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It's Monday, September 28th, 2009. (On this day in history, the Crystals met Bill and sang, "Dey Do Run Run Dey Do Run Run.)
Welcome to The Boston Report I'm feeling much, much better, thank you for asking...
DAILY ENGLISH MUFFINS (On Aging ...) " How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days. " — John Burroughs
In the middle of last night, I noticed the light on in my father’s room. Dad was fully dressed and didn’t know where he was. He had mumbled through a tough day, disoriented. I helped him to the dining room and we played a game of pinochle. He was in good spirits, but thought strangers had been in his room. While we played, he still didn’t know he was home.
He is a good soul, that dad, surviving the Depression, World War II and my mother. I think one of my favorite photos of all time is with the naturalist Burroughs standing with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. It’s an odd juxtapositioning of invention, nature and capitalism.
Mr. Burroughs was a quiet literary giant and prolific essayist and poet. He was sort of the zen hiker of the Catskills. One would do well to read his prose. I am reminded of another lyric, from “Waiting,” one that summed up his “serene acceptance of life: ”Serene I fold my hands and wait Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me."
Vayan con Dios, John Boston
NEW BOOK IS IN! Just a reminder: "Images of America: The Santa Clarita Valley," is off the presses and just ran out of its first publishing run. Check out any fine bookstore in the country to order yours. Read More Boston & his SCV History Column The Time Ranger every week at westranchbeacon.com Mondays, John Boston also hosts the radio show: "The Former Friends of John Boston" on KHTS-AM 1220. Visit www.hometownstation.com and do a search for John Boston. You can listen to his show Mondays at 2 p.m. PST or pick up any of the webcasts. Or, visit SCVTV.com. It's also televised.
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Posted Thursday, September 24th, 2009 Not That I’d Ever Do It, But How To — ahem — Murder Your Wife.
“EXCUSE ME COULD YOU PLEASE SAY THAT AGAIN I DON’T BELIEVE I HEARD YOU CORRECTLY LISTEN JUST WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE FOR GOD’S SAKE WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR SERVANT DON’T YOU DARE TALK TO ME IN THAT TONE OF VOICE I GUESS WE JUST AREN’T MEANT TO BE TOGETHER THAT’S ALL I’VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH YOU THAT’S RIGHT YOU HEARD ME THAT’S NOT MEANT TO BE A THREAT WE’RE JUST IN DIFFERENT TIMES IN OUR LIFE OK GO AHEAD THEN LEAVE I’LL HELP YOU PACK YOUR BAGS I GUESS WE DON’T NEED TO BE TOGETHER OH THAT’S CUTE REAL CUTE I DON’T HAVE TO STAND”
— Wallpaper design for the marital bedroom by Dan Greenburg and Suzanne O’Malley
One of my favorite movies of all time is the George Axelrod comedy, “How To Murder Your Wife.” I find it compelling that Georgie had the chops to produce and write this 1965 flick. He mainly dealt in serious films, like “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Bus Stop” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” although he did write “The Seven-Year-Itch,” that wonderfully wicked flick with the breathy Marilyn Monroe. What I adore about his dark 1965 comedy is that “How To Murder Your Wife” works on so many levels — both on and off the screen. It’s not enough that you simply rent this classic then take to the privacy of your entertainment cave to watch it. No.
You have to stack the deck as Axelrod did. You have to set up the audience. I discovered this quite by accident years ago. I have several friends who are ice ages behind in their movie-watching. My fetching niece-like substance and second-in-command over the entire world (next to me), the lovely Stefanie Kokot, for some odd reason was vacationing in Newhall. She and her saintly husband with the soap opera name, Todd Caine, like to escape the rigors of San Francisco and just hide out down here. We’d overeat, sit under the oaks and watch the clouds go by and top off a glorious day of goofing off in the living room with a double feature. It was at such a respite I discovered that in order to achieve the ultimate evil effect of this film, you have to salt the room with married couples. Women HATE this movie....
Posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009
Happy Father’s Day
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854 (No. I'm not daft. Nor is your calendar broken. I wrote this as an editorial years ago and just felt that sometimes, you just have to bust up a holiday every once in a while...)
A job can be the ultimate sacrifice, a surrendering, perhaps, of boyhood dreams. Men can spend a lifetime working for their children. Women, too. But that is another story, for today is Father’s Day. There is much that goes into putting food on the table and shoes on tiny and not-so-tiny feet. Every morning, a face greets the man in his bathroom mirror. The face changes over the years, yet still is familiar. Etched with worries and lost battles of swallowing pride and freedom for a paycheck, the face matures and ages. Today we salute something taken for granted: Fatherhood. Well. Good fatherhood. The bad ones can pretty much rot, or at least come around for several more lifetimes until they start to get their acts together. A good father has broad shoulders for carrying small creatures too tired to walk or just preferring a better view of the world. A good father comes with an enlarged throat from swallowing grief or inappropriate responses. Men are looked upon for wisdom they frequently don’t possess. It takes a moment, or sometimes years, to find the right answers, and that is more than okay. Like everything else in Nature, men are works in progress. A good father doesn’t necessarily need the correct response for an algebra quiz or have those magic words to mend a broken heart. He should be able to listen. And comfort. He should have a proper lap for rocking. A good father gets out of bed at two in the morning to chase away nightmares and at three in the morning to bring a glass of water and at four to make room for a small, cold, wiggling and lonely body. Sometimes before dawn he stumbles out of bed again, this time to go to work. In all these years of interruptions to blessed sleep, there are rarely any thank you’s, and that’s all right. One wouldn’t want to be startled into a heart attack by a surprise burst of gratitude from the angels in their charge. Some fathers will never get that Corvette. Adventures will be postponed, perhaps forever, to pay for braces or dance lessons, football clinics or law school. But, in those best of days,...
Posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 Dancing Nuclear with Hillary & Britney Spears The Celebrity Faux Interview
There is a certain insincerity inherent in all celebrity interviews. The interviewer prays silently to dark gods for some career-ending, suicide-causing confession. The interviewee is trapped in the machinery of fame. Like vampires, they require their life’s blood to be replenished in the rejuvenating baths of public limelight. Secretly? They wish Earth would open and gnomes will spring forth to devour the paparazzo right in the middle of asking cliché #9,047: “So. How does it feel?” The public, breastfed from birth on deception and prurient gossip, don’t really care if they’re munching on fact or fiction. Just give them some pleasant video of a beheading or what starlet has turned gay, straight or Anabaptist to distract them from the dystopia of their everyday lives.
The logical media conclusion then must be the Faux Interview. It serves all wonderfully. The beastly public with their crude farm implements and mud hats are intellectually nourished for another 20 minute or at least until the next installment of “Jon & Kate Plus 8.” The celebrity is still penglorious in the de-wrinkling rays of stardom and doesn’t have to suffer ashtray-stealing reporters rummaging through their estates. The reporter never has to leave his hovel. Better. Because his story is made up, he can interview anyone, anywhere, one eye on the laptop the other on the Laverne and Shirley marathon. And news directors and editors? The fundamental unit of human incompetence? They will never have to sign another fictionalized expense report again nor worry about libel or catching Swine Flu from the staff. It’s quite the clean crime. Done correctly, the Faux Interview...
'Of all the writers I have known in my 30 years in the newspaper business, John Boston is the best. By far."
— Will Fleet
Past President of the California Newspaper Publishers' Assoc. and Publisher of the Fresno Bee |
READ CHAPTER 1 NOW This award-winning 5-star novel, voted "Book of the Year" by the Los Angeles Press Club, is ready to be bought by millions. Read the first chapter, get hooked, and buy the entire web book for $9.99.
Coming -- well, let's be honest. It still needs another rewrite, so we're looking at later in 2008. But John Boston's next novel is The Halcyon Times & Rural Avenger. In this multi-generational darkly-humorous saga spanning 125 years, a newspaper editor unwittingly enlists the aid of a reformed serial killer, a practical joking eco-terrorist and the psychologically complicated staff of a swashbuckling little newspaper to stop a billionaire developer from turning a former national park in the Sierras into a behemoth and bathroomless "San Fernando Valley yuppie concentration camp" housing project.
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