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HAPPY TIMES WERE THERE AGAIN

5/15/2021

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A couple of my readers have told me that alcoholic beverages provide a pleasant sub-theme in my recent novel, No Man’s Land about the attempted assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Oh well, you can take the Irishman out of Ireland, but you can’t take Ireland ... you know the rest.

In the first chapter, set in Los Angeles in January 1933, Frank Kelly heads to his regular speakeasy after he is called to the murder scene of a German émigré movie actress. Located in the basement of the Natick Hotel at Main and First the speakeasy’s barman, Willie, “had his usual gin waiting for him.”

In Berlin, Kelly finds himself in Die Fliege, a dive bar, and overindulges in the house Schnapps “from a small barrel stamped with the name Berolina Doppelkorn.”

Later, when he is escaping his Gestapo tail, Kelly takes refuge in The Lippenstift bar “beneath a blinking neon sign, a martini glass imprinted with vibrant red lips.” And yes, downs a house martini with a twist of lemon.

And then there is Kelly’s parting drink with the Danish spy Steffi Tappert. She finds a half empty bottle of Aalborg Akvavit in the safe house, as they wait for the Gestapo. An amber liquor spiced with caraway or dill, it’s a drink for special occasions. Escaping the Gestapo probably qualifies.

When Frank Kelly arrives at Union Station in DC on Friday Night, April 7, 1933, he finds a city celebrating “Brew Year’s Eve, the repeal of Prohibition,” the first full day of legal alcohol consumption since January 1920.

​And within days, he also unravels the plot to assassinate FDR, but that’s enough for this now. I’m going to leave my fruitless search for Gilka’s Kaiser Kümmel during a recent trip to Berlin for my next blog. AND take a break in my nearest tavern to sup a legal draft of local IPA.


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The Natick, in Los Angeles. Frank Kelly's local speakeasy.
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Kelly and the spy Steffi Tappert share a bottle of Aalborg Akvavit, as they wait for the Gestapo.
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The ex Marine Schmidt found Kümmel and sex in the Café Dallas bar.
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Finnegan's Walk

5/15/2021

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They also serve who only stand and wait? It doesn’t feel like it, Mr. Milton. While I social-distance at home on my ass, doctors, nurses, my postman and the Fedex guy are the ones serving in this pandemic. 

As a penance for the guilt, I’ve decided to finally read Finnegans Wake. My hair shirt for the brain. 

“A way a lone a last a loved a long...” After grinding my way through three pages of Finnegan, I need sugar. I know there’s cookies in the closet by the washing machine, behind the five cans of Progresso soup and the stack of tuna. I push aside the plastic bag of panic-buy dried pinto beans. Do I have to boil them for 20 minutes before I get rid of the toxins? I should have asked. But the sack at La Reyna Market was open, and it was buy-anything, add water and pray for a milagro. I reach to the back of the closet and find nothing. The mirage of the Keebler fudge stripe cookies evaporates.

Isn’t there a half bar of Trader Joes’ milk chocolate bar behind the last two bottles of IPA on the second shelf in the fridge? I casually saunter past my wife. She’s on the sofa in the living room, learning how to do online Kaltura tutorials. 

I open the fridge. Nothing again. Then I remember. Yesterday. I was five minutes into another Trump everyone-else-is-to-blame whine when I rushed to the fridge and scoffed the chocolate in a blind panic. 

“I’m going for a walk,” I shout out. I won’t tell her I’m walking to the Mexican store. Maybe she wouldn’t let me in the house again. No,  That would be me. I’d demand a head to foot Clorox spraying.

My wife is making the best of her shelter-in-place while I’m spending the Covidture building a workbench and mashing two of my fingers with a hammer. And, of course, reading Finnegan’s Wake. It’s the perfect time. I think of future dinner conversations – if there is such a thing as future. I recall that English prick telling our awed dinner table that Proust should only be read in French.  If only I could have responded: “Interestingly that reminds me of a chapter in Finnegan’s Wake.”  

I start off on my Odyssey to La Reyna the local emporium for dried pinto beans and chorizo. It’s the closest store. It’s might be empty. I could rush in and grab a pack of Chokis or Canelitas and be out before I’m infected. I plod down the hill. I think of the butt-crunching return fortified by chocolate. We live at the edge of the town. Olive trees, almond orchards, the sun is steaming frost off the fields  ... oh to hell with poesy. I got enough of that with my three pages of Finnegan’s Wake. But is it poetry? I can’t tell.   It seems like Swedish to me. I have a moment of panic. Maybe I’ve got the Swedish version. I hear the Muppets’ Swedish chef in my head. Perhaps if I read it like Svenske kockenI could understand it. 

Hell! I sidestep a tube of shit. I can’t call it anything else. A long tube with pointed ends. Not pebbles or a swirling turd. What is that? Some asshole neighbor probably taking advantage of Covid to break with dog poop etiquette. 

“Hey,” the guy from the house with the Marine flag walks toward me holding a shovel. “Did you see it too, neighbor?” I look blankly at him. “You think it’s mountain lion scat? I reckon it is. Maybe bobcat.” He gets closer. I step back. I’ve forgotten the rule. Am I six feet away? Or is it twelve? With one scoop, he shovels up the scat. “I’ll snap a photo and send it in to CalPoly.” He holds it out for me to see. “Uh, good idea.” I manage.
​
I watch him disappear past his weathered Trump sign and stand motionless. No chocolate. A mountain lion. And a neighbor closing in on my plague-free zone. La Reyna and its shelves of alluring delights suddenly seems like a bridge too far. 
I turn and start up the hill. At least there’s the comfort of Finnegan’s Wake. “Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek!”Nope. I couldn’t face the Swedish again. Maybe I’ll watch Schitt’s Creek, speaking of mountain lion scat.
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A memory of Ken Dodd as Malvolio at Liverpool Playhouse.

5/15/2021

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I worked as an acting/assistant stage manager at Liverpool Playhouse in 1971, my first job after Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Ken Dodd was playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night. It was an entrancing performance that skillfully enfolded his sad-clown persona with the puritan pomposity of Olivia’s steward. Offstage he had the retiring demeanor of a gentle but distracted professor, who was fascinated by human behavior. I had to deliver one of the props to his dressing room before each performance. One night, I came in to find his manager and his manager’s girlfriend in the middle of a loud argument. Dodd was standing quietly at the other end of the room, agog. He pointed to them and whispered to me: “Watch. People are fascinating aren’t they?” There was no sarcasm in his voice, but rather I saw that he was fascinated with the rhythm and beat of the verbal interaction.
Onstage he was totally focused on perfecting his work. He had a great piece of schtick, or more literally ‘stick’. Retreating from Olivia’s presence with much bowing, Dodd would flash obsequious toothy smiles until Malvolio’s staff of office ended up, perchance, jammed into his crotch.

​It was a house pleaser, and often I would rush up to the wings to watch him. One evening, however, the house was silent. He came offstage, and saw me standing there. “What happened? Why didn’t they laugh?” A deer caught in the headlights, I fumbled out. “As one actor in a show you can’t control an audience in the same way you can during stand up. The previous scenes can set the mood.” He looked at me thoughtfully. He was a master of his art, and I have no doubt that he knew this already. “Huh, you’re right. You’re right.” Nodding, he exited to the green room and left me standing in awe.
​
He was a gracious man with an open mind, always listening and always learning. He will be missed.
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Sir Ken Dodd played Malvolio at Liverpool Playhouse in 1971
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    welcome to Raymond's Blog!

    Raymond Hardie is a writer and editor. After almost 20 years as a magazine editor, three novels, more than a dozen screenplays, plays, and videos and innumerable articles he says he's come to appreciate that writing is rewriting. "I've been telling stories since I was four years old and I've learned why inspiration and perspiration are derived from the same root. Welcome to my writing and my work." ​

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