speech that St. John had. His last name means "Golden Mouth". That prayer, it occurred to me, speaks also of the late Charlie Kirk. 

"Oh God, you speak the Word of life through the eloquence of the faithful servants whom you call to proclaim the Good News of salvation.  By the example and intercession of Saint John Chrysostom, raise up courageous and convincing preachers in our day to stir faith to life, to heal the brokenhearted, and to offer new life through Jesus Christ Our Lord."

I am satisfied to think that Charlie was raised up either through the intercession of St. John, or through any number of Holy Sources, including the Blessed Mother whom Charlie praised recently, though he was Protestant. He certainly was a courageous and convincing preacher. And what his murder has done is to inspire more speakers, young and old, in all fora. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. How often we have heard that. When I am optimistic, I feel it strongly.

There is something that St. John Chrysostom said that seems particularly apt at this horrible time when a wife and mother is burying her 31 year old husband who had the temerity to speak what people do not want to hear. "All things will certainly turn out, whether in this life or the life to come.  In every circumstance, yield to the incomprehensibility of God's providence."

Think of it. When Jesus Christ came to the earth God made man, He spoke the Truth; He was the Truth, and mankind in creating its own distortion of truth crucified Him. How dare he speak what they did not want to hear. Before He died He was mocked. While on the Cross He was mocked.  After he died, people said, "Good riddance!" He was blasphemer. He was a demon. The important people of the day knew better, and thought that his death would end the story. It was only the beginning.

Charlie Kirk was one of His stout followers. He was mocked in this life. Called vile things that never were so. Mocked it seems just as much in death. And only the beginning. Yield to the incomprehensibility of God's providence. I know it's hard. I am struggling mightily over this. 

I want to shake sense into people. But it is an impossibility. There is only the slow capture of souls who want to be saved. We hear the gate is narrow but we pretend otherwise. We are redeemed. But to be saved? That's a choice each of us makes. Charlie made his choice and I believe God's Mercy is so perfect that Charlie is with Him now. Embraced now, as in those memes that were going around on Facebook, the ones that praised Charlie, and did not demean him. 

For the sake of His Sorrowful Passion, have Mercy on us, and on the Whole World!

Iryna Zarutska, Fletcher Merkel, Harper Moyski Three Utterly Unnecessary Deaths

I haven't been able to get out of my mind the image of a young 23 year old woman doing what all of us do when we are blithely forgetting the evil that is out there, scrolling her cell and never considering that she would be dead in a moment. It was probably easy for her to forget the evil. She thought she left it behind when she came, with her family, from war torn Ukraine. But evil in our country, though it is just as horrible, is a bit more disguised, in part by the policies of leaders who are either fools or intend the harm that they cause. 

The evil is magnified by our so-called main stream journalists. They so-call themselves. They are complicit in the repetitions of the crimes that occur, that take lives like Iryna Zarutska. 

This death we only just found out about--not from the people who posit, lie about, their care for providing unbiased information although it occurred on August 22, 2025. We only found out because of social media--itself an imperfect forum--but to which we are grateful. We now know the truth of that day, of the life and death of Iryna, an execution by a multiple offender with raging mental illness--he a blunt instrument of our society's failed, even insane vision of who it is that is protected and who is not. Iryna was among those of us who are not a consideration in favor of tribalistic destructive agendas. Not "one out of many" but "my truth is better than yours and I got the power".  Those individual agendas are no doubt part of whatever is the "divide and conquer" overarching agenda to end any semblance of the founding principles of this country. Iryna was no less a sacrifice than any victim of ancient cultures to which today's self-absorbed, well fed Americans think themselves so superior.

But, there is more, though we knew of this event prior to the one that occurred before it--the shooting of children in a Church on August 28 by another person that was known to be troubled. We are not allowed, it appears, to say "mentally ill", as that gores a societal bull, a shibboleth that is destroying other young lives. The trouble for that tormented soul, who killed Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski, was truly intransigent. He was possessed by the Devil. Please don't try to tell me otherwise. I have seen the videos. I have read the words. I saw the picture in which he looks into a mirror and sees the demon. I know. The Devil. So quaint. In our Pelagian world, where despite the obvious death and destruction we continue to cause, humans believe that we can achieve the perfect, the utopia, without any divinity involved. When has that ever been demonstrated? The closest we came is this nation, with the fragile tenets that Franklin warned the difficulty it would be to keep. And every underpinning is being removed, using the language of Constitutionality and Republic by people who do not believe in it one whit.  He had the sickness unto death--utter spiritual despair and desolation because he could not find his true self. Who is the true self? The one who has connected himself to God, relates to God, the Creator of us, the creatures. The self of this murderer was demolished long ago, and his own society helped him do it, with a political smile on its communal face. 

It's about the guns. Is that so? Take away all the guns from the law abiding. Who will have them? The people who don't care about the stupid agendas of wizened politicians who have been building up their war chests for 40 years in the same seats. They come in with public service salaries. They come out with millions. People notice. But do not ask. We are helping the people they tell you. Which people? Definitely not the three who just died. 

Oh, and by the way, Iryna was killed by a pocket knife. Ban all the pocket knives! That's the ticket!

Will anyone vote these destroyers of civilization out? It appears not. And when they vote someone in who, imperfect as he is, does something to try to mitigate, to stem the tide, there are riots to protect the criminals with cries of totalitarianism. Where is the totalitarianism?  Look closely. Really look. 

What got me today, so that I am writing this? The funeral of Fletcher Merkel. The pastor of Mt. Olivet Church requested no one film, but someone did. There is the casket of an 8 year old boy. Next to it a picture of him with his wild mane of tousled hair. There will be no grown man. 

Whose fault is that?  I worry that there are a lot of people who look into the mirror and see a demon. Some of them are our leaders. Some of them are smiling at how much an inroad they have made into the destruction of the rest of us. 

These are three deaths that have names. Pray for those who have been slaughtered and are anonymous to all but their loved ones. 

Pray. Pray. Pray the Rosary. Just pray that God will somehow move these hardened hearts. 

Cyndi Lauper: Girls Just Want to Film Their Vanity Projects (But Hey That's Ok)

My friend Len Speaks arranges a yearly summer hegira to the Hollywood Bowl for me and a few friends. It usually results in a package of about four to five shows mostly in the baby boomer pop rock, good old time musicals genres and maybe a little jazz via a Diana Krall or Harry Connick Jr. We have seen some amazing shows, and some duds--I do not recommend cover band type stuff, e.g. Abba. And some of the performers have been well past prime. I shall not name them out of respect for their cultural historical significances. And as to this year, I can tell you a John Williams show without John Williams has become a little mechanical and whoever it is that is choosing the music (hope not you Mr. Williams, though I suspect so) is killing any momentum in the shows. 

One of the selections this year is not someone I'd call a favorite, but I liked a few of her songs, and I was content to have this be the final show for us this season, Cyndi Lauper. Hey I am a sucker anyway for fellow New Yorkers! You don't get much more New York than Cyndi. 

The opening act started fifteen minutes before the announced opening of the show. That's ok because we are always there way early so we can get something to eat (my current favorite is Suzanne's Fried Chicken), and just hang and watch the crowd wander in. In this case there were a lot of variously colored wigs and kooky make-up in homage to our singing hostess. 

The opening act was a three named guy that frankly I couldn't enjoy, so I decided to absent myself for a while and visit the restroom and sit at one of the benches along the walk way, and just take in the lovely atmosphere that is the Bowl, a natural environment, in the heart of Los Angeles. But then I discovered I had lost my drivers license, which stupidly, I had put into too shallow a pants pocket. By the time I reported the loss and returned to my seat and my friends, Cyndi was popping onstage. She sang a lot of really slow songs, in between tales of growing up in Queens in the initial stages of her performance, and I have to admit, I was less than appreciative. She looked good though. And that made me feel great as we are about the same age. Look, we don't have to creak when we hit 70! And at some point, she really demonstrated her Pilates flexibility when she was wrestling the the three named guy from the opening act on the stage floor during a particular robust duet. 

I was getting a little glassy eyed emotionally speaking (or perhaps it showed). Then something happened. They did announce on the marquee that there would be special guests. And then the proceedings glimmered with nostalgia, as Joni Mitchell, 80 plus years appeared on stage already seated, slowed but still full of emotional vigor. I have never seen Joni Mitchell live. And back when she was famous, I was a bit of a stick in the mud musically speaking--a late bloomer to my generation's taste in music. I've gotten to appreciate her style late in life. Now, I hear her sing, "They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot" and I am in a solidarity of objection. Things were looking up in this concert. And then. 

Since it was apparently being filmed for some later streaming purpose, there must have been a glitch with Joni and Cyndi's duet. I think I felt it. They were a bit out of sync. Their styles are so different from the first. Nope. Gotta do it again. So they did it again. Everybody in the audience reacted as if it were the first time. Such is the orchestrated world in which we live. Still, I can't complain that I will have died having seen the real Joni Mitchell, icon of my teen and young adult years, once in my life. 

And then later, there was John Legend. I like him well enough but I wouldn't call myself a fan. He came out when all the cell phone lights were poised in the venue, like we used to use real lighters, but we can't because nobody smokes, well, except pot, but that isn't considered smoking in the woke world. Tobacco. That's smoking. That's dangerous. Woe unto those who smoke and corrupt their minds with nicotine. Glory to those who light up a joint! I digress. John came out and joined Cyndi in a song, but alas, somebody was blocking the cue cards and well, his entrance had to be done a second time as if it were the first. And the crowd roared. Alas, I was still worried about my lost license, and truthfully, I just wanted the whole proceedings to end so I could get to the House Manager and make a report. 

I heard there were to be fireworks and when it looked like we were getting closer to the conclusion of things and those fireworks, I went off to find the House Manager. I was told that entrance was blocked off by sort of fire wardens--actually the young staff of usual ushers wearing fireman type hats--and I should wait. I didn't wait. It's a rarity for me to disobey authority, even now, when authority is nuts, but since I saw lots of regular people wandering in the forbidden area, I decided I 'd look for the house manager's office, unless and until somebody intercepted me. In fact, the other young staffers were fine showing me the way. The guy who answered the door was disaffected by the interruption. No license here, but here's a card. Call tomorrow. I found a nice bench near where the Promenade One and the boxes are, and I went online to see if I could get a temporary license. In the meantime, encore, and therein I missed the third special guest, Cher. At this point, I was resigned that this wasn't the best concert I'd ever been to, and that was ok, nobody's fault.  

I was glad Cyndi had her last ever Girls Just Want to Have Fun concert in the can. 

As of today, nobody's turned in my license. The Hollywood Bowl season for me and my triangle crew is at an end. 

                                                         

Billy Joel: There Is Always a Thorn

 

There are just some people you have never met that you nonetheless feel a kinship with. Billy Joel is one of several actors or performers I feel that for and with.  It's because, yes, he's a New Yorker, born in the Bronx, like me, although unlike me he didn't grow up there, but in Long Island, where I barely ever set foot. I lived in the Bronx until I was 27, and peripatetically practicing law--moving to Los Angeles with dreams of breaking into the entertainment industry. And no matter where we have gone in this life (he far more places than me), we are always New Yorkers, with an energy and a sometime abrasiveness (I have often been critiqued or eschewed for being too pushy, although folks, I am one of the least pushy New Yorkers you'll ever meet; just spend a day there and you'd see--I'm a proverbial powder puff) that can turn people off or make them crazy.  I am thinking of a secretary I had once who went to Human Resources  asking to be reassigned, because I was too "intense". Yeah, that's it. New Yorkers. We are intense.  Forty plus years in lazy Los Angeles never changed that in me.  And having watched the five hour, two part story of his life called "Billy Joel: And So It Goes" recently, it surely never changed for Billy. 

Billy Joel channeled a great deal of his intensity into being one of the most amazing performers ever. And a writer of lyrics that tapped into his intensity, and energy, and yep, moodiness. That's another thing we share. He dealt with his moodiness in a far more flamboyant way than I ever have, but it's something for which I feel a deep camaraderie. The other reason I feel such a kinship is that he and his music have been with me since 1973, and his second album, Piano Man. I was a 19 year old just beginning a gig that almost made me decide not to be the lawyer I did become, at our college radio station, WFUV, the "Radio Voice of Fordham University", where students did everything under the watchful eye of the late Frank Seitz, the seasoned professional. And Billy Joel was played and played. 

Billy Joel is one of those people we say, "He's been part of the tapestry of my life." And how. 

As you can see, on one of the returns for a visit to the East Coast, in 1987, I saw the now quite seasoned Billy Joel at the Meadowlands. This is a photo of my actual ticket for that performance. I know I saw him at least once at some other point, here in LA I think, but alas, my memory of the where and when is gone. 

When it comes to affairs of the heart, well Billy has had quite a number,  including marriages, something of which I cannot boast. My relationships were so few I can count them on one hand. Some might not even really properly be in the count. And they were very short.  And they reflected my psychological avoidance of getting close. I have been the queen of the platonic relationship. I admire Billy for his high dives into the pool of love. And the pain concomitant, still it seems, unresolved, as he says in the song, "And So It Goes":  "And every time I've held a rose it seems I only felt the thorns."  Our wounds are quite different, but I suspect we can all sing some version of "And So It Goes".  No matter who we are the reality is, there always is a thorn.

This puts me in mind of one of Billy's songs, a really popular one, "Only the Good Die Young",  in which he sings about trying to get a Catholic school girl to let down her moral guard and have a sexual relationship with a bad boy. "I'd rather laugh with the sinners, than cry with the saints." I was a Catholic School girl. I am a Catholic adult. I remember feeling conflicted and that the combination of my strict in school upbringing and my psychological familial and individual context made me feel like I was locked away indeed, and that I was paying and would pay a price. That's been part of my thorn. "A price for the things that I might have done", as the song says. But when you watch the biography, there was a price for the things that Billy Joel did. The question always is--was it worth the price paid? What was the goal? What is the ending? Neither of us are yet at our ending, and I hope we have a long way to go.

I won't go too religious on y'all in this entry, but I think there is a lacunae in Billy Joel's thinking and pursuit. He came from a family of non-practicing Jews--though there was a devastating connection to the holocaust which no doubt always threaded its way into his psyche. He assumes a lot in that line in Only the Good Die Young, as many people do about laughing with the sinners and crying with the saints. Could it perhaps be faulty? As so often is the case, it misunderstands Catholic theology and the reality that hard though it is for us to see it, that God wants our happiness. How long does "laughing with the sinners" pertain? When you get to the end of the frolicking road in this life laughing away, what happens?  And are the saints actually crying in the long term? Or is it the opposite, both in this life, and if you haven't closed off the idea of the transcendent, the next, sinners stop laughing and the saints breathe easy and joyfully. Let me clarify. We are all sinners. The key is repentance. Saints are repentant sinners. 

Does the thorn have a purpose since we all have one? Is it perhaps to wake us up? That's the subject of another blog entry, or someone else's. Anyway, greater thinkers than me have opined on the meaning of life. 

One thing I do know, is that Billy Joel is a seeker. He still is seeking.  His music and lyrics alternately give pause and bring a smile. 

And this biography is a wonderful snapshot of the complex, and brilliant Billy Joel. 

I have added a plethora of his hits to my Amazon music playlist. Thanks, Billy!