Where's The Peace?

My step-father's farm lies about 200 kilometers north of Bangkok. Den annually harvests one rice crop. The rest of the year he tends to his roaming cattle.

His house is small. A solar panel provides energy for a small TV, radio, light bulb, and fan. The sun falls fast on the rice fields and at night my father-in-law drinks lao khao or rice whiskey, while speaking with the ghosts of the past.

They have long conversations and Den couldn't be more happy in this peaceful setting.

He rarely comes home to the main house.

No one listens to him after too much lao khao, but the ghosts have no choice.

They are his prisoners.

Even Preta, the hungry ghost.

Not much meat on Den.

Lao khao is the old man's main source of nutrition and hungry ghosts are not heavy drinkers.

A happy man indeed.

The serenity of the Chao Phyra river is an illusion.

Thailand as a nation is not so fortunate according to the World Peace Index.

Insurgency, corrupt police, and a political military are never a good recipe for peace.

See this URL; http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings/compare/

Back in 2008 the Land of Smiles stood 118 out of 140 countries bracketed by Kenya and the Congo, 140th unsurprisingly being Iraq. This low ranking was the result of the government's failed suppression of the restive South.

Yala.

I actually spent a month there in 1994.

It was very peaceful.

Not anymore.

Siam's 2016 standing has dropped to 125 and Thailand's status will not improve until a wise Thai asks his country end the power elite, "What about a little peace?"

Not that the Muslim separatists are interested in peace.

They want a land of their own, but Thailand is not interested in that solution.

So Siam should be in triple digits for the years to come.

In 2008 the USA was 97th.

Present ranking 103.

It feels more like 1003.

I guess the World Peace Index doesn't count when you export violence.

And import your dead.

Is a little peace too much to ask?

Really?

Steve McQueen thought it was cool and no one was cooler than Steve for a while.

KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST BY Adam Hochschild

Can you judge a book by its cover?

Certainly not KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST, unless you have an inkling that Josef Conrad's THE HEART OF DARKNESS was based on his six months of visiting the hellish Congo Free State plantation dotting the Congo River and that Kurtz was not one man but many fervently seeking their fortune by exploiting the natural resources in the jungles from ivory to rubber to human labor.

Henry Morton Stanley of 'Doctor Livingstone I presume' fame sets the mark for future company men working for the owner of the Congo, the King of Belgium.

And all he wanted was money.

If it meant cutting off the hands of the workers.

So be it.

The author conjures up a fascinating coterie of characters aside from the afore mentioned, none more quixotic than Roger Casement, the gay Irish rebel, who helps broaden the campaign against King Leopold's ghastly reign,

"Oh the horror indeed.

The book is worth reading, but only if you can get it from the library along with SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA and of course Alan Whitehead's two masterpieces WHITE NILE and THE BLUE NILE.Good luck.

The Brides of Mopti

The Niger River runs 4000 kilometers through Western Africa. Its existence was known to the Romans, although few people were aware of its source. Mungo Park explored the Mali interior finding death beyond the relative safety of Timbucktoo. It was a common end for most European seeking the shrink the expanse of 'terra incognita' on the Dark Continent.

The French came, saw, and went to Mali. They left the land of the Strong Brown God in 1960 and the nation of Mali returned to obscurity. The BBC News resurrected the world's attention to this distant land with a reportage of brothel towns along the Niger River, where thousands of Nigerian women have been enslaved in whorehouses to serve Muslim men unable to afford multiple wives.

Foreign travelers first saw this rampant sex trade in cities such as Mopti.

One traveler said, "I fired our first travel guide in a dark and dirty brothel in Mopti. The brothel was the cheaper of the two 'hotels' and served cold beer when the electricity was working, but was primitive, squalid, and full of noisy drunks."

Obviously a no star hotel.

And neither was The Hotel Bar Mali.

"A marvelous place to luxuriate in squalor. For the squeamish, it was indubitably a mirror on hell, a place where six of the seven deadly sins were practiced continually, or more accurately, continuously, since there was no significant interval in the on and off of coitus uninterreptus and other frenzied debauch."

Any town that far from sanity will attract the scum of the Earth.

Mopti, for far from heaven, so close to hell.

This photo was not from National Geographic photo shoot.

Peter Beard in Paradise

In 2008 Peter Beard defied the death.

Not only had the famed photographer survived a goring by the tusk of an African elephant, but even the ravages of his own excess.

Bravo for a new life in St. Tropez.

Here's an elephant attack joke:

This tourist returns from Africa and calls his doctor.

"I was raped by an elephant."

"Raped by an elephant?" The doctor is alarmed having once seen an aroused bull elephant at the circus. "I want you to come in right away."

An hour later the man walks into the clinic. Each step misery. Once inside his office the doctor tells the patient to pull down his pants and is astounded by the size of the man's distended anus.

"I know elephants have big penises, but this is huge."

"Well," The tourist lowers his head. "The elephant first fingered me."

photo by randy koral 2010

15 Minutes of African Garage/Psych Rock from 60's Era

Garage rock existed everywhere in the world during the 60s; Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Here's 15 minutes of savage rock from the Big Continent.

Check out this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MicORkZyNaI

Mungo Park - Explorer

European geologists were baffled by the rivers of Africa.

They were puzzled by the sources of the Niger and Congo and even thought that the two rivers were one. Expeditions were sent out from the capitols of the empires. Mongo Park was one of those explorers. The Scot had reached the Niger in the end of the 18th Century, traveling east to Bamako before turning back to the Atlantic.

His book TRAVELS IN CENTRAL AFRICA was a huge success.

Eight years later Mungo Park struck out for Africa.

Europe wanted to solve the mystery.

It was no mystery for the inhabitants of the Niger flood plain.

The river came from one way and wen the other.

It was only a problem when the Niger overran its banks.

The the river went in all directions.

The expedition was beset by disease.

Eleven out of the thirty-nine Europeans arrived at the banks of the Niger.

They continued down the river on a modified canoe.

The men died one by one.

Park's last letter stated, "I shall set sail for the east with the fixed resolution to discover the termination of the Niger or perish in the attempt. Though all the Europeans who are with me should die, and though I were myself half dead, I would still persevere, and if I could not succeed in the object of my journey, I would at least die on the Niger."

The Africans frequently attacked the travelers.

The expedition ended at the Bussa Rapids.

The natives killed everyone.

THE STRONG BROWN GOD: THE STORY OF THE NIGER RIVER By Sanche de Gramont contains an excellent account of Mungo Park's exploration as does T C Boyle's WATER MUSIC.

The Niger still rolls to the sea.

As strong as ever.

Brown as mud.

Bamako On The Strong Brown God

Bamako is the fast-growing capitol of Mali. The word 'Bamako' means crocodile in the Bambara language and the ancient town has served as a market town since Empire of Ghana dominated the region. The city of 2 million inhabitants straddles the Niger River.

Three bridges span the wide river.

During the dry season two causeways provide other options for crossing the Strong Brown God.

My friend Alice is the ambassador in Bamako.

I hope to join her in November.

The dry season and the dry season is real in the sub-Sahara.

Pepe Le Moko

An ex-girlfriend from Paris saw this photo and remarked that I resembled the French actor Jean Gabin in PEPE LE MOKO.

She wasn't too far off.

But I think it was the hair.

I'm sitting in the 169.

I wish it was on this wall.

Algiers I think.

Oculus At The World Trade Building

When the World Trade Towers collapsed on 9/11, the weight of the Twin Towers crushed the subway hub in the massive buildings sub-basement. The federal government and the governments of New Jersey and New York agreed to create of new station. Its construction was long-delayed and the cost blossomed from $1.9 billion to $3.9 billion in the course of the fifteen years since 2011.

The Oculus will serve 250,000 daily passengers of the PATH system.

The original design by Santiago Calatrava was to resemble 'a bird being released from a child's hand' with a mechanically movable roof, however Homeland Security demanded alterations to provide greater security and the New York Times reported in 2005, "In the name of security, Santiago Calatrava's bird has grown a beak. Its ribs have doubled in number and its wings have lost their interstices of glass.... The main transit hall, between Church and Greenwich Streets, will almost certainly lose some of its delicate quality, while gaining structural expressiveness. It may now evoke a slender stegosaurus more than it does a bird."

People regarded the Oculus with wonder, but the cost of $3.9 billion is a little less than three times the annual operating budget of $14 billion and more than twice as much as Amtrak's yearly cost.

Of course the LIRR only travels to Long Island and Long Islanders are conservative by nature.

They deserve nothing better than what they get.

Shitty trains.

Versus the TGV of France.

A Not Very August Afternoon - The Beacon Street Union

Back in 1968 the two best Boston bands were Ultimate Spinach and Beacon Street Union. My best friend and I attended several of their psychedelic Saturday concerts on Cambridge Commons near Harvard. The longhaired coeds dressed like peasants. None of the hippie girls were fat and few wore bras.

Chuckie and I hadn't been to a barbershop since the beginning of the summer. We wore beaded vests, bellbottom jeans, and Frye boots, since we thought that they made us taller and therefore look older. We lied about our age. Neither of us were lucky with the older girls, but the Cambridge Catholic girls were easy, mostly because we were Catholic school boys.

1968 was a good time to be sixteen.

The world was in revolution.

This afternoon I played several song from BSU's 2nd LP THE CLOWN DIED IN MARVIN GARDENS. The best is A Not Very August Afternoon. It'll make you feel very hippish, which is not a bad thing of a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Click on this url to hear the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-G9Rs0YmTI

Rockaway 116th Street

The Sand Bar on 116th Street in the Rockaways was a great place to kill the end of a bay at the beach, until Tropical Storm Sandy destroyed the legendary dive bar. The city condemned the property to pave the way for a nine-story luxury condo development by the Marcal Group without out any plans for affordable housing.

"We are not affordable housing developers," said Mark Caller, the principal partner

A friend of mine extolled the project.

"It will bring new life to that area."

I hate it, because the Rockaways have always been working-class and I like it that way.

But just like the East Village, Chelsea, Harlem, Chinatown and many parts of Brooklyn, the city prefers luxury condos to middle or lower class housing.

Why?

Not because of taxes.

Because they will empty the city of the under-class.

Economic and ethnic cleansing.

Which is why the landlords are the first ones to be executed in a revolution.

In the words of Proudhon "All property is theft."

And Chairman Mao believed the same thing.

Except he also believed that all property belonged to the state.

There has to be a middle ground, but the Marcal Group's plans are only for the rich.

So up against the wall, mother-fuckers or mā le ge bā zi in Mandarin.

Bring back the Sand Bar.

Lily's Time Out

When you're bad, you go to the sin bin.

Even Lily.

A blonde as pure as snow and a bad girl in good light.

This postcard from the 1920s served as an inspiration to many like Lily Bayliss for Pete Townsend's first power pop hit.

To hear the Who's PICTURES OF LILY please go to the following url https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmkBroiw1s

MOSES' BEST FRIEND by Peter Nolan Smith

New York City showed its teeth the winter of 1980. The police were racketeering our after-hours nightclub. One of the Continental’s backers was a gangster from Odessa, Russia. Vadim was going out with my old girlfriend from Buffalo. The tough zek smuggled stolen icons and passed bad paper. Lisa looked good in his furs.

Only problem was that our newest investor in illegal enterprise looked like the FBI mostly since they were the FBI investigating the dirty cops.

Arthur had hired me to work the door, however his partner, a poster boy/model for herpes, didn’t like my attitude and Paul Garcia wasn’t alone. Arthur apologized, “I got to let you go.”

“No worries.”

The microphone wire on Arthur’s chest was never a good sign and I accepted the offer from a Paris nightclub to work the door as a physionomiste i.e. doorman. Jacques and Fabrice paid my plane ticket to France. I got to choose a DJ. Vladmar was my choice. He arrived one day after me. The dance crowd loved his spinning of cold wave hits. I was another story.

“I don’t know how to speak French.” Two years of grammar school French from a nun with a lisp had taught me how to ask, “Ou est le Bibliotechque?” I explained to the owner.

“Pas de problem.” Jacques shrugged with ease.

The previous door person had been Farida, an Algerian Amazon. She was leaving her post to pursue a modeling career. She was that beautiful.

"I want someone not French. You only have to say two words. ‘Ouais’ or ‘non.”

“Okay.” I had learned that trick at CBGBs, Hurrah, and Studio 54. “But I don’t know anyone in Paris. Not the famous people. Not the people who go to nightclubs.”

“Bien.” His partner was tired of everyone getting in for free. “Make them pay. I don’t care if it’s Brigitte Bardot.”

“But how shall I treat them?”

“Like shit.”

“Like shit?”

“Comme le merde.”

I followed those orders to the tee, except I treated my favorites with glory and I built a new clientele for the old bathhouse off the Avenue Sebastopol; rockers, punks, models, gangsters, pop stars, and just normal people too.

For the most part the owners liked the mix.

It was edgy.

One night a decrepit clouchard approached the entrance to Les Bains. The bouncers moved to prevent the derelict's climbing the stairs. They were off-duty Legionnaires. I ordered them to stop and asked the grizzled drunk in Boston-accented French,"Why are you here?"

“Because I’m a good friend of Moses.”

"A personal friend?"

"From birth. He told me to meet him here."

"Come on in."

"Are you serious?"

"Mais ouais." I had heard plenty of excuses from people seeking to enter the Bains-Douches. None of them were as good as that offered by this 'friend of Moses'.

"I have no money." The clouchard patted his pockets.

"A friend of Moses doesn't need money. Here are two drink tickets. Have a good time."

His raison d’etre granted him entry to the elite boite de nuit and I went inside from time to time to make sure that he was having a good time. The clientele of the Bains-Douches opened their hearts to the Friend of Moses. He wasn't one of them. They liked different. I considered him harmless, until my boss stormed up to the front door.

"What's wrong?" I didn't have an idea what, but I was sure about the 'who'.

"Your friend drank a bottle of wine from Thierry Mugler’s table." My boss had a sweet spot for the fashion czars of Paris.

"Really?" I regarded the designers as a little full of themselves and laughed at the situation.

"You think it's funny."

"Just a little. I'll show him out."

“Why did you let him in?”

“Because he’s a friend of Moses.” The excuse wasn’t so funny to the patron, but he had never seen Charlton Heston part the Red Sea in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

I know it was special effects, but the real thing must have been very impressive.

I had the bouncers or 'videurs' escort the clouchard from the dining area and he cried out, “You can’t treat the friend of Moses like this.”

“Sorry, I'm just doing my job."

"Pas de problem." Then he cried out, “Just wait till I talk to him. He has more plagues up his sleeves than I have fleas.”

Nothing as bad as the killing of the first born visited the Bains-Douches and several nights later I spotted the friend of Moses in Les Halles hectoring passers-by about the 27 Commandments. I wish that I could remember his 'thou shalt nots', except I’m lucky if I can repeat Moses’ 10.

One afternoon he cursed everyone with damnation at the very popular Cafe Pere Tranquille.

The junkies and drunks laughed at his predictions of doom.

I looked to the sky.

The madman pointed a finger at me. “That Amerlot loves God.”

And I wish it were true, but I had been a non-believer since 1962 and I gave him 20 francs, for it wasn't such a bad idea to have the friend of Moses saying good to the Grand Seigneur, even if the drunk is completely mad, for while their Lord moves in strange ways, so do the mad.

TOUCH OF EVIL Opening Scene

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 and make a slow journey through town to the U.S. border. Newlyweds Miguel "Mike" Vargas (Charlton Heston) and Susie (Janet Leigh) pass the car several times on foot. The car crosses the border, then explodes, killing the occupants.

To see the opening scene of TOUCH OF EVIL PLEASE go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg8MqjoFvy4

Out Of My Small Hands

NRA president Charlton Heston famously told a gathering of gun-lovers at the 129th NRA convention, in Charlotte, North Carolina on May 20, 2000, "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands."

While the slogan's originality has been attributed to the Hollywood actor, however the line was first popularized by Bellevue, Washington's Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in 1970, "I Will Give Up My Gun When They Peel My Cold Dead Fingers From Around It."

Tough words.

From a actor wearing a wig.

And I never believe anyone who lies about their baldness, especially Donald Trump.

Most recently a north Carolina Sheriff extolled the GOP candidate's shooting ability, saying “I’ve got to say this man can shoot.”

However judging from his grip of a rifle, I could pry any weapon out of the fat short eye's small hands without a fight.

And fuck Charlton Heston too.

He had small hands too.

Ali McGraw - Chanel Promo

Ali McGraw was in LOVE STORY, but she shined in THE GETAWAY with Steve McQueen.

They were a cool couple.

And those were a cool time.

ps Jim Thompson adapted his novel of the same title for the screenplay.

Cool.

Shot by Sam Peckinpah.

Ali's character Carol Ainsley McCoy betrays him.

That still doesn't stop him from loving her.

Very cool.

26,560 hits

On Aug 19, 2016 mangozeen hit over 20,000 pageviews.

I can't figure out why.

But I'm sure it had nothing to do with Emerson Lake and Palmer.

I lost my virginity during their 1970 concert on the Charles River.

To Linda Imhoff.

Few more beautiful than her.

She had long legs.

Very long legs.

Sadly no one now knows how to be that sexy.

Cornish Drive In

98 And That's All

Thursday the temperature in New York City hit the high 90s. The humidity soaked my shirt within a few minutes of exposure to the outside weather. I drank three large bottles of Perrier, ate a quarter of a watermelon, and downed about five iced beers in a vain attempt to keep up with my projectile sweating. It was almost as if my pores were spitting out fluid. Once home I took about five showers and remained cloistered in my air-conditioned apartment.

I survived the night.

Friday the weathermen were predicting heat nearing 100.

The record for New York City was 105 and the hottest temperature ever recorded for the NY State was in Troy on July 22, 1926, when the thermometer hit 108.

Today the temperature has slacked off and I said that the heat wasn't as bad as the previous day. My friends said my brain was heat-addled. They weren't far from the truth.

The present heat wave will continue throughout the weekend, although Sunday evening is predicted to be the end.

This morning I even went out to shoot hoops at the park on DeKalb.

My friends once more accused me of suffering from heat madness, but this recent spike in the temperature is nothing to comparison to the grasp of the heat dome over Oklahoma and Kansas. A month of unrelenting 90+ temperature, but even that streak pales in regards to the longest heat wave in modern history.

5 months of 100+ Marble Bar, Australia during the winter of 1924.

America's worst heat wave occurred in the Dust Bowl of 1936.

101+ for over 100 days in Yuma, Arizona.

Back then hot was hot. There was no AC. Ice melted faster than butter on the red-hot frying pan.

98 was hot for New York City.

People complained so much that their wind blew away the heat.

Hot air versus hot air.

New Yorkers are # 1.

It's certainnly not Kansas.

Hotter Than Before Almost

The Friends of Science actively refute the majority of scientists churning out warnings about the threat of Global Warming. The Hoaxist website disputes the claims of the radical rise in temperatures, the danger of man's carbon footprint on the planet, global warming's adverse effect on weather patterns as well as the shrinkage of glaciers and polar ice packs by stating that Earth's atmosphere is in a constant state of flux with Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe leading the charge as a member of the Senate's Standing Committee on Environment.

Three summers ago when a relentless heat wave scorched the South and Central states with a merciless stretch on triple-digit temperatures, Senator Inhofe argued on the floor of the Senate that global warming was a hoax.

Several of his opponents booed his assessment as denialism.

According to the New Times a third of the nation’s population had experienced 10 or more days of summer temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Among the cities that set temperature records in 2012 were Nashville; Athens, Ga.; and Cairo, Ill., all of which hit 109 degrees on June 29; Greenville, S.C., which hit 107 degrees on July 1; and Lamar, Colo., which hit 112 degrees on June 27.

The City's Observer Newspaper argued that New York surpassed the previous record of 106F from 1934 with thermometers topping 107 on July 7, 2012.

I was in Thailand on that day, so I cannot verify that information, but I am a believer in Global Warming, however my opinion differs from the majority consensus on the causes of climate change as does Jamie Parker.

My good friend avowed that the planetary increase in temperature was a result from our Solar System passing through a warmer region of space, while I theorized that sweating fat people added to the problem.

Both of conjectures were trumped by my counterpart in religion, the ex-model from Paris, has sent a damning email claiming the prime reason for global warming is that many people have lost their faith in God and after dying they are sent to Hell.

"More sinners to burn, the warmer the planet, plus people are fatter than before so they burn in Hell hotter."

Jamie and I agreed that this made sense, if you believed in an after-life.

So repent sinners and save the world.

There will be no smoothies in Hell.

Presidential Gurning Contest

Gurning originated as a rural English tradition dating back to the 1200s and even beyond recorded history. The object of gurning has been to distort your face in the most horrific or comedic manner possible and upon seeing the many expressions of the two leading candiates for the 2016 Presidential Election it became clear that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump should participate in a gurning contest instead of a debate.

The presumptive GOP candidate specializes in dismissive smirks, indicating while people have said that he was stupid, his success in life has proven them wrong.

Hillary Clinton has no control over her face.

She would win the contest hands down.

Donald Trump can try.

Try is the first syllable in 'triumph'.

However the Former First Lady is a champion gurner.

So I guess it will just be debates.

How boring.