Memories Of Palestine

Several years ago I was getting gold chains on 47th Street to show a customer at the Plaza Hotel store opened by Richie Boy. Business was slow at the exchange and the older gold dealer asked with a Levantine accent, "Where are you from?"

"Boston." No one in the Diamond District had ever asked my origins. I am a goy. Gentiles don't really count except on the Shabbath, when the Hassidim need us to turn on the lights.

"Are you Jewish?" He picked out several heavy necklaces.

"No, I'm the Shabbath Goy."

"I'm not Jewish either. I'm an Armenian born in Israel." Armenians are scattered through the jewelry business. "I left in 1957."

"That's a while ago." I had been five when he arrived in the USA

"I've spent my entire working life on this street."

"And have you ever seen times like this?" I signed the memo.

"Never."

"Not even in Palestine." I put the gold necklaces into a packet and slipped it into my jacket.

"That's the first time I've ever heard anyone on this street call it that." He smiled with a lost sadness. "Palestine. It wasn't like they said. All that dreck about changing the land from desert. Feh. It was beautiful. More natural. Like Utah. And the fruit. It wasn't fake like now. But what can you do?"

"Just remember I guess." Like I remember so many good things in New York like the Second Avenue Deli, the St. Mark's Movie Theater, and CBGBs.

"Well, have a good day."

I thanked him for his best wishes and headed back to the Plaza Hotel. It was a little after 10.

My cellphone rang. It was Richie Boy.

"Why aren't you at the Plaza?"

"I had to pick up some pieces to show a customer." The Plaza store had nothing like them in our inventory

"Hurry up."

"Yeah, sure." I hung up and slowed my pace.

In the past no one was in such a hurry as the 21st Century.

Certainly not in Boston and not Palestine.

I was going to open late.

It happened every day when business was slow.

It was a land of many faiths.

A land of Milk and Honey.

Palestine had access to the sea.

The Wailing Wall.

The beauty of Palestine is not gone.

Just buried under modernity.

Miss Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge sought to reincarnate the pureness of Cambodian society by wiping the slate clean in Year Zero and after the Fall of Phnom Phem the new regime exiled the country's urban population to rural re-education camps in the rice fields and jungles.

The cadre shut schools, hospitals and factories throughout Kampuchea. Buddhas were cast into the gutter and monks were executed by the thousands. Money was banished from daily life. Private property was deemed evil and Khmer Krahom considered drinking alcohol, gambling, and playing crimes deserving execution. If this severe puritanism sounds familiar, it is because the Taliban have followed a similar path in the parts of Afghanistan under their control.

Of course the Khmer Rouge were slightly more progressive with women than their Islamic counterparts.

Women were allowed one black outfit instead of a chador and veil. Hair was cut short. Make-up and jewelry were signs of foreign influence. Death was the punishment for any infraction.

And America can expect the same should the Baptists have their way.

Vote out the GOP this November.

Hell, yes. Heaven no.

Lost and More Lost

30,000 years ago mankind numbered in the thousands. Their settlements have been researched by countless archaeologists. Nothing was lost to the notice of man, however Henri Mouhot announced to the world in 1860 that he had found the lost city of the Khmers, Angkor Wat. The Frenchman never mentioned that previous expedition to the great lake of Cambodia had visited the ruins or that thousands of monks were living on the grounds of the various royal temples. He was a good writer and his posthumously published journals intoxicated the Occidental psyche with the romance of forgotten worlds.

"One of these temples—a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michael Angelo—might take an honourable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged. At Ongcor, there are ...ruins of such grandeur... that, at the first view, one is filled with profound admiration, and cannot but ask what has become of this powerful race, so civilized, so enlightened, the authors of these gigantic works?"

The height of prejudice.

The cities had been abandoned like those of the Mayas.

Rebellion against the rich.

Several years ago my good friend and I stumbled across the ruins of several brick kilns in Dutchess County. They probably dated back to the 18th Century. Slate piled into cones. No beer bottles or cans were in the interior. The layers of leaves formed a bed of neglect dating several seasons of bad weather. We were ecstatic to have discovered such monuments to man's neglect only 10 miles from Andrew's house and we did what all men do at such moments.

We peed on their walls.

"I came, I saw, I peed."

For a related article click on this URL

http://www.mangozeen.com/2008/11/10/drinking/drunkee-pol-from-nj.htm

Snake Farm A Go-Go Sihanoukville

After several hours of drinking gin and tonic's at the Zig Zag bar, Roland, the manager of the Angkor Inn, suggested a night cap at the snake farm.

"Ze girls there dance with snakes." Roland is French, hence the ze instead of the.

"Lead the way." Nick was a great admirer of the exotic arts.

The Snake Farm was on a dark road. The road sign was promising.

Dancing girls. Snakes.

The place looked like someone had spent a lot of money of his go-go dream, only the Snake Farm was emptier than Phnom Penh after the victory entrance of the Khmer Rouge. Not completely. A few listless bargirls lazed on the sofas. They didn't even smile. One might have rolled her eyes.

No snakes in sight. No go-go dancing. We were the only customers.

I couldn't have been more disappointed. Nick almost cried. Roland said sorry.

We headed to his place and went to sleep with dreams of better things to come in Phnom Penh.

Scumbag Judge

A piece of shit.

Ventemilla

The 2009 Cannes Film Festival concluded with Austrian director Haneke's "The White Ribbon" winning the Palme d"Or for yet-another movie about the Nazis.

Ten years earlier my old girlfriend Candida Romero asked, "When will that war be over?"

Possibly never.

ANTICHRIST had been also recognized by the Ecumenical Council as the 'anti-film'. It was booed at the screening for rank offensiveness, yet the film's actress, Charlotte Gainsbourg, won the award for best actress.

Nice to see that the jury can run against the current of outrage.

Once Cannes was over, the hotels rolled up the red carpets.

The yachts disappeared over the horizon and the paparazzi returned to the hives of society. Director Amos Poe also evacuated the Cote d'Azur, abandoning his $1400/week Fiat panda at Nice Aeroport and jumped on the train to Italy. At Ventemilla he missed his connection, forcing him to stay in this border town.

Amos had nothing good to say about it and neither do I.

I missed the last train to France in 1985.

Somehow the town fathers' must have arranged this delay with the railways on both sides of the border, otherwise no one would ever stay in Ventemilla. The trainmaster informed me that the next departure was at 6am and suggested a hotel across the street. I walked across the street into the lobby. The air was stale. The unshaven clerk laughed at my attempt to ask for a room in Italian. He wrote down room # 421 and a 50,000 lira or almost $30. I paid him and took the elevator to the fourth floor. My room was sandwiched between the elevator and neighbor with a TB cough. A 40-watt bulb hung from a wire. A bed was valleyed by thousands of 1-hour stands. The sheet was as slippery as baloney. Several flies buzzed out of reach. After an hour I packed my bag and slept in the train station.

Ventemillia.

Some things never change and usually they are the bad things in life.

White Man Overbite

Earlier in the week Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judicial Committee in response to an old schoolmate's accusation of sexual abuse i.e. attempted rape. The GOP revealed their support with an avalanche of old white white man grimaces.

Chairman Chuck Grassley didn't attack Kananaugh's victim either by person or testimony.

The Senator even apologized to Mrs. Blassey Ford, although only to accuse of Democrats of summing a witch hunt, but make no mistake Chuck Grassley is another old white guy seeking to protect male domination of America.

Lindsey Graham proved himself to be a woman-hating KKK drag queen.

And who can believe the snake-dancer Ted Cruz?

Himself?

Or Trump the ultimate liar.

He wasn't even born in the USA.

That White Boy Overbite was popularized in WHEN TOM MEETS SALLY.

It was the way we danced in publix. ,P>No shame.

Only eating a mayonnaise sandwich is a more convincing proof of being a white boy.

And damn it electrify everything.

Otherwise use more lighter fluid.

Burn baby burn.

especially Greenwich CN.

ps GI JOE doesn't overbite.