Friday, June 23, 2017

Renovation 4







































Picture Legend:

1. Kyzylkum Desert, south of Dzhangeldy, Uzbekistan
2. Artifact
3. Confrontation
4. LAC-USC hospital in Los Angeles
5. First floor view, main hallway from the front door towards the back of the building
6. First floor view, main hallway at midpoint toward front door
7. First floor view, main hallway from the back of the building toward the front
8. First floor kitchen before renovation
9. Kitchen at a different angle
10 Panoramic view of the garden with Jeannie, Chris, and me contemplating the black monolith
11. Garden ladies Jeannie and Chris
12. Hardy
13. The infamous front stairway from the first floor to the second
14. The infamous front stairway looking down to the first floor from the second
15. Second floor hallway toward the ghostly apparition and the wall that hides the elevator shaft
16. The author lurking in the hallway
17. Hallway to my room
18. Third floor fire escape door
19. Hallway window that can’t be opened
20. Photographer Fatemeh B
21. Third floor janitor’s room where the voices come from
22. My desk. Notice the 31 books required to stabilize to front
23. Third floor shower & rest room. Notice there is no barrier separating the shower from the rest of the room
24. Feet
25. The elevator shaft
26. Carl’s Jr’s objectification of women
27. Beth
28. Beth sandwich
29. Alfred E. Neuman
30. The thing in the bathroom
31. Milana
32. Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple
33. The Hippie Kitchen


Photo Credits: Gudrun G & Fatemeh B
Demon Special Effects: Industrial Light & Magic


March 18, 2017

South of Dzhangeldy, Uzbekistan. The Kyzylkum Desert

   The jeep Wrangler rolled over the dirt road kicking up a cloud of dense sand and dust behind it.       The driver, a man in his early seventies with drawn features, unkempt blonde hair and mustache, with intense blue eyes, was sweating profusely, a reflection of the the 110 degree heat penetrating the vehicle which lumbered on without the burden of air conditioning. 
   Kirinan McCalister had lived and worked in the region for many years and was somewhat used to the ambient heat, as used to it as anyone could possibly be.
   It was the dust though that he disliked the most. The never ending dust which was constantly present and affective despite any effort to mitigate it’s very presence.
   Dust everywhere. Sometimes he felt he could just choke on it as it filtered through the cloth bandana that he wore across his face, his mouth and nose.
   They had spent three months at the  present site, producing an abundance of fossils, including several species of early birds, such as the Enantiornis martini and E. walkeri, Kizylkumavis cretacea, Kuszholia mengi, Lenesornis kaskarovi, were also found, as well as the usual examples of ancient tree trunks, pelecypods, beetles, sharks, rays, bony fish, frogs, salamanders, turtles, crocodylomorphs, and the occasional pterosaur.
   All very interesting enough but McCalister was not a paleontologist. He was a veteran practitioner of paleontology’s sister branch of science, archaeology, the study of artifacts and remains, usually of human origen.
   Muattar met him as he pulled to a stop. They spoke in a mixture of the native Uzbek language and Russian.
   “When did you break through?” McCalister asked.
   “Last week. They were trying to get through a barrier of  heavy rock when they discovered artifacts of a completely different period.”
   “How old do you think?”
   “Twenty five hundred... three thousand...”
   “Show me.”
   They walked several hundred yards through the maze of diggers busy at work, until they fell upon an open pit that ran about twelve feet deep.
   McCalister scurried down to the bottom and surveyed the current state of the dig.
   “Has the sediment been washed at all?” he asked.
   “No. We waited for you.”
   “Good.”
   McCalister stuck the upper part of his body into the small hole in the side of the pit and began picking around with a rock hammer.
   Until he saw something.
   He dug out a small rock, or piece of rock, with something embedded in it.
   He cleaned away at the piece, removing bits of hard clay until what he had became clear.    
   What he saw was a face.
  
   In Tashkent McCalister sat in a small, dirty, cafe. A small cup of bitter brown tea was brought to his table. The male waiter watched as he opened a small pendant full of pills and put one
into his mouth. He noticed the other’s leathered and work worn hands as they trembled slightly.
   “Something else?” the waited asked.   
   “No thank you,” McCalister replied.

   He sat in the office of his colleague as what was found at the dig was being recorded.
   McCalister picked up the rock head he had found.
   “Evil against evil,” he said
   The man at the table looked confused.
   “Father...” he said.
   Then he noticed a clock’s pendulum had stopped of it’s own accord.
   McCalister stood up and walked toward the clock, looking at it.
   “I wish you didn't have to go,” the man at his desk said.
   “There is something I must do.”
  
   McCalister drove his jeep up to another, local dig site that had been worked years before. Two security guards rushed out of the lean-to office. McCalister waved to them and they slowly returned to whatever it was they had been doing.
   McCalister walked up a rocky mound to see a statue of the demon Pazuzu, which also had the head of the small artifact he had found earlier.
   He climbed to a higher point to get a closer look.  
   When he reached the highest point he was looking at the statue head on.
   He heard rocks falling and turned around to see a guard watching him. Then he heard two dogs savagely attack each other.  
   He looked back at the statue as the wind picked up, and sand with it, until he and it were lost to waves of dusty obscurity.


Los Angeles

Mar 18

   I was released from the LAC-USC hospital at 9am with a curious mixture of cracks, bruises and contusions.
   All I was given for the intense pain was tylenol.
   Not even tylenol 3, which at least has a little kick to it.
   I returned home to my bed.
   Tommy had turned the light on in the stairwell. All he had to do was flick a switch.
   I felt sad.

Mar 20th 8am

   I was meditating, and just about to reach Nirvana and a true state of enlightenment, which would allow me, Rick Joyce from San Jose, to liberate all sentient beings (birds too!) from the pain and suffering that life bestows, liberate all from an endless cycle of rebirth, from the slavery and dependence of desire and ignorance, to show Trump supporters the errors in their judgment, to which they would actually listen to and accept, when they came.
   I knew they were there because they knocked on my door.
   The construction workers wanted to check the holes in my walls.
   I had eight!
   They didn’t say they were going to fix or close any of them, they just wanted to reassure themselves that I had some.
   I did.
   Everybody who lives in the Las Americas has holes in their walls.
   It’s an epidemic.

March 28th  5pm

   I received one of those mysterious construction notices on my door this afternoon. They would come to fix the holes in my walls tomorrow.
   I was glad because the rats that live in the walls use those holes to stare at me at night. I can see their beady little red rat eyes glowing in the dark.
   Rat surveillance. It exists.
   I believe they even has their own form of some kind of rat NSA.

   The renovation workers have a new little trick of turning the power off for a second or two without any fore-notice, causing my computer and TV to go out of whack, at which point I have to reboot them.
   The workers think it’s funny as hell.

   Oh yes, the stairs, which are inherently unsafe to begin with due to a half inch over hang on each riser (which serves no purpose whatsoever other than make it easier to trip on), are beginning to fall apart. Literally.
   Parts of the stairs are sloughing off, coming apart altogether, making an inherently unsafe stairway even unsaftyier.

   I E-mailed Tommy about it. He assured me he’d have the workers fix the problem.

  
   On April 13th I sent Tommy the following E-mail:

“Tommy, on the 27th of this month, Gudrun, one of the Garden Club ladies, is bringing her camera after which we're going to take some pictures of the ongoing renovation process, and we'd like to get some of the basement. Can you ask whoever's in charge of all of this if that would okay? This needs to be documented. Thanks, I appreciate it.”

   Tommy replied the next morning.

   “Sorry, Corporate Office say No. Come down and I will explain.”

   At which point I replied

   “Doesn't matter. I don't need the basement. And I can use the fact that the corporate office is involved and has denied me access. Thank you.”

   What are they trying to hide?

April 15th

   Tax Day! Sleep in until 5:30, which was nice. I was planning on attending the Tax March at Pershing Square at 10:00, and had many other things to do today, so got up and went to the showers.
   Only to find a folding table in the bathroom I usually use to shower in. I thought that rather odd as I usually find a regular, non-folding table in there.
   This wasn’t a small table. Oh no! This was a nice 5 foot by 2 in the middle of the room.
   Well, I’ve seen stranger things. I saw a goldfish eat a cat once. So I prepared to shower by turning the water on so it could cycle and get nice and hot... no water came forth in the shower. Water in the sink was working just fine, but nada in the shower.
   Okay.
   I walked downstairs to the 2nd floor shower. Hey, no table! Things were looking up.
   I knew the lock didn’t work on the door, so anybody could walk in on me as I showered, but at this point I didn’t care. I checked the shower’s water, which came on, on the hand held shower head only. The stationary shower head on the wall was not putting forth.
   Then I noticed that the ledge under the window where I usually place my shampoo and soap was actually smaller than the shower above me on the 3rd floor, so small my shampoo wouldn’t fit on it.
   Okay.
   I endured the awkward process of washing my body and hair while having to hold the shower head.
   I got through fairly unscathed, then dressed before someone came in, and went back to my room, thankful that the showering process was over.
   For today at least.

April 16th

   Another day has come upon us. Hallelujah!
   I used the small “shower room only” this morning at about 4:45am. It’s right next to the restroom with the table in it. A simple rectangular cell like, 4 by 8 tiled room, with no toilet, no sink, no towel rack. No towel rack? Yeah, no towel rack.
   It is interesting to contemplate what the designers of this place had in mind when they designed it. I suppose they thought those who utilized this shower could at once wash themselves and their clothes, and the towel that they brought with them at the same time.
   How thoughtful!
   I used the lever at the top of the door, the device that helps open and close the door, to hang up my clothes and towel, which worked, for today.
   At least the shower was functional.
   As I left, on a whim, I checked the restroom next door, and behold! The table was gone. I checked the shower, and it was back on as well!
   Then as I left I noticed the folding table all folded up resting in the corner.
   Thank God someone left it there... just in case it’s needed again.

April 17th

   They began building the elevator shaft on the second floor today. We had been given notice that residents who lived on the second floor would need to take a circuitous route to the back of the building, climb the stairs to the third floor, then walk to the front of the building to the main staircase in order to leave the Las Americas.
   The renovation workers opened up the hallway on the second floor, just about at the half way point, and built a wooden box in which they worked. The hallway, which had previously been a straight forward hallway running through the length of the hotel, from north to south, did not exist anymore. Now, after the renovation workers had their way, one walking from the back of the building to front would encounter that wooden box blocking their path. The hallway had been expanded somehow, and you would need to walk around the wooden box to get to the main staircase.
   It’s all rather exhausting.

April 22nd

   Wanted to shower before heading off to the Science March. Entered the bathroom and the table, folded in half, was laying flat on the floor right in front of the toilet. It had been leaning against the south wall all week, but now was flat on the floor. I picked it up and dragged it outside into the hallway and leaned it against the west wall.
   That should take care of that!

April 23rd

   The table was back in the restroom this morning, folded in half and in the shower. I removed it once again.
   My 73 year old neighbor, Arnold came over to chat this morning and told me he attempted to use the shower next to the restroom with the table business, the one without a toilet or towel rack. He could not shower however due to the fact that someone had defecated on the floor. I believe Arnold used the term, “A huge s _ _ t!”
   I immediately began to wonder how I could blame this on the renovation workers or SRHT management.
   I’m still wondering.

April 24th

   They began the elevator shaft on my floor today. The third floor. The best floor.
   How exciting!


April 26th

   One of my creditors, Chase Rewards, tells me that they didn’t receive this month’s payment which means I have to pay them a little more than double my monthly bill in May. I called their customer service and they confirmed they hadn’t received it. I told them I would put a trace on the postal money order I had used to make the payment and if it turns out that they in fact did receive the payment and cashed the money order I would expect an appropriate credit to my account, plus the $5.95 it cost for the trace.
   Now I’ll find out if they got the payment, or I’ll get a refund on the original money order. One way or another I’m not getting screwed. 
   Of course if they took payments over the Internet like normal companies, and not through the mail, this would have never happened.
   I suspect they make more money this way.
   When I walked to the post office to initiate the trace I left my reading glasses on the desk I had used to fill out the trace form.
   This is the second pair of reading glasses I’ve lost within the last week.
   It’s as if someone... or something wants to impair my vision for some strange, dark, evil purpose.
   After the post office I walked to the VA clinic on Temple and Alameda as they were having the annual Open House.
   I got myself a free hot dog (with bun and mustard!), some Ruffles potato chips, a small package of Chips Ahoy cookies, a Snack pack cup of chocolate pudding, and a green apple.
   It’s as if some nefarious and evil entity wants me to get fat.
   I then went to see my doctor’s nurse to get a vitamin B12 shot. Dr. Garcia, my doctor now that P.A. Brown has retired, had called me yesterday and told me my B12 was low and that I should come in a get a shot, and he would also mail some B12 pills to me.
   Well the nurse didn’t have any injectable B12 on hand. Neither did any of the other nurses on the floor. I certainly didn’t have any.
   “You’ll have to go to the pharmacy and get some,” she told me.
   F _ _ k! I knew what that entailed. Go down, put in my order, and wait, wait, and wait.
   I went down, put in my order, and began waiting.
   I continued waiting, and after I finished doing that I waited some more.
   More veterans came to the pharmacy and they began waiting.
   But nothing was happening. We began to think the pharmacy personnel took off for lunch.
   I had been told that they would call my name when my B12 was ready (by that I mean picking up a small vial of injectable B12 and placing it in a bag). They never called my name. I could have sat in that pharmacy for the rest of eternity, until the Sun engulfed the earth 5 billion years from now and they still would not have called my name.
   I eventually just got up and went to the “Pick Up” window and asked for my stuff and they gave it to me.
   It’s as  if some one or some thing wanted me to die due to vitamin B12 deficiency.
   I went back up stairs and had the nurse shoot me up.
   Then on my way out I stopped by Susana Ochoa LSW’s office to amend my advance directive, or living will. She happened to be in and I made an appointment with her for next Monday to do just that... amend.
   I figured that with all the stuff that was happening to me during the renovation process I might not make it to the end, so I thought appointing a person to make medical decisions for me if I were to be incapacitated was a prudent course of action.
   I did not choose my sister, as she would take me off life support ASAP. I choose my friend Mike instead.
   I trusted him more than my sister, and this would give him something to do as he mourned my loss.
   Next I’ll need to make a real will, and parcel out my various assets.
   And I should do this soon.
   I don’t think I have a whole lot of time left.
  
April 29th

  
   It wasn’t a particularly hot day, the temperature in Los Angeles reaching 83 degrees (the historical average being 74 degrees for April 29th, which of course proves that global warming does exist), but it was hot enough.
   On warm days like this I open the fire escape door, wedging a piece of brick between the back of the door and it’s frame. Since the renovators, in their wisdom, replaced the old hallway windows that could be opened and shut with windows that can not be opened and shut, the fire escape door is the only avenue we have that can be used for ventilation purposes.
   So I opened it, as I have done countless times in the past.
   I returned to my room to do whatever it is I do in there.
   About an hour later I walked down my hallway toward the stairs and noticed that the fire escape door was now closed.
   “Huummm,” I said to myself.
   I propped the door open once more and went about my business.
   Only to discover it was closed a little while later.
   I opened it again.
   I found it closed again.
   I opened it and stood around looking at it.
   It stayed open, so I went to my room.
   Only to find it closed a few moments later.
   Open, closed. Open, closed. On and on.
   It went on like this until 5am, at which point I gave up opened it once more and went to bed.
   When I got up at six it was closed.
   Something decidedly odd was afoot.
  
May 12th   11am

   The renovation workers turned the power off and on twice today, causing me to reboot my computer and TV twice.
   The two occurrences occurred  about an hour apart, and just to my little section of the building.
   The second time it happened the power was out for five minutes. The thing is when this happens, as it does occasionally even when we’re not being renovated, you never know when the power will come back on. It could be a minute, and hour, or several hours. I once lived through a twelve hour blackout. Our rooms can get so hot that without an operating fan they are uninhabitable. 
   I walked to the third floor janitor’s room, where Jose keeps his magic mops and where the circuit breakers are located.
   There didn’t appear to be any tripped breakers, and I was just about to leave when I heard voices emanating from the walls. Soft voices talking to each other.
   I couldn’t really pinpoint where the voices were coming from, but they sounded nearby.
   There was a hole on the back of Jose’s room which presumably the renovation workers had created and used.
   Perhaps some workers were in there doing some construction business and talking about it.
   I looked through that hole, into the very depths of the Overloo... the Las Americas Residential Hotel, but did not see anything but the wooden spine of the building, sheet rock and dust, and nothing else. The building’s interior seemed to wind on into infinity, so much so that it made me a little dizzy to keep on looking.
   I returned to my room and the power was back on. I began the computer reboot process for the second time. 


May 14    1:33am

   I was watching David Lean’s “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” this Sunday morning when the power flickered on and off, causing me reboot yet again.
   WTF!? It was one thirty in the morning so this couldn’t have been caused by renovation workers. I attributed the disruption to North Korean hacking and continued to watch William Holding chit chat with Jack Hawkins for about ten minutes when the power flickered on off and on again.
   F _ _ k!
   This was not good! Any disruption in power around here is not good. I got out of my night gown and cap and put on my clothes to go check Jose’s room.
   This time instead of finding disembodied voices I found one of my neighbors systematically shutting on and off all of the breakers two at a time, trying to find the one that controlled her room on the south side of the building, as her power was off.
   Granted, most of the residents in the Las Americas were probably asleep, still this person felt little compunction in disrupting the power and lives of everyone who lived on the third floor.
   This is the world I live in.
   At least in this instance the cause of the power disruption was known, and wasn’t caused by a general power outage, ghosts, or Kim Jong-un.
   None of the breakers seemed to be off yet my tenacious neighbor continued her search.
   I can’t say as I blame her really. A night without electricity would suck. Not only that, it wouldn’t be very pleasant either.
   I bid her adieu and returned to the vast and unforgiving jungles of World War II Ceylon.

May 16   6:12pm

   I was working fiendishly at my desk when someone called me from my doorway. I looked around, as I am want to do on just such occasions, to find the tall young man, John, the SRHT employee who gave me money when the electricity in the kitchen was turned off, at my door.
   He handed me a construction notice.
   “You’re working late,” I told him.
   “Yes, I know,” he replied. He looked around nervously. “They make me.”
   “Who makes you?” I asked.
   “I can’t talk about it. They have my family,” he added hastily before scurrying off. 
   The notice was dated May 17, 2017. So this was a genuine notice from the future, and would be so until midnight.
   If only there was some way I could preserve the notice in it’s pristine, undegraded form. Then I could prove that time travel is possible once and for all!
   But I can’t. God damn it! I just can’t.
   The notice was addressed to Las Americas - All 2nd & 3rd Floor Units. It was from the mysterious and powerful Skid Row Southeast 1 Staff, whose mystery is only exceeded by their power.
   The notice concerned our windows.
   “Dear Residents, You are being notified that in unit work has been scheduled for your unit for Wednesday, 5/17. The contractor will need access to your unit for approximately 5 to 10 minutes from 8am to 4pm to measure the windows in your unit. You will not need to vacate your unit when the contractor arrives to do the work, but you will need to allow them to enter your unit.”
   The notice ended with the now infamous epitaph: “Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions regarding the work. We appreciate your cooperation. Sincerely, Skid Row Southeast 1 Staff.”
   Of course there was no contact information provided, no way to contact the Skid Row Southeast 1 Staff, whoever or whatever they may be.
   So, accordingly, after midnight, when the notice reverted to just a simple piece of paper, I began my preparations.
   I got up at 3:30am, showered and checked my E-mail, then began washing the walls that were a little dusty. While I was at it I washed the ceiling as well. I threw some bleach on the floor and scrubbed every inch, getting my neighbor, 73 year old Arnold who likes to rise early in the morning, to help me move my king size bed to one side as I cleaned the space it had occupied. I washed the window and the medicine cabinet’s mirrored surface. I moved all of the thousands of books off of their shelves and dusted and cleaned there then placed them back again. I vacated and cleaned the other shelves as well. Shelves that held my television monitor, dishes, condiments, candles, my calculator, sunglasses, medicine, flash drives, cell phone, and the water key for the garden. I cleaned the weird desk my computer sits on, held down by the unrelenting force of gravity. I cleaned the night stand that resides below it, and sorted out and adjusted  the contents of it’s two drawers. I cleaned the actual computer. I emptied out my refrigerator and dresser and cleaned inside each. I shifted them around (with Arnold’s help) and cleaned the spaces where they normally rested. I cleaned the sink before helping Arnold with his room.
   Then I loaded up all of my clothes, my sheets and pillow cases, packed them up and took the 18 bus into Boyle Heights, to the Laundromat they have on Whittier and Spence St. I washed all of my clothes, then changed into some newly cleaned pants, socks, and shirt, then laundered the ones I had worn to get to the Laundromat.
   I ate a humongous breakfast sandwich from the nearby Carl’s Jr., despite the company’s past objectification of women in their ad campaigns. 
   Yes, I was that hungry.
   Finished, I took all of my clean stuff back home and stowed them in their appropriate places.
   Finally I was ready for people to visit my home.
   At 10am I put my office chair approximately four feet away from my door, which was cracked open to allow air in.
   I sat and stared at my door willing the contractors to come, do whatever it was they were going to do, then leave, allowing me to get back to the vital work that I had assigned myself.
   At 5pm I got up and put my chair back at my desk, then visited the restroom. I had been holding it in for quite awhile by then.

Southeast 1 Construction Notice
Date: May 22, 2017

Dear Residents,

You are being notified that the kitchen will be shut down for construction for approximately one week, starting at 8am on Tuesday, May 30th. You will not have access to the kitchen or the lockers during this time. Please  remove any food in your locker before Tuesday, May 30th.

You will receive a $64 per diem for each day the kitchen is offline for this work because we realize how difficult it will be for you to eat on site.

A VISA debit card for 7 days’ worth of per diem will be distributed to each resident. You can collect your VISA debit card at Unit #315 at the following times:

Tuesday, 5/30                  8 - 10am and 3 - 5 pm
Wednesday, 5/31             8 - 10am and 4 - 5pm

*Please note - you will need a valid photo ID to collect your debit card.

   On May 26th we received another construction notice amending the construction notice of May 22nd. It let us know that work on the kitchen would not start until June 5th. The dates we could collect the debit cards changed as well, to June 5th and June 6th.
   $64 a day isn’t enough to make up for the loss of the toaster.
   I will morn it’s loss... or buy my own, one of the two.

May 26th

   As I left the building to attend to some chores that needed attending to I was warned by one of my neighbors not to leave my door open.
   “Why?” I asked him.
   “Big rats are coming up on the second floor, so don’t leave your door open.”
   “Rats are on the second floor now?” I asked.
   “Yeah.”
   I prepared my room for a possible rat attack. Moat. Flame Thrower. Barbed wire. Catapult. Concussion grenades. sparklers, the works.

May 28

   The rats are getting bolder. I saw them in the kitchen today during daylight hours.
   The walls are filled with the sounds of scurrying.

May 29   Memorial Day

   At about 1:00pm I stopped writing about Marilyn Monroe to go downstairs to toast some bread. That’s the only reason I use the kitchen these days, ever since I bought my own microwave oven. The less I go down there the less chance the rats have of getting me, and the less contact I have with the new residents of the mysterious new program that Henry manages.
   Miracle was down there... cooking away. Meat everywhere for the Memorial Day traditional meat fest.
   I would see a meme on Facebook that day which showed a picture of flag draped coffins with the caption: “We don’t need any more “Happy” Memorial Days. We don’t need to celebrate it with hot dogs or mattresses or car buying. We need to stop sending our kids to war.”
   That would be good.
   And my beautiful and esteemed yoga teacher Beth would post a beautiful and esteemed picture of herself from Las Vegas where she was spending the weekend, with this caption: “I insist on documenting my buffet acquisitions. I offered to snap some pics for Sarah and Dasha, but they declined.”
   “Buffet acquisitions.” She’s funny and wise for her young age.
   I wondered who Sarah and Dasha were.
   My wondering paid off as Beth posted the above picture (A28) a little later. That’s Sarah on the left and Dasha on the right making a sort of Beth sandwich.
   I would reply stupidly, saying that so much beauty overwhelmed me and that I may need to commit seppuku to cope, seppuku being the Japanese traditional form of suicide by disembowelment. 
   A little over the top but one has to keep complimenting these girls as they tend to be insecure in general... just like Marilyn Monroe.
   Miracle said she would give me a plate of meat but she never did. I think she had been drinking.
   She did manage to utter something about Kevin, the assistant residence manager not being at work over the weekend, making it difficult to get the mail, or get back into to units after being locked out.
   “Maybe he’s sick,” I offered.
   “Tommy says he didn’t seem sick last Friday night! And Tommy can’t get him on his phone.”
   “Tommy’s here?”
   “Yeah.”
   “You gonna give him a plate too?”
   “Yeah.”
   “And nobody’s seen or heard from Kevin since Friday night.”       
   “Yeah. That’s when I last saw him.”
   “What was he doing?” I asked.
   “Uumm... he was going to the basement I think.”
   “The basement? By himself?”
   “Yeah. By himself.”
   
   I returned upstairs and monitored MSNBC hoping for actual news before the channel switched over to examine the latest trends in prison diplomacy via “Lockup.”. 
   I saw commercials for BP telling us how concerned they are for safety in general, and commercials for Trumpcare, telling me what a failure Obamacare was and how Trump’s healthcare proposals are going to make America great again by uninsuring 23 million people.
   The oil company and the White House are just blatantly lying to the country through the complacent media. How does this happen?
   I felt like throwing up, but continued working on Norma Jean’s transformation into Marilyn Monroe.
   At least she was honest. You can say that about her.

June 1st  12:37am

   I had gone to bed early, well, early for me, at 11, because I was tired.
   But at 12:37am I woke due to a low frequency humming noise coming from outside my room.
   I say noise, but it was more than that. A vibration would be a better description... with a low frequency thrumming, a rhythmic oscillation, a deep trembling, a pervasive resonance that permeated throughout my room and apparently the building beyond. 
   I got up wondering what was going on. I dressed and walked out into the hall.
   I couldn’t see anything until I turned the corner and faced the walled off elevator shaft. The noise seemed to be emanating from there.
   The sound and vibrating was loud enough to have wakened everyone in the building, but I was the only one in the hall as I slowly approached.
   A violet light issued from the holes and cracks in the plywood that housed the shaft which pulsated in sync with the vibrating auditory manifestations.
   I looked down at my arms and the hair on them was standing on end. I felt my head and whatever little I had left up there was doing likewise.
   I stopped right next to the enclosure, next to the window that looked out onto the night. Everything seemed normal out there... everything looked sane.
   The vibrating seemed to increase reaching a marvelous crescendo, then abruptly stopped. The hallway became dark once more. Normality returned.
   So I went back to bed.

June 2

   I got sick. I had low level nausea enveloping my poor body. When I looked into my mirror I saw someone who had suffered a tragic sunburn on their face and arms. My nose began to bleed. I would endure  severe diarrhea throughout the following week. Every time I combed my hair it would come out in fistfuls. It became difficult to move around and my hands would shake so much it became hard to even drink from a water bottle. I developed a 4mm raised corrugated papule on my right anteriolateral tongue with a flat surrounding leukoplakia. A rash that looked like Alfred E. Neuman manifested itself on my chest. My  risk of bacterial, viral, and fungal infections heightened, I could feel it. 
   I went back to bed but could not sleep.

June 5th 

   Work began in the kitchen, and it was no longer available to us residents. It would be locked up at night and the window that looked in on it was papered over.
   We still didn’t have a laundry room as well. What I couldn’t wash by hand in my sink I took to the Laundromat in Boyle Heights.
   I guess that was okay for the time being. They give away free coffee from 6 to 7:30am!

June 12 & 13

   We were given notice that certain residents on the third floor would need to leave their units on the 12th and 13th so workers could finish up the floors outside of their units.
   When a man knocked on my door on Monday the 12th to make sure I knew I had to leave I told him I couldn’t because I was sick.
   “But you won’t be able to come out of your room, you know that right?”
   “That will be no problem.”
   I spent the day watching “The Paleface,” and Bob and Bing road pictures.

June 12 thru 15th 

   Work on the kitchen was extended from the 12th to the 15th. We got more money for the extension but I continued not to have access to the toaster.
   In my room I watched “The Money Pit.”

June 16th 5am

   I felt good enough finally to get up and do stuff, like shower.
   I walked to the bathroom, opened the door, saw something similar to picture A30 near the toilet, closed the door and returned to my room.

   I had somehow lost my disabled bus pass and library card. The library card I could do without but I needed the pass in order to economically go to places in order to get stuff... like food.
   I called the MTA’s special number that deals with disabled bus passes and asked them if they could send a replacement.
   “No. Your pass expired yesterday.”
   “Really.”
   “Yes.”
   F _ _ k!
   I laid down for a minute and thought about what I had to do.
   I walked north on Alameda to Union Station and picked up an application at the Metro Customer Service office. Then I walked the short distance to the VA Clinic to see my psychiatrist, Dr. Shaw.
   Granted I had no appointment, and Dr. Shaw, a short brown man of Indian ancestry, is a stickler for protocol, but hell, it would take about one minute for him to fill out the medical section of my bus pass application, so I went to the mental health department and asked to see him.
   “Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist asked.
   “No. I just need him to fill out my bus pass.”
   She informed the good doctor I was there and soon I was in his office.
   He said it would take a couple of days for me to get the application back.
  “ You can’t give it to me today?” I asked. I really needed that pass.
   “No.”
   He had me fill out a bus pass application application form and said he would mail it back to me.
   “Mail it back...” I thought a moment. “I’ll be here on Monday for the depression drop in group, could I get it then?”
   He thought a moment, then said, “I’ll be gone in the afternoon on Monday... can you pick it up at, let’s say eleven?”
   “Yes, I can do that.”
   I was ready to leave when he asked plaintively, “How is the renovation going at your building?”
   “It goes on and on. Why?”
   “You haven’t seen or heard anything unusual have you?”
   “Now that you mention I...”
   “Forget it. I don’t want to know. I’ll see you Monday.”
   “Ahhh, okay.”
   What a dick, I said to myself upon leaving, for making me wait. I mean supposedly he’s a good doctor and all, and I usually only have to see him twice a year, but he does suffer from an abundance of dickishness.
   I walked from the clinic to downtown, 5th and Broadway, and bought some pants at the pants store, and some milk and vanilla ice cream from Rite-Aid.
   Both of those commodities were treats for me.
   I felt I deserved a treat. I don’t know why.  

Southeast 1 Construction Notice

To: All Residents at the Las Americas
From: Skid Row Southeast 1 Staff
Date: June 16, 2017
Re: Kitchen Offline

Dear Residents,

Due to unexpected delays, the kitchen will remain closed until Friday, 6/23.
Each resident will receive $64 for each additional day of kitchen closure in the form of a VISA debit card.

   It’s true we all would get money due to the construction crew's incompetence, but that’s really not the point... is it?
   I think I’ll take a vacation to Uzbekistan (birthplace of the lovely and talented Milana Aleksandrovna Vayntrub, of AT&T Lily fame) with my money.
   Either that or retire.
      
June 18  Father’s Day  Sunday

   After spending the morning attending a Father’s Day service and luncheon (turkey sandwiches!) at the world famous Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple at Third and Central, I returned home. My friend Cliff was talking to some of his friends who were in a car at the curb.
   “Hi Rick,” he said expeditiously.
   “Hi Cliff.”
   I waited inside for him to finish up his business. He sells cigarettes and I wanted to buy some singles.
   “Why don’t you buy a whole pack,” he asked.
   “I don’t want that many.”
   “Oh, I see. You’re tapering off. No problem. Don’t say another word.”
   We went to his room on the second floor where I bought nine cigarettes for three dollars.
   He had been up since four that morning barbecuing various small parts of defenseless animals and ears of yellow corn. He offered me some. I, being the weak individual that I am, accepted.
    “Father’s Day is our holiday. It’s got nothing to do with bitches [females]. They’ve got every other holiday, but this ones ours.”
   I’m not a father but that didn’t seem to bother him.
   He gave me a cooked rib of some type, a sausage link of some type, and an ear of corn. ( I love corn on the cob, and have done so ever since I was a small child. My parents would feed them to me with some trepidation, knowing full well that left to my own devices I would eat until I threw up... which I had done so on several occasions).
   I spent the afternoon writing and watching movies, “The Maze Runner,” being one of them.    Around six the power blinked off and on, the second day in a row. This of course screwed up my TV and computer, so I had to reboot both.
   It’s as if the building did this on purpose, just to mess with me, and was chuckling to itself in it’s dark recesses where I couldn’t hear it.
   I believe this to be true.
   Near eight I ate what Cliff had given to me. It was good. A little messy, but good, especially the corn.
   Instead of throwing the rib bone and corn cob in my own trash receptacle, I went into the hall to put them in the common garbage. One of my neighbors, a black guy about my age came out of his room at that time.
   I opened the trash room’s door, but there was no trash can as there should have been. In it’s place was a rectangular box in the floor, filled with a foul liquid. The stench it gave off was nauseating.  
   “Somebody put a dead dog in there,” my neighbor said before walking away.
   I slammed the door shut and returned to my room. I felt no need to investigate further.

June 19  

   The dead dog turned out to be some dirty foul smelling clothes emersed in dirty, foul smelling water. It was so bad the steadfast Jose complained to Tommy about having to clean it up.
   I opened the fire escape door to get some clean air in the hallway. Ten minutes later it was closed.
   I retrieved my bus pass application from Shaw at 11 then walked to the Metro Customer Service office at Union Station.
   I took some pictures of myself at the picture machine and turned in the application.
   “You’ll get your pass in the mail within six or eight weeks.”
   “Don’t I get a temporary pass until then?”
   “You’re not eligible when you get this filled out by a doctor.”
   “Really?”
   “Yes.”
   Now how does that make any sense? Am I any less disabled than someone who submits using a social security award letter, or who is on Medicaid?
   Hell no I say! I’m as disabled as the best of them.
   I would take my revenge on MTA regulations by only paying half of the regular fair while pretending to be a senior rather than the youthful individual that I am.
   Did I feel bad about circumnavigating lawful bus regulations.
   No.
  
June 20

   I needed to wash my blanket, sheets and some pants, and wanted to get in on that free coffee at the Boyle Heights Laundromat, so left my house at 5:30am and stood near the bus stop at 6th & Central waiting for the next 18.
   Someone was sleeping on the bus stop bench. They soon woke up, poked their head out of their blankets and looked around. It was a pretty, young black girl, early twenties, I’d say.
   She got up and came over to me and asked if I could move.
   “Excuse me?”
   “I need to use the bathroom.”
   I moved away and she proceeded to relieve herself in the trash receptacle they have there.
   As Atticus Finch once said in “To Kill a Mockingbird, “I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the state. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance...”
   Well this young woman wasn’t a chief witness, and she probably didn’t have anything to do with mockingbirds, but I had the deepest sympathy for her.
   How had she come to this? I had no idea.

June 22 

   After returning from the Hippie Kitchen with a container of lentils, I stopped by the window by the wall that encloses the elevator shaft, the same window I had looked through the other night before getting sick.
   I young white woman was crossing Central and walking toward my building. She looked up and waved to me. I waved back. She smiled and continued on her way.
   That made my day.

   Later that night I heard that ominous humming, vibrating again. Not knowing any better I went out to investigate.
   Instead of violet, the light emanating from the walls bordering the elevator shaft was of a deep orange. I placed my hand upon the plywood and felt the vibrations run through me. I walked around and to my surprise found  a section of the panel had been removed which allowed access to the shaft. I poked my head in there and found my friend Cliff sitting on the edge of the precipice.
   “Cliff! What the f _ _ K are you doing in there?”
   “Hey, Rick. Come on in.”
   I entered and took a seat next to him.
   The light and vibration originated from the bottom of the shaft, which you couldn’t see really. If you looked down into it all that could be seen was the light streaming forth.
   “Isn’t it beautiful?” Cliff asked me, a statement rather than a question.
   “I suppose. How long have you been here?”
   “I don’t know.”
   Cliff had a glazed look about him, an expressionless expression on his face.
   “I wonder how deep it is?” he said.
   “Well it can’t be that deep. The basements just two floors down. Let’s see.”
   I took a piece of brick that was nearby and tossed it in. Cliff smiled.
   I looked down into the pit... I mean shaft, and saw the brick falling and falling until it fell from sight. We never did hear it reach a bottom.
   “I want to go in,” Cliff said. He stood up as if he were going to jump  and I hurriedly pulled him away.
   “No, no, Cliff. You don’t want to do that.”
   “Yes I do.”
   “No you don’t. Let’s get you back to your room. Okay?”
   “You mean leave here?”
   “Yeah Cliff. It’s time to go.”
   “But I’ll miss it.”
   “I know Cliff. You can come back later.”
   I took him to his room and put him to bed. He fell asleep almost instantly.
   I walked back outside and returned to the shaft. It continued to pulsate and throw out that orange light, and for a moment, just a moment, I thought that I was looking into the bowels of hell.




Thursday, June 1, 2017

Remembering Marilyn Monroe









































































“Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die, young, but then you'd never complete your life, would you? You'd never wholly know yourself...”

A Delicious Breeze


Picture Legend

1. Marilyn
2. “China Seas”
3. Patricia (Kennedy) & Peter Lawford
4. Singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK
5. Cute Little Stoat
6. That dress!
7. Norma Jean’s birthplace
8. Norma Jeane Mortenson
9. Maternal grandmother Della Hogan holding her new granddaughter Norma Jeane
10. Gladys age 16
11. A Flapper, actress Louise Brooks (1927)
12. Consolidated Film Industries
13. Charles Stanley Gifford
14. Ida and Albert Bolender
15. Norma Jeane and the Bolender’s adopted child, Lester Carl
16. Grace McKee
17. Los Angeles Orphan’s Home with unknown lady standing in front
18 Married with Jim Dougherty
19. Norma Jeane and Bernice finally meet
20. Norma Jeane at the airplane factory
21. Where she made airplanes
22. Early poses
23.         ^
24.         ^
25.         ^
26.         ^
27. Marilyn as artichoke queen in Castroville, CA 1947
28. Pageant Magazine
29. Early pin up
30. U S Camera Magazine May 1946
31. And August of 1955
32. June 1946 Laff Magazine
33. More magazine covers
34.                 ^
35.                 ^
36.  You get the idea              
37. Emmeline Snively
38. Marilyn Miller
39. Marilyn in “Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay!” 1948
40. Acting coach Natasha Lytess with Marilyn
41. Marilyn with Johnny Hyde
42. Marilyn’s May 1949 Red Velvet photo shoot
43. Marilyn in “A Ticket to Tomahawk”
44. With Dick Powell in “Right Cross”
45. With Micky Rooney and somebody else in “The Fireball”
46. Marilyn in “The Asphalt Jungle” 1950
47. Marilyn with Bette Davis and George Sanders in “All About Eve”
48. Dressed to present at the 23rd Annual Academy Awards (her movie was the big winner)
49. Advertising in Collier's 1950
50. Featured in Collier's 1951
51. Marilyn with the Skipper, Alan Hale Jr in “Home Town Story”
52. With Albert Dekker in “As Young as You Feel”
53. With Macdonald Carey in “Let’s Make it Legal”
54. Marilyn makes the cover of Life Magazine in 1952
55. As the Grand Marshall of the 1952 Miss America Pageant parade
56. Marilyn’s 1952 chest x-ray which  sold for $45,000 at auction, probably bought by the U.S. Army
57. Marilyn wearing underwear. These bloomers, which she wore in “The River of No Return,” were also sold for $45,000 at auction... again, the Army
58. Publicity photo for “Clash by Night”
59. With Richard Widmark in “Don’t Bother to Knock”
60. In “We’re Not Married”
61. With Cary Grant in “Monkey Business”
62. With Charles Laughton in the “The Cop and the Anthem” segment of “O. Henry's Full House”
63. In “Niagara”
64. With Jean Peters and Max Showalter in “Niagara”
65. Jean Peters in “Niagara”
66. Jean again
67. Marilyn about to be murdered
68. S.E. Cupp
69. What she wore at the 1953 Photoplay awards
70. Joan Crawford
71. In her next movie... something about blondes
 


    She fantasized that Clark Gable was her father because she never knew who her real father had been.
   Norma’s mom,  Gladys, possessed a picture of a man she had once dated on her wall.
   "He had a thin mustache like Clark Gable," she remembered. "I asked my mother what his name was. She wouldn't answer."
   When Norma was 9 years old she went to see a movie called “China Seas,” starring Gable and Jean Harlow (who would become a role model for her), and from that point onward Clark became "the man I thought was my father."

   “Reds. I took reds for about six weeks when I was a teenager and stopped without having to be prompted. Reds were alcohol in pill form, and I could get all of the effects that alcohol gave to me without having to drink. But it was too easy and sometimes I drank and dropped... took reds at the same time, and I knew that if I continued that crap I’d wind up going to sleep one day and never wake up. Man, reds. I haven’t thought about them for years. Reds... barbiturates... downers.” -Richard Joyce at a Drifters AA meeting, May 20th, 2017


Happy Birthday Mr. President

   May 19th, 1962.
   It was a Saturday night in New York City’s Madison Square Garden (the third building to bear that name, and the only one that was not near Madison Square, being 3.2 miles uptown. It was demolished in 1968). The temperature that day had soared to 99 degrees, the hottest yet recorded for the fifth month of the year. Some relief occurred between 7:00 and 8:00pm when a thundershower moved through the city, dropping the temperature from 87° to 70°.
   The occasion was a fund raising gala for the Democratic Party. The night’s program included a  celebration of John F. Kennedy's forty-fifth birthday, ten days before his actual birth-date on  May 29th. 15,000 guests attended.
   It was the actor and in-law to the president, Peter Lawford, who had arranged for Marilyn Monroe to attend the festivities and to sing to Kennedy. Lawford had once dated her and Marilyn had became close to Lawford’s wife, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, through continued contacts. Peter, most probably, was the last person Marilyn would talk to in life.
   It was rumored that the president and Marilyn were in the midst of an affair, quite possibly involving sex of some nature. Some have stated that a full blown liaison had never occurred but that the two probably got together less than two months earlier at Bing Crosby’s house in Palm Springs on March 24th.
   What Bing was doing during this is anybody’s guess, although he reportedly spent a lot of time abusing his children.
   Marilyn and Kennedy had met at a dinner party in New York earlier that year, in February. Actress Arlen Dahl, who was at the event, recalled that "The President turned around and you could see that he was immediately attracted to her. 'Finally! You're here,' he said, with a big smile."
   What a smoothie.
   According to National Geographic correspondent Patrick Kiger, JFK was a “compulsive womanizer, whose insatiable urge for sexual conquest was fueled by a complex array of personal traumas – his own father’s conspicuous adultery, a difficult relationship with his mother, anxiety about his own health problems, his brush with death during World War II, and the deaths at a young age of his siblings Joe Jr. and Kathleen.”
   As a matter of fact it may have been Kennedy’s propensity for dalliance that contributed to his successful assassination at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald.
   According to Journalist Seymour Hersh, “President Kennedy once told a friend, ‘You know, I get a migraine headache if I don't get a strange piece of ass every day.’ Apparently he didn't have many headaches. His affairs were legion. He even slept with one of his long time lovers in the Georgetown home he shared with his wife and two children the night before his inauguration.
   In September 1963, while frolicking poolside with one of his sexual partners, JFK tore a groin muscle. He had to wear a stiff shoulder-to-groin brace that locked his body in a rigid upright position. It was far more constraining than his usual back brace, which he continued to wear. The two braces made it impossible for JFK to bend in reflex when he was struck in the neck by a bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. The president remained erect for the fatal shot from Oswald.”
   So it’s been pretty much confirmed that JFK was a huge asshole as far as women were concerned, especially to his own wife, who knew about the affairs, if you can call them that, but tolerated them, adopting the first “Dont’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
   Kennedy was great at getting the ball rolling on going to the moon, and facing down the Soviets, but women, treating them with the dignity and respect that they deserved, not so much.
   Accordingly, for JFK Marilyn was just another conquest, or relief valve to be used and discarded. Marilyn, on the other hand, may have regarded her relationship with Kennedy as much more serious that it actually was.
   She was used to having her way with men, no doubt due to her pervasive personality. Kennedy was a man. Arguably the most powerful man on the planet, but still a man. And she wanted him.
   However, Kennedy’s friend Senator George Smathers believed that Marilyn, well "It wasn't a big thing as far as he was concerned." He told Ms Monroe’s biographer Barbara Leaming. To JFK, Monroe was "like a lot of the pretty girls who had fallen very much in love with the Kennedys, just by being around with him a little bit."
   Which precipitated a public rendition of “Happy Birthday.”
    Lawford was there to introduce Marilyn. True to form she didn’t show up on the stage until the third introduction.
   “I am invariably late for appointments - sometimes as much as two hours. I've tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.”  
   Peter introduced her when she finally appeared in a spotlight on the stage.
   "Mr. President," Lawford says, leaning into the microphone, "the LATE Marilyn Monroe."
   She took off her white ermine (stoat (Mustela erminea), also known as the short-tailed weasel. Back in the sixties it was politically correct to kill defenseless little animals who just wanted to get on in the world they found themselves in and be left alone) fur coat revealing the dress she had to be sewn into it was so form fitting, and the audience gasped.
   About that dress. It was designed in 1961 by Jean-Louis Berthaulto who is an American fashion designer. It was especially created for Marilyn to attend the president’s birthday party. The dress is decorated with sequins that sparkle like diamonds. The original price was $12,000, but it was sold at an auction for $1.3 million.
   The president’s wife, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, had spent the day at the Loudoun Hunt Horse Show riding her horse Ninbrano in Leesburg, Virginia, with her children John-John and Caroline, so Marilyn sang as naughtily and suggestively as she wanted.
   Marilyn sang the traditional "Happy Birthday to You" lyrics in a sultry, intimate voice, with "Mr. President" inserted as Kennedy's name. She continued the song with a snippet from the classic "Thanks for the Memory", for which she had written new lyrics specifically aimed at Kennedy. "Thanks, Mr. President, For all the things you've done, The battles that you've won, The way you deal with U.S. Steel, And our problems by the ton, We thank you so much."
   Then she was spirited off stage.
   It’s hard to hear on the above clip but this is what Kennedy said after Marilyn’s performance:
"I can now retire from politics after having had 'Happy Birthday' sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome manner."
   John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy had 552 more days to live, 1 year, 6 months and 3 days, before he was assassinated at age 46, at 12:30pm Central Time, on a Friday afternoon, in a motorcade parade, on November 22nd, 1963, in Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
   Marilyn only had 77.

   She was an L.A. girl, born Norma Jeane Mortenson at a very early age at 9:30am on this day 91 years ago. She was born about ten minutes away (4.6 miles via the mighty I-5 S and I-10) from where I’m typing this feverously on my little computer, at the USC Medical Center, or what is commonly known as the General Hospital, or the Death Palace as I like to call it.
   The year was 1926.
   She was the third child of Gladys Pearl Baker (maiden name Monroe).
   Gladys would outlive her daughter, living until 1984.
   Gladys was the daughter of two pre-Dust Bowl migrants from the Midwest who had migrated to California, the land of plenty.
   When she was fifteen she married John Newton Baker who was twenty four. She had two children by him, Robert, who died when he was sixteen (August 16th, 1933, probably due to tuberculosis of the kidneys), and Berniece, who as far as I know is still alive at 98 years old.
   When she was 19 Gladys filed for divorce. John took the children with him to Kentucky. For a while, Gladys visited them on an irregular basis, then completely lost sight of them.
    Three years later, in 1924, Gladys married her second husband, Martin Edward Mortensen, but they separated before she became pregnant with Norma Jeane by a different man and they divorced in 1928.
    Gladys was a flapper (Flappers were a generation of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norm. In other words, my kind of women) and worked as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries, which was acquired by Technicolor Inc. in 2000.
   In October of 1929 the Hollywood laboratories of  Consolidated Film Industries exploded due to the flammable nature of the nitrocellulose film used at the time. One man was killed.
   It is not known if Gladys was present for this tragic event.
   It is often said that the identity of Marilyn’s father is unknown and that she used Baker as her last name.
   However, some speculate that Charles Stanley Gifford, an employee at Consolidated was Norma Jeane’s biological father.
   Displaying symptoms of mental illness Gladys was ill prepared to raise another young child. She was able to place her with foster parents, Albert and Ida Bolender, who lived in Hawthorne, about 15.4 miles from where Gladys worked in Hollywood.
   The Bolender’s raised their foster children according to the principles of evangelical Christianity (a worldwide, transdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity which maintains the belief that the essence of the gospel consists of the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ's atonement (in western Christian theology, atonement describes how human beings can be reconciled to God through Christ's sacrificial suffering and death)).
   “When I was five, I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.”
   Gladys lived with the Bolenders for a while, driving to work in L.A. In 1927 she had to move back to the city as longer work shifts made it difficult for her to commute, and she saw Norma Jeane only on the weekends, taking her to the movies and places like the La Brea Tar Pits where the ice age mammals came to die, and Grauman's Chinese Theater where Norma would place her hands inside of the cement imprints of famous movie stars.
   By the summer of 1933 Gladys felt stable enough, was self aware enough, to have 7 year old Norma Jeane move in with her buying a small house in Hollywood. They had lodgers, an English family, actors George and Maude Atkinson, and their 20 year old daughter Nellie.
   “No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they're pretty, even if they aren't.”
   Shortly after moving in Gladys was rocked by the news that her grandfather, Tilford M Hogan, had hung himself on May 29th while his wife was out shopping.
   Shortly after that she learned that her son Robert had succumbed to his illness and passed away on August 16th.  
   It has been reported that Gladys first reacted to this news by lashing out at her young daughter who wasn’t fairing so well emotionally herself. Gladys was soon overcome with depression and anxiety, and was continuously unable to care for herself and Marilyn.
   Throughout 1934 Gladys’ mental health deteriorated. She was constantly evaluated at the same General Hospital that Norma Jeane had been born in. Her friend, Grace McKee tried to take care of both Gladys and Norma Jeane but it soo became too much for her. She eventually persuaded Gladys to put the house up for sale for $4,500.
   Meanwhile 8 year old Norma Jeane spent her time playing with empty whiskey bottles.
   “I guess I must have had the finest collection of bottles a girl ever had. I’d line them up on a plank beside the road and when people drove along I’d say ‘Wouldn’t you like some whiskey?’”
   Gladys had a complete breakdown in January of 1935. Norma Jeane was in the kitchen having breakfast when she heard her mother yelling and screaming in the hallway while the Atkinson’s tried to calm her down.
   When Norma Jeane returned from school that day Gladys was gone. She was told that her mother was very sick, and that she wouldn’t be able to see her for a “long, long time.”
   “I figured my mother was really dead and they wouldn’t to tell me because they didn’t want me to cry. I didn’t know my mother was alive for many years.”
   Gladys wasn’t dead but might as well have been. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia  on January 15th, 1935, and committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, about 22.8 miles southeast of Hollywood.
   Gladys spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals, and was rarely in contact with her youngest child.
   Norma Jeane stayed in the care of the Atkinson’s until Grace removed her from that home feeling the child was being mistreated and possibly sexually abused.
   Always a shy girl, Norma Jeane now developed a stutter and became withdrawn. 
   Soon after Grace met a man, Ervin Silliman Goddard, and they got married. Ervin (what kind of inhuman being would name their child Ervin?) wanted to bring one of his three daughters from a previous marriage back to live with them. Apparently there wasn’t enough room in the house for both girls and Grace sent Norma who was now 9, to the Los Angeles Orphans Home at 815 N. El Centro Avenue, Los Angeles on September 13th, 1935, where she became occupant number 3463.
    Norma Jeane stayed at the orphanage  (which would change it’s name to Hollygrove and is now defunct) on and off for a period of almost two years.
   It is rumored that the window of Norma Jean’s dormitory, which she shared with 26 other girls, looked out upon the RKO Studio’s water tower and led to her dreams of someday becoming a world famous movie star. 
   “I used to think as I looked at the Hollywood night, ‘There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star.  But I’m not going to worry about them.  I’m dreaming the hardest.’
   During her time at the orphanage she was shuttled between 9 to 11 different foster homes. 
   “Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn't miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.”
   She left the orphanage for good on June 12th, 1937, at which time she moved back in with Grace where she remained for about a year before being shuttled off to yet another family member. 
   Two years later Grace brought Norma Jeane back home but Ervin attempted to molest her, and so she went to live with her uncle’s mother, Olive Brunings. Just after Norma Jeane’s 12th birthday she was assaulted by one of Olive’s sons and went to live with Grace McKee’s aunt, Ana Lower.
   “At twelve I looked like a girl of seventeen. My body was developed and shapely. I still wore the blue dress and the blouse the orphanage provided. They made me look like an overgrown lummox [a clumsy, stupid person].”
   Norma Jeane was enrolled in Emerson Junior High School and was taken to weekly Christian Science services with Lower. While otherwise a mediocre student, she excelled in writing and contributed to the school's newspaper. After graduating from Emerson, she began attending Van Nuys High School... in Van Nuys, smack dab in the middle of the San Fernando Valley, which made her a bona fide Valley Girl.
   Natalie Wood, Norma’s future co-star Jane Russell, Robert Redford, Stacy Keach, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Erika Eleniak, Kim Darby, Tony Dow, Julie Brown, Ed Begley Jr., Diane Baker, Paula Abdul, famous football player Don Drysdale, and many other outstanding individuals also attended Van Nuys High.
   Several years later Ana developed health problems and Norma Jeane went back to the Goddards despite Ervin’s past efforts to seduce (if you can call it that) her. There she met a neighbor’s son, Jim Dougherty.
   In early 1942, the company that Goddard worked for required him to relocate to West Virginia. California laws prevented the them from taking Norma Jeane out of state, and she was faced with  the possibility of having to return to the orphanage. Grace gave her a choice, either return to the orphanage or get married. Norma Jeane didn’t want to go back to the orphanage.
   Right after her 16th birthday, on June 19th, 1942, Norma Jeane married Dougherty.
   She subsequently dropped out of high school and became a housewife. She later stated that the "marriage didn't make me sad, but it didn't make me happy, either. My husband and I hardly spoke to each other. This wasn't because we were angry. We had nothing to say. I was dying of boredom."
   It was at about this time that Norma Jeane visited her her half-sister for the first time in Detroit. Berniece Baker was then Berniece Baker Miracle, having married Paris Miracle in 1938.
   In 1944 Jim enlisted in the merchant marines, which in hindsight was a fairly foolish thing to do while the country was at war (a little kerfuffle called World War II), if you wanted to stay alive that is. Take the example of many of our current and past presidents who managed to get out of military service that involved actual combat! It’s the prudent thing to do.
   Anyway Jim was called into active service and was initially stationed on Catalina Island, where they used to have a glass bottomed boat. Norma Jeane lived with him until he was shipped out to the Pacific in April of 1944. He would remain there for most of the next two years. After Jim took off Norma Jeane moved in with his parents and began working at the Radioplane Munitions Factory to participate in the war effort and to earn her own income.
   The Radioplane Company was an American aviation company which produced drone aircraft primarily for use as gunnery targets. While Norma Jeane worked there the Army sent a photographer, David Conover, to take pictures of women helping with the war effort (the Army was really perverted back then and took every opportunity to take pictures of unsuspecting women). 
   “The first thing I knew, the lead lady and lead man had me out there having the Army taking pictures of me.They all asked where in the h... I had been hiding... They took a lot of moving pictures of me and some of them asked me for dates etc (naturally I refused!).”
   Indeed Norma Jeane was a very attractive girl, and as Marilyn Monroe, would become a world famous symbol of sex of some nature.
   Personally, I don’t see it myself.
   Norma Jeane wrote to Grace on June 4th, 1945:
   “After they finished with some of the pictures, an Army corporal with the name of David Conover told me he would be very interested in getting some color still shots on me. He used to have a studio on "the strip" on Sunset. He said he would make arrangements with the Plant superintendent if I would agree. So I said okay. He told me what to wear and what shade lipstick etc. So the next couple of weeks I posed for him at different times (...) He said that all the pictures came out perfect also he said that I should by all means go into the modeling prof. He also said that I photographed very well and that he wants to take a lot more. Also he said he had a lot of contacts in which he wanted me to look into.
   I told him I would rather not work when Jimmie was here so he said he would wait so I'm expecting to hear from him most any time again.
   He is awfully nice and is married and is strictly business which is the way I take it. Jimmie seems to like the idea of me modeling so I'm glad about that...”
   Conover suggested Norma Jeane apply for a modeling position at the Blue Book Model Agency.
   She signed a contract with that agency in August of 1945, and moved out of her in-laws home, against the advice her her in-laws and her husband.
   She began to occasionally use the name Jean Norman (or Jean Adair. One of the two) when working, and dyed her hair blonde as apparently gentlemen prefer blondes, and this would get her more work... which it did.
   Because she was so... curvy, she was deemed more suitable for pin-up photographs than fashion modeling, and was featured mostly in advertisements and men's magazines. No, not Hustler and Jugs, but wholesome men’s magazines such as Pageant, U.S. Camera, Laff, and Peek (I don’t know about that last one).
   According to the agency's owner, Emmeline Snively, Norma Jeane was one of its most ambitious and hard-working models she had encountered and by early 1946, she had appeared on 33 magazine covers.  
   Norma Jeane was an avid reader, something she and I had in common. She owned 200 books (including Tolstoy, Whitman, and Milton), listened to Beethoven records, studied acting at the Actors' lab in Hollywood, and took literature courses at UCLA in Westwood.
   Emmeline arranged a contract for Norma Jeane with an acting agency in June of 1946. After an unsuccessful interview with producers at Paramount Pictures, she was given a screen test by Ben Lyon, from 20th Century-Fox. The head of Fox at the time was Darryl F. Zanuck who was also unimpressed but gave her a six month contract in August anyway so his rival, RKO Pictures wouldn’t get her.
   Norma Jean and Lyon selected the stage name "Marilyn Monroe." The first name was picked by Lyon, who Norma Jeane reminded him of Marilyn Miller, one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. The last name was picked by Marilyn after her mother's maiden name.
   In September of 1946, Grace arranged a divorce from Dougherty who had been against Norma Jean having a career.
   In December of 1947 Marilyn’s first movie was released, “Dangerous Years.” The movie delt with something like Jeff Carter putting an end to his town's delinquency with a boys' club. And then young hoodlum Danny shows up and screws everybody over, like teenagers Doris, Willy and Leo. They hang out at the Gopher Hole, a juke joint where Evie (played by Marilyn) works. Then Jeff tries to stop a robbery planned by Danny, he is killed and Danny goes on trial... on and on.
   Poor Jeff. He was only doing what he thought was right.
   Here’s a clip.
   Marilyn also got an  uncredited role in “Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay!” a classic love triangle film.
   She had one line which was “Hi Rad!"
   Here’s James Haspiel, a friend of Marilyn’s, making sure you saw her in the movie.
   Yes, the little girl in the clip was a pre-Van Nuys High Natalie Wood, and that was not Marilyn’s film debut, as “Dangerous Years,” came out before “Scudda-Hoo! Scudda Hay!” and Marilyn had a much more substantial role in Years.
   Of course you probably recognize the pretty blonde in the film standing next to Natalie as the lovely and talented June Haver. I certainly did.  
   The lovely and talented Academy Award winning actor Walter Brennan was also in the movie.
   I know what you’re thinking but it’s true. The terms "scudda hoo" and "scudda hay," refer to commands used to drive mules, and roughly correspond to “left” and “right.”
   I’ll leave it to you to decide why someone would want to title their motion picture after mule commands.
   They very well could have been cat commands but the end result would no doubt have been disastrous.
   Marilyn’s contract was not renewed in August 1947, and she returned to modeling while also doing occasional odd jobs at the studio.
   But she was determined to be a working actress. She continued studying at the Actor’s Lab, and  she appeared briefly in a play at the  Bliss-Hayden Theater in Beverly Hills.
   She visited producers offices and became friends with the gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky, and entertained (if you can call it that) influential males who were connected to the studios. 
   She became a friend and occasional sex partner of Fox executive Joseph M. Schenck, who in return we’ll say, persuaded his friend Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures, to sign her in six month contract in March of 1948.
   Marilyn took acting lessons with the German  actress, writer and drama coach Natasha Lytess, who would continue to work with Marilyn until 1955 (some say, certainly not me, that the two had an ongoing affair for those 7 years. I say “Good for them!”).
   Her hairline was raised by electrolysis and what was above that line was bleached even lighter, to platinum blond.
   Marilyn was featured as Peggy Martin in 1948‘s “Ladies of the Chorus.” This was her first major part, and besides from getting to sing 3 numbers, her stage persona began to crystallize, the persona of a very attractive, wise woman, with a touch of innocence, vulnerability, and a penchant towards the comedic. The film was considered a “B” picture at the time (until Marilyn became famous, and it was reissued), and disappeared from theaters very quickly. Here’s a clip, and here she sings in a movie for the first time.
   Marilyn’s contract with Columbia was not renewed. 
   She left Columbia in September of 1948. In 1949, Johnny Hyde, the Russian American talent agent who was then vice president of the William Morris Agency, met Marilyn when she was being photographed by Hollywood pin-up photographer Bruno Bernard at the Racquet Club of Palm Springs.
   Johnny took her on as a client and had her undergo minor plastic surgery (a silicone prosthesis implanted in her jaw and a rhinoplasty (nose job). Their relationship became sexual and Hyde proposed to her several times but she refused.
   Johnny got her a bit part in a Marx Brothers film, 1950‘s “Love Happy.” Here’s a clip. Although her part was really small, Groucho (or maybe Harpo, or all four of the buggers) liked her enough to have her  participate in the film's promotional tour in New York.
   But the realities of a young actress struggling in Hollywood weighed heavily on Marilyn. She didn’t have any money. She didn’t have food and needed to make a payment on her car.
   The photographer Tom Kelly approached her about a nude photo shoot, and she turned him down at first, concerned about the potential negative effects that such publicity could bring her burgeoning  career. At that time nude photographs didn’t seem appropriate  for young actresses. These days the ladies in the film and TV industry can’t seem to get their clothes off fast enough, and no one cares about seeing them nude really except me and Fox Molder. 
   Marilyn still needed some cash and a few days later she gave in and decided to take the photos signing them, Mona Monroe.
   She joked that she was glad she wasn’t eating much at the time because it gave her “a real washboard stomach” in the photos.
   “All of her constraints seemed to vanish with her clothes,” Kelly said, and that she seemed to be more “herself” in the nude (actually throughout her life Marilyn was notorious for walking around without clothes on and in front of others... just like me!)
   I’ll give you a moment to get the image of me naked out of your head.

   Okay, let’s move on.
   Kelly even went as far as to say that she was “graceful as an otter,” otters being known for their wet gracefulness.
   Marilyn got $50 for the shoot (about $500 in today's dollars), and despite the pictures gaining massive popularity (Hugh Hefner used some of the pictures to launch Playboy Magazine), she never received any more money or royalties for that job.
   1950 also saw Marilyn in an uncredited role in “A Ticket to Tomahawk,” a western musical comedy with Anne Baxter and her old buddy Walter Brennan. Here’s a song from the film about a forward young man.
   She also appeared that year in “Right Cross,” another love triangle movie with June Allyson, Dick Powell,  and the future Mr. Roarke on “Fantasy Island," and Kirk’s nemesis Khan, Ricardo Montalban. Here’s a clip with Powell, Marilyn and Ricardo.
   She also appeared as Polly in “The Fireball.” Here’s Ed Stephan’s synopsis: “Johnny runs away from Father O'Hara's orphanage and becomes a roller skating star with the help of Mary Reeves. He becomes involved with women, including Polly, who only love him because he is a champion, not, as with Mary, out of love for him. Then he gets polio."
   What a bummer! Ah man, that sucks. I’ve had polio more times than I’d like to remember and it’s no joke! Poor, poor Johnny (my apologies to the 37 reported cases of Poliomyelitis reported in 2016, and all of those who suffer from this horrendous disease).
   The film stars Mickey Rooney, Pat O'Brien, and Beverly Tyler.
   Here’s a non-polio clip.  
   1950 also saw Hyde using his considerable influence to help Marilyn win the role of the  gangster’s moll Angela in John Houston‘s “The Asphalt Jungle,” which has since been considered one of the most influential crime films of the 1950s. It starred Sterling Hayden, before he got involved with precious bodily fluids, and was shot in throat by Al Pacino in “The “Godfather.” Here's a clip.
    The film also starred a pre “Them,” Miracle-Gro and  “The Shawshank Redemption,” James Whitmore, and a post “Gunga Din,” and a pre “The Day the Earth Stood Still," and “Ben Casey,” Sam Jaffee, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work.
   A review in Photoplay stated: “This brutally frank story of crime and punishment in a Midwestern city was directed by two-time Academy Award winner, John Huston—son of the late Walter Huston. John's pictures are usually grim (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), but always dramatic and exciting. This time he exposes the behind-the-scenes details of the robbery of a jewelry store... This picture is packed with stand-out performances... There's a beautiful blonde, too, name of Marilyn Monroe, who plays Calhern's girl friend, and makes the most of her footage.”
   The director Joseph L. Mankiewicz saw her in “The Asphalt Jungle,” and fell under her spell. He put her in his “All About Eve,” (1950), which starred Bette Davis and Anne Baxter as Eve, along with the future Mr. Freeze, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Hugh Marlowe, Barbara Bates, Gary Merrill, and Thelma Ritter (who Marilyn would work with again in her final finished film, “The Misfits,” in 1961). The story concerned an ingénue  (the ingénue is a stock character in literature, film, and a role type in the theater; generally a girl or a young woman who is endearingly innocent and wholesome. Marilyn did not play the ingénue) who insinuates herself into the company of an established but aging stage actress and her circle of theater friends. Here's a clip.
   This was Marilyn’s first really important role and the movie was a huge success, being nominated for 14 Academy Awards (a feat only matched by the 1997 film “Titanic” and the 2016 film “La La Land”). It won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Sanders), Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, and Best Costume Design, Black and White.
   It made some money as well costing $1.4 million to produce and made $8.4 million, which was  a lot of money back then. In todays dollars that would be like $14,322,237.29 to make, and returning $85,933,423.73.
   That’s a pretty good profit for a movie without sinking ships and a tracking shot of people singing and dancing on the Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange (Judge Harry Pregerson is  an acting Senior judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. No one knows why this interchange was named after him... not even the judge).
   After Marilyn’s relative success and exposure in Asphalt and Eve, Johnny Hyde was able to negotiate a seven-year contract with 20th Century-Fox that December. Just a few days after securing the contract, he died of a heart attack at the age of 55.
   Marilyn was devastated as her friend and benefactor was now gone, but she shouldered on.
   In March of 1951 she was a presenter at the 23rd Academy Awards (here’s the clip), and in September, Collier's became the first national magazine to publish a full-length profile of her.
   Then 20th Century placed her in 4 supporting roles in 4 low budget films. They loaned her to MGM for “Home Town Story,” about “After failing to be re-elected, politician Blake Washburn returns home and becomes editor of the local newspaper. When he notices the influence the paper has on the public, he uses it to appeal to potential voters in the next election,” and starring Jeffrey Lynn, Donald Crisp, and Marjorie Reynolds . Here’s a clip with the Skipper.
   And three moderately successful comedies for Fox, “As Young as You Feel (the time honored story of a 65-year-old printer who hatches an elaborate scheme to avoid forced retirement. Here’s a clip),” “Love Nest (“Two married New Yorkers purchase an old, run-down building full of colorful tenants,” starring  Monty Woolley, Thelma Ritter again, and David Wayne. Here’s a clip),” and “Let's Make It Legal (with Claudette Colbert, Macdonald Carey, Zachary Scott, Barbara Bates, which concerned the nearly-final divorce of the Halsworths which suddenly gets complicated when Miriam's old flame comes to town. Clip).”
   Marilyn’s publicity and popularity were growing. She was now getting thousands of fan letters in the mail a week, some of them with inappropriate suggestions. She was declared "Miss Cheesecake [a display of the female form, probably wearing little clothing, often in photographs] of 1951," a dubious honor bestowed by the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, reflecting the preferences of soldiers in the Korean War (freaking Army pervs).
   She was dating famous men, such as the director Elia Kazan (who never bothered to put her in one of his movies), Nicholas Ray, baldy Yul Brenner, and Lawford.
   Gossip columnist Florabel Muir named her the "It Girl" of 1952 and Hedda Hopper described her as the "cheesecake queen" turned "box office smash."   
   She began a highly publicized romance with retired New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio (nicknamed "Joltin' Joe" by Paul Simon, and "The Yankee Clipper," who was an American Major League Baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career for the New York Yankees. He is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak (May 15 – July 16, 1941), a record that still stands. DiMaggio was a three-time MVP winner and an All-Star in each of his 13 seasons. During his tenure with the Yankees, the club won ten American League pennants and nine World Series championships).
   It is said that on their first date Marilyn told him, “I don’t know a thing about football.”
   In April of 52 a scandal broke out when she revealed in an interview that during 1949 she had posed for nude pictures which were featured in calendars.
   Fox executives had learned of the photographs some weeks earlier, and to contain the potentially disastrous effects on her career, Marilyn and the studio decided to talk about them openly while stressing that she had only posed for the photos while she was in a dire financial need.
   The strategy succeeded in getting her public sympathy and caused a huge backlash toward President Harry S. Truman’s  economic polices which were blamed for causing Marilyn to take such drastic measures, and no doubt led directly to his downfall in the General election of 1952... that, and the newly ratified 22nd Amendment.
   This so-called scandal had the effect of increasing interest in her films, and in May Marilyn was featured on the cover of Life as "The Talk of Hollywood".
   Marilyn was complicit in building her reputation as a sex symbol with certain publicity stunts,  such as wearing a revealing dress when acting as Grand Marshal at the Miss America Pageant Parade (clip), and by stating to gossip columnist Earl Wilson that she usually wore no underwear (again, like me!) even though it was none of his business.
   I find the statement she made to Wilson rather odd as I find pictures of Marilyn in her underwear all the time!
   I can understand her self promotion as a symbol. It gave her a degree of power within the industry, and helped to ensure her continued success, or at least her ability to work.
   But she wanted more.
   In the summer of 1952 she appeared in two commercially successful dramas. The first was Fritz Lang's “Clash by Night,” for which she was loaned to RKO and played a fish cannery worker; to prepare, she spent time in a real fish cannery in Monterey (as did I!).
   The film starred Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan, and Paul Douglas, and concerned “Mae Doyle comes back to her hometown a cynical woman. Her brother Joe fears that his love, fish cannery worker Peggy, may wind up like Mae. Mae marries Jerry and has a baby; she is happy but restless, drawn to Jerry's friend Earl.”  
   Oh my! Here's a clip.
   Marilyn played Peggy. She received positive reviews for her performance. The Hollywood Reporter stated that "she deserves starring status with her excellent interpretation", and Variety wrote that she "has an ease of delivery which makes her a cinch for popularity."
   Both statements were true.
   That rascal Darryl Zanuck wanted to test Marilyn’s abilities in an even heavier dramatic role as a crazed babysitter in “Don’t Bother to Knock,” which also featured Richard Widmark, and Anne Bancroft. 
   Here’s a clip.
   This film was the precursor to the “Insane Babysitter” genre. 
   Monroe's three other films in 1952 continued with the type casting of her in comic roles that focused on her physical appearance.
   In “We're Not Married!,” she starred as a beauty pageant contestant, and according to screenwriter Nunnally (Nunnally?) Johnson the part was created solely to "present Marilyn in two bathing suits."
   And a lot of other girls as well (this film was produced by the United States Army). Here’s a clip.
   The movie also starred Victor Moore, Ginger Rogers, Fred Allen, David Wayne and Paul Douglas again, Eve Arden, Eddie Bracken, and Mitzi Gaynor.
   Marilyn would work with Ginger Roberts once more in “Monkey Business,” along with Cary Grant. The film concerned out of control drug use among America’s elite.
   Here’s a clip. 
   “O. Henry's Full House” was a 1952 American anthology film made by 20th Century Fox, consisting of five separate stories by the American short story writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter. God, I hate pseudonyms).
   Recalling Marilyn’s days as a cannery worker wanna be in “Clash by Night," she got John Steinbeck, my favorite writer (“Cannery Row" being my favorite book) to make a rare film appearance in which he introduced the five different stories.
   Marilyn appeared in the first segment, "The Cop and the Anthem," along with Charles Laughton and David Wayne... again. 
   Here’s the segment. 
   Laughton would succumb to renal failure 133 days after Marilyn died.
   It has to be said that Marilyn was beginning to gain a reputation for being difficult to work with, which increased over time. She was quite often late, or didn’t show up, or couldn’t remember her lines. She relied on her acting coaches so much that it distanced her from the directors she was working with.
   Some say, certainly not me, that wanting to be perfect in her work, low self esteem (like me!), stage fright, and lack of control attributed to her behavior. 
   Being late, not showing up, not remembering lines, and other aspects of this type of conduct would be more than enough to get most actresses or actors fired from existing projects, let alone trying to find work in the industry in the future.
   But Marilyn was becoming a phenomena, and everybody wanted to be associated with her, and she was making the studios tons of 1950's dollars.
   So she got away with it.
   She began to use drugs to lessen her anxiety and chronic insomnia. She used barbiturates, amphetamines and alcohol, which most addicts will happily tell you does practically nothing to help solve one’s problems. You’ll escape those problems for a little while, but they’ll still be there when you sober up.
   And you’ll have an awful headache.
   Anyway, Marilyn’s next film was the noir murder drama, “Niagara (in Technicolor!).” It also starred Joseph Cotten, Howard Hughes 2nd wife Jean Peters, and Max Showalter.   
   Marilyn was given first billing in “Niagara” which elevated her to star status. However, Jean Peters part was longer, meaning she had more screen time than Marilyn, and frankly her part was more interesting than Marilyn’s, so in my humble opinion Ms Peters was the star of the movie.
   Full disclosure... I’ve become smitten with Ms Peters and was sad to hear the she passed away in Carlsbad, California (no relation to the caverns) in 2000 from complications with leukemia ( I would have given her my blood if I had known).
   FYI, our friend, Journalist, killer of fish, and rampant sex symbol in her own right, S.E. Cupp, was born in Carlsbad, CA.
   I especially admired Jean after learning that she was known for her resistance to being turned into a sex symbol, and preferred to play unglamorous, down-to-earth women.
   I mean I love Marilyn and all but she was quite a handful.
   In any case, according to Sarah Churchwell, author of “The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (2004),” “Niagara” was one of the most overtly sexual films of Marilyn’s career, as it included scenes in which her body was covered only by a sheet or a towel, which was considered shocking by audiences in 1953. Its most famous scene is a 30-second long shot of Monroe shown walking from behind with her hips swaying, which was heavily used in the film's marketing.
   Here’s that walk.
   I’m not only shocked but am appalled as well!
   When Niagara was released in January, women's clubs protested that the film was immoral, as it clearly was, but the movie proved popular with audiences and grossed $6 million at the box office ($54,663,849.06 now). While Variety deemed it "clichéd" and "morbid", The New York Times commented that "the falls and Miss Monroe are something to see," as although Monroe may not be "the perfect actress at this point ... she can be seductive – even when she walks".
   Here’s a non-walking scene.
   Marilyn continued to attract attention with her revealing outfits in publicity events, most famously at the Photoplay awards in January 1953, where she won the "Fastest Rising Star" award.
   The actress Joan Crawford described Marilyn’s behavior as "unbecoming an actress and a lady" to the press.
   She was just jealous. Crawford would look horrible in that dress.
   And at that point any publicity was good publicity for Marilyn.
   Her next film involved dancing and singing and blondes.
   Something about gentlemen preferring them to other forms of females.
   That’s just ridiculous.

To be continued