Gay Marriage

Someone asked me the other day what I thought about gay marriage.  I laughed.  "Better you ask me what I think about marriage in general," I said and launched into the following lecture.

Marriage is a legal and binding contract regarding property rights.  It has nothing to do with love or sex or children.  Well, the children part is wrong.  It has everything to do with children inheriting property.  That's why, if you're not married, the kid is a bastard and isn't entitled to anything - which has created a huge market for attorneys in this post-women's lib, drop your drawers society we now live in.

If a person writes a will, he/she can leave their property to anyone they want.  They can set up whatever trust they like for whoever they want.  But if you don't have a will, marriage a.k.a. property laws prevail.      

So when you're signing on the dotted line for a marriage license, forget about love and sex and cheating and a family and happy home and all the other mushy stuff people get married for today, and think about what that contract really means which is - who gets the house and the cars and the kids and who gets to visit in the hospital and who gets to make decisions for you when you're sick.

Personally, I don't care if Fido and Bowzer get married to insure their dog houses are inherited by the right partner.  So if two guys or two gals want a legal and binding marriage contract to protect property rights, more power to them.  But, please . . . please . . . please . . . if you're a woman don't introduce me to your partner as your wife or your husband.  That's screwed up!!

Wife is a woman.  Husband is a man.  Those titles are achieved when a man and woman get married.  Fido and Bowzer, Susie and Sally, Ben and Burt have PARTNERS!  But that's my opinion, and I'm old - thank goodness - and I still believe in waiters and waitresses, chairmen and chairwomen and mailmen and mail-ladies.

Marva Whitney - Soul Sister #1



Have you ever had a "phone buddie"?  Someone you've never met in person, but, through happenstance, met on the telephone and became friends.   That was Marva Whitney and me.  We never met, but we spent hours on the phone.  Marva had called Jean Bennett hoping Personality Productions could help her get some bookings.  Personality had already been sold, but Jean had Marva call me anyway.  I told her there was nothing Jean or I could do to help, but we started to talk about "Playboy After Dark."  I had worked for the agency that booked the atmosphere people.  Marva had been a guest performer.  Those had been good days.  We were young, full of energy and still full of hope, despite that fact showbiz had already kicked us a couple of times.  Now were weren't so young anymore, but we were certainly not ready to quit.  Marva would call me early a couple of times a week around seven in the morning.  I'd always be asleep and groan about the early hour.  She always sounded like she had a horrible cold.  Her voice would be thick and scratchy.  My first words were always, "Are you all right?"  Gramps usually answered the phone at the hour, and after I'd hung up, he'd want to know if she was all right.  I told him that after we talked a bit, her voice sounded better - but never great.  Marva and I talked about her bookings, her band in Japan, and about seeing if we could get her booked in Las Vegas.  She sent me copies of her new CD, and she gave me the highlights of James Brown's funeral.  We talked about the reception she received in Europe, and we planned for the future.  All the time I protested there was nothing I could do, but at the same time I thought just maybe I could.  Every conversation had a "when are you coming to Kansas City.  I don't know.  Can you come to Las Vegas" moment.  The last time I talked to her was a little more than a year ago.  She sounded amazing!  Her voice was clear as a bell.  I kept saying, "You sound great."  She told me about being on stage in Australia.  One minute she was singing.  The next thing she remembered was waking up on a gurney.  They said she'd had a stroke on stage.  She didn't sound like it.  She didn't think the diagnosis was right.  She said her doctors here couldn't find anything wrong.  She thought she'd had a reaction to the chemicals in the smoke machine used in the show.  Her apartment had flooded.  She was moving - into a senior's complex.  Seniors!  Old people.  But it would be fine.  It was a nice place.  She was working with someone new and was excited about the future.  I kept telling her how good she sounded and said that in 2013 I was going to concentrate on writing and publishing.  If I didn't do it now, it would  never get it done.    January 1, 2013, I sat down and uploaded the first of five books to Nook and Kindle.  January 3, 2013, Marva was laid to rest.  I didn't know she had passed away until a couple of months ago.  I had emailed her, and when it came back I thought I had the wrong address.  She had changed it at least three times.  I wouldn't have been on her "people to call list."  We were only phone buddies.  And I've been sitting in this chair ten and twelve hours a day writing, typing, editing, posting and re-posting to the exclusion of everything else.  A couple of times Gramps had asked if I'd heard from Marva.  I said no, but she was probably on the road.  She'd call when she was back.  Because she had sounded so good, it never entered my mind that anything could have happened that wasn't fabulous.  Maybe I was right, because now she's singing with the angels.  And what could be more fabulous than that!  RIP my friend.

Sixty Years of HIts: Straight From the Horse's Mouth

This is interesting.  Press releases, letters and photos exactly as written over a 50 year period.  Seems there was never a press release about The Platters that went out of the Personality office that did not mention Buck Ram.  Not one in 50 years!  It's pretty amazing that this whole who's the owner, who started the group thing has been going on that long, but here's the truth without opinion, dreams, wannabes and do-gooders personal opinions.  The Platters were the #1 group of the 50s.  I doubt there are many people under fifty who give a rats behind about the group or the behind the scenes goings on, but it's interesting that so much of the court's time is being spent on the matter in 2013.  Perhaps Judges Navarro, Pro, Segal-Ikuta, McKeown, Wallace, and Magistrates Foley, Johnson and others and their office staffs should take a look at the truth as written at the time it was happening and stop wasting the taxpayers money on something that means nothing to the public.  But I won't hold my breath.  In following this, I have learned that the courts have nothing to do with the truth.  The only thing that matters is if one attorney can put their lie over with no regard for the truth over the other guy who may or may not be telling the truth.  I've started watching some of these Forty-eight Hour Mysteries on television with a whole new attitude.  Just how much of what these prosecutors and defense attorney make-up do the judges and juries believe.  That makes me think about OJ and Sam Shepard again.  What a pile of horse manure those two trials were!!

No Truth in Truth in Music - Chapter 2

And the saga continues . . . It has been flying around the last few days that Jon Bauman has submitted his personal statement, or perhaps a statement on behalf of Truth in Music or the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, in a court case brought by Herb Reed Enterprises (Herb is dead) against Monroe Powell stating that Buck Ram began a new company in 1970 to promote a group called The Buck Ram Platters. I can tell you for a fact that is not true. This case is yet another battle over the ownership of the name The Platters. If you count the little skirmishes that lasted a day or two, there have been at least a hundred cases over the last sixty years. The correct information is that Personality Productions managed The Platters from 1953 until 2006. Buck Ram SOLD Personality, a management company representing thirty-three acts at the time, to Jean Bennett in 1966. Buck stayed on as Music Consultant. That's it. He washed his hands of the whole Platters mess on 1966 - except for music. On that score he had the final say. Buck had been a successful songwriter when Herb Reed and the other "original" singers were in diapers. The guys who started the group before Reed and Tony Williams joined were younger and weren't even born when Buck was hanging round the Apollo with Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Chick Webb and writing songs with them. It is true that The Platters began to be referred to as The Buck Ram Platters about the time Bennett bought the company because of all the counterfit groups springing up around the world. But it was not Jean - or Buck - who began referring to the group as The Buck Ram Platters. It was the bookers. They wanted to make sure they were getting the group whose music and performance came directly from the master. Although Buck threw in finacial support if needed, Jean, not Buck, fought the battle for the group and the name from 1966 until she'd had enough. With Buck and all the singers passed on, I'm still trying to figure out what these people bringing lawsuits today - and there are at least two and maybe more in courts at this moment - have to do with The Platters or the success of the group. Herb Reed did not start the group. He was reportedly in the Army when they began. They were originally a bunch of high school kids. Cornell Gunter was 16. Herb Reed and Tony Williams were 25 or 26 years old when they got involved. And what has Bauman or Reed's manager, who is apparently now claiming rights to the name, got to do with The Platters?

Politics

I started to write something about my opinion of politics the other day, and the computer froze up. I guess even an inanimate object has an opinion about the direction the world is taking. Seriously, I don't understand politics. Everyone I've known personally who was involved in running the government has either been a drunk or nuts. There are some exceptions but those have been raked over the coals and had their careers destroyed. It's my experience that it does not pay to be honest in politics. The bad guys will always get you. There are lots of labels in politics I don't understand. I know being a Democrat or Republican or Liberatarian is a club of people you like that you can join and vote with. It's like picking a church or joining Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or a fraternity or soroity. I was a communist for awhile. When I first came to Las Vegas I thought it was cool that you could register as an Independant. American Independant to be exact. I later found out that American Independant in Nevada is the communist party. Hmmm. Wonder if Obama could have run on that ticket in Illinois too? I guess the New Party he ran on doesn't exist anywhere but Wisconsin now. But that's what confuses me. All the names and labels and parties no one has heard of. I understand the TEA Parties. Taxed Enough Already makes sense to me. I don't understand why there are so many "groups" of TEA Party people. From the days when I had cable I know that the people involved are older, washed and combed, carry guns - big guns - shout down politicians and don't leave a mess behind them. I don't get the 99 Percenters. They are apparently ticked off because there are some smart, rich, ruthless guys out there who have more - lots more - than they do and think those people should give them some of what they have earned. Why? And I don't understand why they think it's all right to destroy public and private property and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Seems to me there are some snapped synapses there. Then there are liberals and conservatives, righter wingers and left wingers, progressives and the "extreme," John Birchers and who knows what else. It's nothing but a bunch of name calling that accomplishes nothing. I know that during the last election I thought if I heard Harry Reid say "extreme" one more time I was going to scream. Oh, that's right. I did scream. Several times. In the privacy of my own home. If I'd gone to one of his rallies, I'm sure I would have been screaming "Shut up, Harry" at the top of my lungs. I also don't know why Harry has to keep going on television and saying idiotic things. Is anyone so stupid that they don't know Harry is President? Nothing goes to Barry without going through Harry first. If Harry doesn't like it, it sits and mellows on this desk. Gee, to think, we have a Mormon President without the election process. How's that for a joke on all the people who think religion matters in politics. Actually, the only thing in politics I like is the Constitution. It is amazing how brilliant the founders of this government were. I find George Washinton interesting for someone with wodden teether. I don't care that Jefferson slept with a slave. I don't think Lincoln was a great or brilliant president. He was a guy who failed in business sixteen times until he discovered politics, and, like Obama, he was a great speech maker. I think FDR was the worst president in the history of the country. I liked Jerry Ford until I learned that all the "diversity" crap started under him. I was sure Carter would take the country down the toilet the first time I saw him on television, and I was right. Reagan was the ultimate great speaker who increased the national debt by a bizillion dollars, and I don't understand the adoration. I'm not sure what I think about Nixon. I don't think "opening up" China was a good thing. One the other hand, I know that Watergate was a SEX scandal that got blown out of proportion because a bunch of guys broke into an office looking for info on SEX. They broke into Hank Greenspun's office, the newspaper publisher in Las Vegas, too because he was the one feeding Jack Anderson info about politicians coming to Las Vegas for hookers. NOTE: In Las Vegas they are not hookers. They simply have a job. Girls who work in outcall servies and strip bars make the BIG bucks. My opinion of George H. W. Bush, Clinton and Obama is the same. They are - as many before them - proof that the country is run by congress.

Global Warming. . . Cooling . . . Warming . . .

It has been a hot one in Las Vegas this summer. We broke the temperature record set in 1902! It makes me wonder about Global Warming. When did the Global Cooling begin that has kept us so far below the 117 degree for a century? And how soon is another of those cooling periods going to begin. It's hot!!

It's Called Neighborhood WATCH!

I was about eight or nine when the Sam Shepard murder trial was in all the newspapers.  It fascinated me.  I would get up every morning and hurry to get dressed for school.  Then I would spread the Chicago Tribune out on the living room floor and on my hands and knees read every word of the story in the right hand column of the front page.  I remember my mother, on more than one occasion, having to tell me,  repeatedly, that I had better leave for school or I'd be late, and I could finish the article when I came home.  If I didn't have time to finish the long articles that were continued somewhere in the first section of the newspaper, all I would think about at school was getting home to finish reading.

I was fascinated, not because of the bushy-haired man Shepard said was in his house, but because I could not believe anyone could make up stories the way they were and print them in the newspaper as fact.  It fascinated me then.  What has happened in the Travon Martin case disgusts me now.

When I cancelled the cable, it was because there is nothing worth watching on television.  I couldn't see paying to watch informercials, reruns and screaming housewives.  I didn't realize until this morning that the straw that broke the camels back was FOX's Bill O'Reilly and his "reporting" on the Martin case.  Granted, O'Reilly is not a journalist.  Like Sean Hannity he is simply stating his opinion.  Well, here's mine.

Georege Zimmerman just got away with murder.  Unlike O. J. Simpson or Robert Blake or any of the thousands of people whose names we'll never know who are acquitted of a crime there was no expression of relief on Zimmerman's face.  He wasn't even cocky.  He had a self-righteous smile.

In one of snippets of "news" I get from the newspaper, on the internet and YouTube I heard one of the jurors say she "felt sorry" for George.  What?  Why?  Zimmerman was a guy who got out of his car, tracked down the seventeen year old and, when Martin Stood His Ground, shot the kid dead just feet from his own back door.  What is there to feel sorry for about Zimmerman?  Why would you have sympathy for a guy because he got his head cracked open for approaching someone and pointing a gun at him?  If I were fighting for my own life, I hope I'd be able to crack the guy's head wide open too.  People like Zimmerman terrify me, but Gramps disagreed with me.  

Gramps is eighty.  He thought the verdict was right until I personalized it for him.

Gramps had a good life and made a good living selling Rolls Royces and Mercedes to rich people.  The other day we went through his closet to give his old  clothes, many things with the tags still on, them to the Salvation Army.  What is left is about twenty pair of shoes, still in the boxes either unworn or that will never be worn again.  He has about twenty new shirts left, and he kept one sports jacket and a three piece suit.  He needs none of it because he won't wear any of it.

Gamps days are now spent sitting on the patio, smoking and watching sports.  He seldom goes anywhere, but he also does not sleep at night.  He naps during the day.  At three in the morning he is a familiar sight in the neighborhood, walking in circles, sometimes in the middle of the street, smoking.  He's a one man neighborhood watch.  He knows everything that goes on after midnight.  All of that would be fine, except that he doen't wear his good duds.  He was worn the same dirty, torn levis for a least a month.  His Hawaiian shirt is stiff with sweat from the hot Las Vegas days.  The soles of his twenty dollar, discount store running shoes are taped to the tops with duct tape, and his fingernails are long, dirty and jagged.  Don't misunderstand.  He is not senile.  He's as sharp as any forty year old.  He walks like he's forty and looks twenty years younger than he is.  When the palm fronds fly in a wind storm, he can't wait to climb on the roof and work in the yard cleaning them up.  So how could I personalize the not guilty verdict to him?  It was easy.  He looks like he's homeless.  His big excursion of the day - or middle of the night - is to walk to the 7-11 to get cigarettes and a coke.

Our neighborhood has Neighborhood Watch.  We're two blocks from the Strip and strange people, frequently drunk, wander through the streets at all hours.  But no one from the neighborhood patrols the streets carrying a gun.  We do exactly what the name says.  We watch, and when necessary, we call the cops.

Had there been a George Zimmerman in our neighborhood Gramps could have been the one murdered. 

I told Gramps to imagine this.  It's two in the morning.  He decides to walk the four blocks to the 7-11.  While on his way home, Zimmerman is doing his armed patrol of the neighborhood.  Unlike our immediate neighbors, Zimmerman does not know who Gramps is and decides he looks suspicious.  He calls the cops.  The cops tell him to stay in his car.  They're on their way.  But Zimmerman doesn't heed the authority of the police.  He decides he knows more than they do and tracks Gramps. 

When Gramps ducks behind a bush to get out of the wind to light his cigarette and try to get a look at the suscicious guy in the truck casing the neighborhood, Zimmerman disobeys his instructions from the police, gets out of his vehicle and confronts Gramps. 

I know Gramps.  He's not taking any crap from anyone.  When Zimmerman demands to know what Gramps is doing.  Gramps demands to know what Zimmerman wants.  If Zimmerman had taken one step toward him, Gramps would have swung.  And Gramps, at eighty, would have died at the hands of a wannabe cop packing a gun. 

Gramps didn't say anything when I got through putting him in Trayvon Martin's shoes.  He quiety lit a cigarette and banged at the computer keyboard griping, "I can't watch my games on this thing.  All I can get is the scores."  But I noticed that when he went to the 7-11 the next time, he changed his clothes and put on his khakis and a clean shirt.  He looked nice, except for the duct taped running shoes.