AN ESSAY IN PHOTOS

Crook, liar, baffoon, former economic advisor and current prison bitch

Retired ... finally









Still dead.

Still Mayor.

FAVORITE LIVE LPS (not CDs)

As you will see, this is heavily weighed to the 1970s … what can I say? I grew up in the 70s.
In chronological order:

Live at Newport 1956 – Duke Ellington Orchestra (1956)
When Duke Ellington took his orchestra to the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956, the band was in need of an uplift, looking for a way to revitalize its image in the wake of bebop, hard bop, and so many more jazz currents. Ellington got the lift he needed when he called "Diminuendo in Blue" with set-closer "Crescendo in Blue" tacked on the end. Tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves got the nod from Ellington to segue from "Diminuendo" to "Crescendo," and he created the most famous sax solo in jazz history. With one rousing 27-chorus solo, Gonsalves blew a fever into the crowd and jump-started Ellingtonia for another generation. Capping off Gonsalves solo is an equally over-the-top trumpet solo by Cat Anderson, former member of the Jenkins' Orphanage band in the 1920s.

Live at the Apollo – James Brown (1962)
The hardest-working-man-in-show- business proves he deserves the title. Brown was born in the hometown in which I graduated high school, Barnwell, SC. Barnwell's other claims to fame are being home of Cliff Hollingsworth, who wrote the screenplay for the movie Cinderella Man starring Russell Crowe, and the birthplace of Henry Wallace, convicted serial killer of nine women in Charlotte, NC in 1993.



Live at Folsom Prison – Johnny Cash (1968)
One of the seminal events in country (and popular) music. By turns funny, maudlin, rocking but always with attitude. This LP helped pave the way for Waylon, Willie and the Outlaw music of the 1970s. Rolicking versions of "Folsom Prison Blues", "Cocaine Blues" and "Twenty-four Minutes to Go," one of the greatest execution songs ever written.

Live at Leeds - The Who (1970)
Four guys, three instruments and a wall of noise. Loud, loud and louder! Heavy metal bands are still trying match this. You can almost visualize Townsend's trademark pinwheel guitar playing and Roger Daltrey swinging the mic like a lariat.

Mad Dogs & Englishmen – Joe Cocker (1970)
Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen revue showed the world how a rock and roll road show should be done. Recorded live at New York's Fillmore East in the spring of 1970, this CD documents a slapdash extravaganza (the whole thing was conceived, organized, and abandoned over the course of two months) that overflows with big, brassy, rockin' soul. Front and center is Joe Cocker, a spastically charismatic Brit soul shouter. The bandleader is Leon Russell, playing some of the best rock piano ever waxed. And the crack company (boasting 21 singers and players) includes the rhythm section of a band which become known as Derek & the Dominoes' .

Live at the Fillmore East – Frank Zappa and the Mothers (1971)
This was a live concept-like album. It was a quick peek behind the curtain of the life of a rock band on the road as narrated by Frank Zappa. Frank and the Mothers portray stereotypically egotistical members of a rock band "negotiating" with a groupie and her girlfriends for a quick roll in the hay. The girls are insulted that the band thinks they are groupies and that they would sleep with the band just because they are musicians. They have standards; they will only have sex with a guy in a group with a "big, hit single in the charts – with a bullet!" and a "dick that’s a monster." One of the funniest LPs ever!

Made In Japan – Deep Purple (1973)
This is often in the top five in "Greatest Live Album" lists. One listen you will understand why. Definitive heavy metal with master musicians. The band even indulges in some great long-form jams, reaching into the 10-minute range for most of the main set and closing with the now-famed live read of "Space Truckin'." Ritchie Blackmore earns his "guitar god" status on this release. Ian Gillian releases one of rock and roll's all time great screams in "Strange Kind of Woman."

On Your Feet or On Your Knees – Blue Oyster Cult (1975)
As non-mainstream (for the 70s) as this music was, "On Your Feet Or On Your Knees" was Blue Oyster Cult's first album to break into the Top 30, a stunning document of the innovations to come. Sonic bombast on par with their obvious model, the aforementioned "Made In Japan." Bands like Judas Priest and Dokken built a career copying this model.

Frampton Comes Alive – Peter Frampton (1976)
What else do you need to know? The album became the biggest selling live album at the time of its release and sold over 6 million copies in the US, and 16 million worldwide. As of 2008, it is the fourth best selling live album of all time.Released in early January 1976, it debuted on the charts at 191. It stayed at the top of the charts, at number one, for 10 weeks, stayed in the Billboard's Top 40 album chart for 55 weeks, and stayed on the Billboard charts in total for 97 weeks. It was the top selling album of 1976. It was so successful it took Frampton almost 20 years to recover professionally.

Live Bullet – Bob Seger (1976)
Frampton got most of the sales records and press, but Live Bullet stands the test as one of the all time great live recordings. Bob Seger is one of the best songwriters in rock and roll, and one of the greatest vocalists also ... with a prime-to-the-pump back-up band ... how can you go wrong? This was the LP that put Seger over the top. His next release was called Night Moves.

One More From For the Road – Lynyrd Skynyrd (1976)
Again, one of the greatest live recordings of one of the all time great bands. Those of who that have only seen the current version of Skynyrd have NO IDEA how great the original line-up was on stage. Happy that I got to see them twice. In 1976, and the next year, in their next-to-the-las performance before the fatal plane crash.

Seconds Out – Genesis (1977)
The last great Genesis LP before they became nothing more than Phil Collins' back-up band. Peter Gabriel had left the group the year before and after auditioning hundreds of vocalists as replacements, the band just decided to let drummer Phil Collins take over the lead vocal duties. Genesis had such a reputation as a live act, it was imperative that the new line-up (sans Gabriel) prove it's mettle on stage - and they did. If you can only own one Genesis release ... this is the one. It includes an amazing version of the 29 minute end-of-the-world opus "Supper's Ready". After this Genesis was well on it's way to becoming the 80s superstars they became. Great for the bank, but lacking in musical creativity.

The Last Waltz – the Band (1978)
How amazing can live performances get? The Band's last performance with guest stars galore - my personal favorite being Dr. John. This is also one of the great concert movies.

Waiting For Columbus – Little Feat (1978)
The funkiest bunch of west coast (mostly) white guys. Smoking hot versions of Little Feat classics like 'Fat Man In The Bathtub", "Dixie Chicken" and "Oh Atlanta." Lowell George's last great performance.

Live and Dangerous – Thin Lizzy (1978)
These guys may qualify as the greatest rock and roll band that ALMOST made it. Sure, everybody has heard "The Boys Are Back In Town", but Lizzy is so much more. Phil Lynott was the Irish Springsteen / Seger. Guitarist Brian Roberson later provided guitar fireworks for Motorhead. One of my regrets is that I never got to see these guys live.


Full House / Aces High – Amazing Rhythm Aces (1981)
I may have listened to this LP more than any other live recording! I initially ordered through an ad in Rolling Stone magazine. This LP has been responsible for kicking more parties into gear, and provided the greatest soundtrack for cruising. If you've never heard of them ... think of a Memphis version of Little Feat with more country twang and a wicked sense of humor. God bless the Aces.

GONE WITH THE WIND @ The Terrace Theater

www.MarkRJones.net / www.WickedCharleston.net / www.BlackCatTours.com

Last night Rebel and I attended (in costume) a showing of GWTW in Charleston at The Terrace Theater on James Island. Great fun! A good contengiency of Charleston Tour Guides were in attendance, including two newbies who had never seen the film before. Great fun for all who attended. It also got me thinking about how good movies used to be. How many great movies come out in a single year these days ... one or two ... often zero.

1939 was a watershed year in Hollywood. It gets my vote for being the best year for movies in Hollywood history. Here are movies nominated by the Academy for Best Film in 1939.

Goodbye Mr. Chips: Robert Donat in his Oscar performance as the beloved school teacher.
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington: James Stewart in one his more iconic roles.
Of Mice and Men: One of the best versions of Steinbeck's classic. Wth Burgess Meredith as George and Lon Chaney, Jr. as the simple-minded Lenny.
Stagecoach: Stagecoach has been lauded as one of the most influential films ever made. This was John Ford's first Western with sound, and also featured John Wayne in his breakout role.
Ninotcha: Launched with the tagline "Garbo Laughs!", Ninotchka is Greta Garbo's first full comedy, and her penultimate film.

Which film won? None of the above. In 1939, the Academy nominated more than 5 films. Here are some other nominees.

Love Affair: The classic tear-jerker starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. It was later re-made as An Affair To Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr and re-made again as Love Affair with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
Wuthering Heights: The film that made Lawrence Olivier a star, also starred Merle Oberlin and David Niven.
Dark Victory: Another classic weeper. Bette Davis plays a swinging socialite, living the fast life of booze, smokes, and--with the help of Humphrey Bogart as her Irish stableman--raising thoroughbred horses. When a brain tumor starts giving her headaches and eroding her vision, she falls in love with her surgeon (George Brent), who grows more determined than ever to cure her.

None of those won either because 1939 was also the year in which The Wizard of Oz was released.

Which did not win because the movie of the year was Gone With The Wind. Pretty good year, huh?

Here's a list of more films from that year.

Beau Geste: The best known version of this classic adventure story with Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston, Susan Hayward, Broderick Crawford, and Brian Donlevy.
The Cat and the Canary: This comedy-horror film is considered to one of Bob Hope's best overall films, and his best performance.
Destry Rides Again: This is on my list of James Stewart's Top Five films, and one of the funniest westerns ever. The Western film genre was a first for both James Stewart and Dietrich - in a perfect example of inspired casting and image reversal. Stewart plays the role of an atypical, pacifist, unarmed Western hero and the usually glamorous seductress Dietrich is a sultry saloon entertainer-trouper post-von Sternberg. Imagine that Stewart managed to make this film and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington in the same year.
Golden Boy: William Holden's film debut, with Barbara Stanwick. Joe Bonaparte's father wants him to pursue his musical talent; but Joe wants to be a boxer. Persuading near-bankrupt manager Tom Moody to give him a chance, Joe quickly rises in his new profession. When he has second thoughts Moody's girl Lorna uses feminine wiles to keep him boxing. But when tough gangster Eddie Fuseli wants to "buy a piece" of Joe, Lorna herself begins to have second thoughts...for that and other reasons. Is it too late?
Ginga Din: One of the all time adventure movies! On par with the Indiana Jones films. Starring Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Made For Each Other: James Stewart (yes, again!) and Carole Lombard star in this comedy-drama about the struggles of a young married couple Stewart and Lombard play a recently married couple, Jane and John Mason. John works as an attorney for the law firm of skinflint Judge Doolittle. Doolittle calls John back to work immediately after the wedding ceremony, forcing the couple to abandon their honeymoon. A classic romantic comedy.
The Man in the Iron Mask: Louis XIV of France plots to keep his twin brother Philippe imprisoned in an iron mask, away from the knowledge of the public, which might prefer Philippe as King. But the Three Musketeers and their comrade D'Artagnan contrive to rescue the unjustly imprisoned Philippe. Great adventure movie.
Only Angels Have Wings: A quintessential adventure-aviation film with drama, dark fatalism, suspense and romance that is stocked with true-to-life sequences, fast-paced action and top stars in skillfully-executed roles. The film's themes include male camaraderie and loyalty, professionalism, courage and duty in the face of life-and-death perils and dangers, and rugged, stoic bravery - the pilots' code. Starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth.
You Can't Cheat An Honest Man: One of the last great W.C. Fields comedies. Larson E. Whipsnade runs a seedy circus which is perpetually in debt. His performers give him nothing but trouble, especially Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Meanwhile, Whipsnade's son and daughter, Phineas and Vicky, attend a posh college. Vicky turns down her caddish but rich suitor Roger Bel-Goodie, but changes her mind when she learns of her father's financial troubles. Will Vicky marry for money or succumb to the ventriloqual charm of Edgar Bergen?
Young Mr. Linclon: Directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda. Ten years in the life of Abraham Lincoln, before he became known to his nation and the world. He moves from a Kentucky cabin to Springfield, Illinois, to begin his law practice. He defends two men accused of murder in a political brawl, suffers the death of his girlfriend Ann, courts his future wife Mary Todd, and agrees to go into politics

FICTION SET IN CHARLESTON: What to read --- What to avoid!

Here's a list of some of my favorite (and not-so-favorite) fiction in which Charleston is one of the major settings. Obviously, there are plenty of books I am going to leave out ... feel free to make your own list.

WHAT TO READ

Prince of Tides and The Lords of Discipline / Pat Conroy
The Prince of Tides tells the story of Tom Wingo, a teacher and football coach who is reluctant to help his twin sister's psychiatrist unlock their dysfunctional family's secrets. When the sister, famous New York poet Savannah Wingo, attempts suicide again, Tom is torn from his safe and dull world and travels to New York to help her. Calling the Wingo family dysfunctional is like calling Paris Hilton an annoying skank - it's true but an understatement.

Discipline pissed off a lot of Charleston people when it was published. Why? It was a little too close to the truth. Charleston people like to be in charge of the mirror. They get upset when someone else decribes the reflection. Both books are amazing fiction. Conroy is an emotional and compelling writer.

Great Mischief / Josephine Pinckney
A perfectly creepy little book that unfortunately is out of print. I had to buy it used on Amazon.

The year is 1895, and much of sleepy little Charleston is still lit by gas. Timothy Partridge operates a rundown apothecary shop, where things have't really changed much since the glory days of Romeo and Juliet; drugs are still hanging from nails on the walls, such as bat wings, hummingbird feathers and strange, fiery potions. Timothy is supporting his shrewish sister Penelope and has a roguish best friend, the drunken doctor Golightly, who is always encouraging Tim to live a little, stop being such a fussbudget, One creepy stormy evening a young woman enters, dashing into the shop in an urgent, insistent plea for some solanum. Tim knows instantly there's something "off" about the girl, but he has no idea that she's actually a witch from hell, who will intertwine herself to his life and change it--forever.

Carrion Comfort / Dan Simmons
The War and Peace of the horror genre. One of my all time favorite books. It is December 1980, and a small circle of vampires—not the fanged blood drinkers of legend, but monstrously cruel human beings with the psychic ability to possess and dominate others—gather in Charleston for a reunion, where they score points by comparing the latest acts of extreme violence initiated on their command.

It is a page-turning marvel, weaving multiple plot threads and over-the-top action sequences into a narrative of genuine, resonant power. One, Nina, is particularly proud of getting a faceless nobody to assassinate the Beatle John Lennon. But the game soon gives way to a power struggle of an even more ruthless sort. The mind controllers turn on one another, initiating a bloodbath fought with innocents snatched from their everyday lives.

Enter Charleston Sheriff Bobby Joe Gentry, nobody's top nomination for action hero: An overweight, soft-spoken failed historian, who is baffled and angered by the sudden eruption of madness that has left Charleston littered with nine bodies in a single night. Gentry is out of his depth when his investigation begins to involve conspiracies that involve superpowers and coverups at the very highest levels of government power. He is soon joined by Saul Laski, an aging Jewish psychiatrist who has spent his life searching for the Nazi whose psychic powers he experienced during World War II, and Natalie Preston, a young black photographer whose own father was a victim of the massacre in Charleston. These woefully outnumbered three take on a global conspiracy, finding themselves alone in a world where any innocent can be possessed and turned into a murderous assassin without warning.

One of the creepiest characters is 'sweet little old Charleston lady' Melanie Fuller, one of the most evil creatures in modern literature.

Porgy / Dubose Heyward
The story of a crippled beggar who witnesses a murder during a dice game and later gives shelter to the murderer's woman, the beautiful, haunted Bess. The Catfish Row community is united in its opposition to the union, but Porgy and Bess make each other happy, and their happiness only increases when they take in a child orphaned by a hurricane. Their idyll is brief, however. The murderer, Crown, returns for Bess, and Porgy, defending his family, kills him. The police detain him for questioning but never dream that a cripple could have been the killer, so Porgy returns triumphantly to the Row. The triumph turns to tragedy, however, when he learns that, while he was away, Sporting Life, the dope pusher, beguiled Bess with "happy dus'" and took her away to New York City to resume, it is implied,her career as a prostitute.

The book, for all it's melodrama, is beautifully written.

North & South - Love & War - Heaven & Hell / John Jakes
Historical fiction as it should be ... well written, and well researched and full of forbidden love, illicit sex, double crosses and other intrigue. In North and South, two strangers, young men from Pennsylvania and South Carolina, meet on the way to West Point . . . The Hazards and the Mains are brought together in bonds of friendship and affection that neither man thinks can be shattered. And then the War begins.

Love & War: From the first Union rout in Virginia to the last tragic moments of surrender, here is a gigantic five-year panorama of the Civil War! Hostilities divide the Hazards and the Mains, testing them with loyalties more powerful than family ties. While soldiers from both families clash on the battlefields of Bull Run, Fredericksburg and Antietam, in intrigue-ridden Washington and Richmond, strong-willed men and beautiful women defend their principles with their lives ... or satisfy illicit cravings with schemes that could destroy friends and enemies alike!

Heaven & Hell: The war ends, but there is no peace for the Hazards and the Mains in a nation still inflamed with bitterness and hatred. The defeated South teems with schemers and carpetbaggers ... and the North has no place for scarred veterans such as Charles Main, who struggles to rebuild his life in the Plains cavalry, only to be stalked by a murderous nemesis seeking revenge against both families.
A gripping portrait of Reconstruction America, and a fitting conclusion to the saga of two mighty dynasties!

Celia Garth: A Story of Charleston in the Revolution / Gwen Bristow
This young adult tale of Celia Garth, a 20 year old woman trying to make a living as a seamstress in Charleston, South Carolina during the Revolutionary war. Celia and her friends survive the seige of Charleston by the British, living through the constant shelling and lack of food until the final surrender. At first, things seem normal after the surrender and Celia begins to build a new life, but tragedy strikes after the British go back on their promises and Celia must start life afresh. This time, while working as a seamstress she is also a bit of a "spy" for the colonials.

Galilee / Clive Barker
Clive Barker has earned a reputation as the thinking person's horror writer. His novels mix fantasy, psychology, and sheer creepiness in almost equal quantities. In Galilee, Barker soft-pedals the ghoulish in favor of the gothic. His novel (or as the author would have it, "romance") tells the tale of two warring families caught up in a disastrous web of corruption, illicit sexuality, and star-crossed love, with a soupçon of the supernatural thrown in as well. On one side are the wealthy Gearys--a fictional stand-in for the Kennedys--and on the other are the Barbarossas, a mysterious black clan that has been around since the time (quite literally) of Adam.

Galilee chronicles the twisted course of this centuries-old family feud, which centers around the magical Barbarossa matriarch Cesaria and her son Galilee. Indeed, it's the latter figure--one part Heathcliff to one part Christ--whose relationship with the Geary women sets a match to the entire powder keg of hostility and resentment. Mixing standard clichés of romance and some deep-fried Southern gothic, Baker has come up with an intelligent and shameless potboiler.

Settling Accounts: In at the Death/ Harry Turtledove
This is the last novel of the Settling Accounts tetralogy that presents an alternative history of WWII. It brings to a conclusion the multi-series compilation that is sometimes referred to as Timeline-191. This alternative history began with the Confederate States of America winning the Civil War in 1862, followed by a war between the United States and Confederate States of America in the 1880s which is also won by the South. In the conclusion, the United State detonates an atomic bomb in Charleston, wiping the city off the map, in retaliation for starting the War Between the States in 1861.

The Devil of Charleston / Rebel Sinclair
Full disclosure ... this novel was written by the love of my life. So ... I admit a major amount of bias. However ... Capt. Royal Ashurst was a brooding sea captain branded the "devil of Charleston" by a powerful merchant, Carter Seymour. Royal is sucked into events out of his control when he becomes an "agent" for the city when the notorious Blackbeard blockades the harbor. The events only enflame his passion for Seymour's estranged fiance Josephine.

The Fallon Saga / Reagan O'Neal (Robert Jordan)
Great historical fiction on the same level with North & South. Written by Charlestonian James Rigney, Jr, more popularly known as Robert Jordan, author of the massively successful fantasy series, The Wheel of Time. Jordan died in Sept. 2007. Sharp-eyed tour guides often got a glimpse of him walking Tradd Street.

In The Fallon Blood, escaping brutal English overlords, 1760s Irishman Michael Fallon becomes an indentured servant to Charleston merchant Thomas Carver, where his infatuation with Carver's sensual daughter Elizabeth causes life-changing complications.

In The Fallon Pride, Michael Fallon's son Robert Fallon survives years at sea fighting Barbary pirates and enduring the siege at Tripoli. He then returns to America with an Irish wife, Moira McConnell, and goes into business in Charleston where he raises a somewhat troublesome family.

In The Fallon Legacy, James Fallon, the last scion of the Fallon line, strikes south and west, adventuring in New Orleans, Missouri, and finally Texas (then still part of Mexico). He loves and loses women, ranches and breeds horses, and becomes entangled in the schemes of shady men and women. Enemies made by Michael and Robert during their lifetimes converge upon James, who must find out if he has strength enough to stand against them.

WHAT TO AVOID

• Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig. This is AWFUL!! One of the worst novels I've ever tried to read. Silly and poorly written. The narration is fuzzy and the story is well ... silly. Why can't they leave Gone With The Wind alone? First there was Scarlett by Alexandria Ripley which was a snore-fest and now this "Authorized Novel". Rhett should challenge the Margaret Mitchell estate to a duel for this insult!
• All of the 'island" books by Dorothea Benton Frank. You know ... those books that have the fill-in-the-blank plot lines; the major change in each book is the characters' names and the sea island she uses as the setting. Frank is the female James Patterson - books written for the barely literate. I find it ironic that she is from and writes about Charleston, given the sterling nature of the public school system.
• All of Mary Alice Monroe's Oprah-fied low country-based fiction.
• William Gilmore Simms - praised in his time (1800s) by none other than Edgar Allan Poe, Simms is virtually unreadable today.
  
  
  COMING SOON!

The Werewolf Super Sex Club by Mario Acevedo. Mario is the author of the bestselling Felix Gomez vampire detective series. The first three books are titled: The Nymphos of Rocky Flats, X-Rated Bloodsuckers and The Undead Kama Sutra. They are as fun to read as their titles indicate.

His next book (Super Sex Club) will be set in Charleston. Mario spent a week in the Holy City earlier this year researching the area. Rebel and I were happy to be his hosts and show him the nighttime Charleston. Can't wait for Felix and his vampire friends and werewolf enemies to be running rampant in the streets of Charleston. Could be lots of fun!

BEST CROSS-DRESSING MOVIES

My previous blog about the infamous Dawn Langley Hall in Charleston led me to thinking about the best Hollywood movies in which cross-dressing plays a vital role of the plot. Here's my list.

Some Like It Hot: One of the all-time funniest movies. Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe are all at the top of their game. Jack Lemmon gives what may be the greatest comic performance in cinema. And to top it off ... you also get the great Joe E. Brown in single-minded pursuit after the cross-dressing Jack Lemmon.
Tootsie: A close second to Some Like It Hot. Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Terri Garr, and Jessica Lange are all phenomenal. And kudos to the late director Sidney Pollack for his great cameo as Hoffman's exasperated agent.
Victor/Victoria: In 1930s Paris Julie Andrews plays a struggling female singer who cannot get a job. Her friend (played by the fabulous Robert Preston) comes up with a scheme: Victoria will pretend to be a man pretending to be a woman and get a job as a female impersonator in a nightclub. Then Chicago mobster James Garner finds himself oddly attracted to "Victor". Great, great movie.
Psycho: What else do you need to know? Anthony Perkins as a cross-dressing murderer masquerading as Mama.
Dressed To Kill: Michael Caine is chilling as a cross-dressing psychopath.
The Crying Game: Infamous movie about a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who executes one of his hostages and then goes on to have a relationship with the murdered man's girlfriend.
Nuns on the Run: Comic silliness with Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane as criminals who hide out in a convent dressed as nuns.
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar: Hilarious movie with Patrick Swazye and Wesley Snipes as transvestites who get marooned in a small town and get involved with the locals and their troubles.
Ed Wood: Directed by Tim Burton (in glorous black and white) and starring Johnny Depp as the cross-dressing cult movie maker, and all around weirdo, Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films and also his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played with magical intensity by Martin Landau.

WORSE CROSS-DRESSING MOVIES
Glen or Glenda: Usually considered one of the worst movies ever made, it has become a cult classic due to its awfulness. Directed and starring Ed Wood (with a drug-addicted and impoverished Bela Lugosi) with such ineptness it inspired a movie that was 100 times better, Ed Wood.
Mrs. Doubtfire: Robin Williams in drag so he can see his kids ... it's even worse than it sounds, mainly because it is directed by the vapid Chris Columbus.
Yentl: Barbra Streisand cross-dresses as a Jewish man so she can study law. Bad, bad, bad ...

CHARLESTON and ROWAN & MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as "Sock it to me!" has died. He was 86.

Unknown to many is the fact that an bizarre event in Charleston became fodder for a great Laugh-In joke. In October 1971 a Charleston woman named Dawn Langley Hall gave birth to a daughter Natasha. Nothing unusual about that ... right?

Well, when Dawn had arrived in Charleston in 1962 she was called Gordon Langley Hall ... yes she was a man. But on September 23, 1968, after successful surgery at John Hopkin's University's Gender Identity Clinic, Gordon became Dawn. Gordon claimed he had been a woman his entire life, but had mis-identified at birth as a man. (Yeah, right.)

Dawn became engaged to a black man named John-Paul Simmons. But in 1968 the South Carolina state constitution prohibited the “marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto or a person who shall have one-eighth or more Negro blood.” Dawn hired a lawyer and changed South Carolina law. Charleston's first inter-racial marriage of record took place for January 22, 1969.

For several months during the spring and summer of 1971, Dawn walked the streets of Charleston wearing maternity clothes. Some claimed she would have a big belly beneath her dress one day, and a flat stomach the next. Someone claimed to see a military surplus blanket stuffed beneath Dawn’s dress. Anna Montgomery worked at a baby store on King Street and waited on Dawn. Anna claimed in the Charleston Chronicle that Dawn looked like a pregnant woman, “he forgot to tie down the strings of a pillowcase stuffed with cotton."

Dawn was convinced that white Charleston wanted to kill her unborn half-black child. She claimed there were numerous threats against her, so she decided to move seven hundred miles north to Philadelphia to give birth at the University of Pennsylvania hospital – or maybe to better hide whatever deception she was trying to pull. John-Paul remained in Charleston.

According to a birth certificate on file at the Department of Health Vital Statistics in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on October 17, 1971, Natasha Marginell Manugault Paul Simmons was born. After her return to Charleston, Dawn pushed Natasha up and down the streets in an old-fashioned British baby carrier just like the one the Queen had for Prince Charles. She kept the birth certificate handy to flash at all doubters. Even John-Paul wasn’t impressed. He knew exactly where Natasha came from – one of his girlfriends.

“I’d been going with her for eight months –constantly had sex, sex, sex, all the time with this girl,” he said. “She was about twenty-three. She got pregnant." John-Paul claimed that the girl’s daddy knew Dawn wanted a baby, and the daddy didn’t want his daughter to have an illegitimate daughter with a black man. Dawn gave the father $1000 for the baby. The first time John-Paul saw Natasha he commented, "Whoever saw a blue-eyed nigger?"

Dawn’s announcement of the birth of her daughter became the fodder for TV comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, hosts of the wildly popular Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, a show with more than forty million viewers. The opening monologue contained the following exchange:

Dan Rowan: News flash: Charleston, South Carolina. Noted transsexual Dawn Simmons hast just given birth to a daughter.
Dick Martin: We can only hope she grows up to be half the man her mother was.

For the complete story of Dawn Langley Hall you can read the following:

• Wicked Charleston, Vol. II: Prostitutes, Politics & Prohibition by Mark R. Jones (yours truly) Chapter Five is titled "The Queen of Ansonborough".


• Dawn: A Charleston Legend by Dawn Langley Hall. Dawn's memoir of her life.


• Peninsula of Lies by Edward Ball. A kind of detective story that refutes some of the claims made by Dawn in her memoir.

UNFORTUNATE NAMES FOR NEWLYWEDS

These are self-explanatory.

Butts-McCraken

Traylor - Hooker


Poore-Sapp

Crapp-Beer

Best-Lay

Filler-Quick

'WHITE-LINE 'RAVENEL "Angry' / RUSTY THOMAS Gone / TEDDY KENNEDY Alive

Thomas Ravenel, former SC State Treasurer is angry that he has to go to prison after being convicted of cocaine possession and intent to distribute. I guess being a Ravenel skewers your world view that you're not supposed to go to jail. "I've kind of resigned myself that I'm not going to get any breaks," he said.

Welcome to reality, Mr. Ravenel. Now talk to Mayor Joe about resigning ...

But it's difficult to blame Ravenel for his elitist view - growing up in the pampered good-ole-boy culture of old Charleston. The same culture that allowed fire chief Rusty Thomas (now resigned) to keep the CFD at the sterling standards of the 1970s. Chief Thomas is the perfect example of The Peter Principle - 'In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.'

On July 7, 2007, Chief Thomas defended the training and standards of CFD. He said that he trusted the department's time-honed (i.e. old, outdated) techniques, regardless of what written standards might say.

"We come from a long line of traditional firefighting, and we are never going to get away from that — never," Thomas said. "You can't read out of a book how to put a fire out. You have to go out there and do it, and that's what we do."

And people wonder why South Carolina (and Charleston County) have some of the worst public education in the United States. Here we have a public official saying that he has nothing to learn by reading about advancements in fire fighting theory and safety. CFD trained their staff to rush headlong into the building. Charleston firefighters are taught in training that if a newspaper photographer snapped their photo at a fire scene they weren't doing their jobs. That meant they were standing outside the burning building, rather than attacking the blaze head-on.

Wow. And people in this city are STILL supporting Chief Thomas and Mayor Joe. You remember Mayor Joe, don't you? The man whose job it is to keep abreast of the status of all city departments. The Mayor blames the owner of the Sofa Super Store for the deaths of the Charleston 9. Because, after all, nothing is EVER the city's fault.

I guess we should blame the flooding on the pennisula on the rain, not on the city's failure to solve the drainage problem. Blame the eye-sore trash of cigarette butts up and down Market Street every morning on the restuarant owners, not on the city who made it illegal to smoke inside privately owned businesses.

But we can keep dumping money into the abyss called the South Carolina Aquarium. By the way ... when's the last time anybody saw a movie at the IMAX? Oops, sorry, it's closed.

Just another example of the Charleston way of doing business.

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In similar news, it seems Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D/M[arxist]-Mass) had a seizure over the weekend. And as of this writing, Mary Jo Kopechne is still dead.

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HOLLYWOOD ALERT

Leo DeCapprio discusses the size of his brain ... or his penis ... not sure which.

BOOKS I HAVE READ MORE THAN FIVE (5) TIMES

This list does not include juvenile books like The Hardy Boys, Tom Sawyer and Black Beauty since I read those dozens of times as a kid. Only adult novels make the list:

To Kill A Mockingbird / Harper Lee: I have read this book every 2-3 years since 1977. One of the best of all time. Simple and charming yet very deep. One of the best movies of all time also ...

The World According to Garp / John Irving: When this book was released I read it two times in a row! I literally finished the book and turned back to the first page and read it again. Funny as hell and sad as hell ... a difficult combination to pull off well. Decent movie too ...

The Princess Bride / William Goldman: One of the most fun books you will ever read. The early edition (pre-movie) had one of the greatest tag lines in publishing history: What happens when the most beautiful woman in the world meets the handsomest prince in the world and he turns out to be a son-of-a-bitch? The movie is good, but the book (of course) is much much better. I read this in college and tried to interest my friends in reading it ... I had no takers. When the movie was released 20 yrs later, everyone wanted to read the book and I took great delight in reminding them I tried to make that happen years ago.

Carrion Comfort / Dan Simmons: Wow! Creepy beyond belief. And some of it takes place in Charleston! The little old Charleston matron, Melanie, is one of the creepiest characters to walk through the pages of a book. A massive, multi-plotted novel about a vast global conspiracy among "mind vampires" who use the power of their will to impose it upon weaker humans. French movie is in production ...

A Town Like Alice / Nevil Shute: A great adventure romance. A WWII book, a romance, a travel story ... all rolled into one. Shute is on my list of one of the few writers who has never written a boring book. Great BBC production for Masterpiece Theater in the 1980s starring Bryan Brown.

Dune / Frank Herbert: Towering sci-fi epic that deserves its reputation as one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time. If you've read it, you already understand how detailed and complex the story is ... and how exciting. It takes place on a remote desert planet named Arrakis that is the only place in the known universe that produced the highly addictive spice melange. The plot is fueled by a massive power grab by feuding Intergalactic families with all the intrigue and double-crosses you might expect, along with a touch of mystical religion. Lousy movie directed by David Lynch in the 1980s and a tepid miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel. New version is in production currently ... I'm not holding out much hope. The book is difficult to turn into a movie.

Replay / Ken Grimwood: A classic take on the time-travel novel. In the opening paragraph 43-year old Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and "awakens" in 1963 at the age of 18 ... with all the memories of his previous life intact. He lives again to the age of 43 and then dies ... and "awakens" again ... over and over and over. Kind of hope they don't make a movie ... Hollywood would screw it up like they did Jumper.

Strangers & Watchers / Dean R. Koontz: Koontz has fallen prey to the Stephen King syndrome ... publishing books that would never see the light of day if they were written by someone who was not a "name" author. However, these two books were written when Koontz was hitting his commercial (and creative) stride. Strangers is one of the best takes of the alien-abduction story that branches out in intriguing ways. Watchers is Koontz favorite book of his ... a sweet and harrowing story about a lonely man and woman who are brought together by an unsual dog. The plot of the movie Watchers was so different I'm not sure the producers ever read the book.

Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card: My personal favorite sci-fi book. Deceptively simple but full of misdirection and narrative layers. Eight-year old Ender Wiggen is an unsually intelligent boy who is sent to Battle Schoo. Several generations ago Earth luckily defeated an invading alien force called the Buggers, did not destroy them. So Earth is busy training the best and brightest to be ready to meet the Buggers when they return ... and they may be closer than you think. Movie version is in slow developement ... Card has huge control over this material ... thank goodness. Hoepfully when and if it is a movie, it will be faithful.

Cannery Row / John Steinbeck: My favorite novel by one of America's best writers. Steinbeck's "serious" books can become preachy populism (The Grapes of Wrath) , but his comic novels are flat-out hilarious and filled with great characters. The group of bums called "Mack and the boys" are some of the best comic relief in fiction. Odd and stylized movie starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger is entertaining.

X-FILES - BEST EPISODES

Rebel and I just finished our 14 month saga of watching all 9 seasons of The X-Files in order. Very sad to have it come to an end. I was most surprised by how many of the episodes in Season 9 were really good. However, Seasons 3,4,5,and 6 were when this show was really turning out a great episode week after week. So my final opinion. The best show on TV ... ever. Dana Scully is smart, and hot hot hot! Monica Reyes is almost as hot hot hot. The Smoking Man is one the greatest characters ever on TV, and the Lone Gunmen were fabulous. And Mulder is Mulder.

Here are my favorite episodes ... in order in which they were broadcast. I gave up trying to rank them. I did make myself leave out another 15 however.


1. Humbug
Production Code: 2X20 (second season, 20th episode)
Wacky and weird.
Mulder and Scully travel to Gibsonton, Florida, a town built and populated by circus and sideshow performers to investigate the death of Jerald Glazebrook, The Alligator Man. While searching for leads on the killer, the agents come across many bizarre characters including the local sheriff who was once known as Jim Jim, the Dog-Faced Boy, Dr Blockhead who performs human feats of endurance and The Conundrum, a tattooed jigsaw man who eats live animals. Scully finds it difficult to find a normal suspect, in a place where nothing is normal.

2. Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
Production Code: 3X04 Guest Star: Peter Boyle.
Sad and smart.
Mulder and Scully are called in to assist in an investigation of a killer who is targeting fortune tellers. The investigators have very little to go on and need all the help they can get. Clyde Bruckman, an insurance salesman, knows so many details about the crimes that Scully suspects he is the killer. Mulder however believes that Clyde Bruckman has psychic abilities and is divining the information that way. Peter Boyle as Bruckman is outstanding.

3. War of the Coprophages
Production Code: 3X12
Funny and weird.
Mulder travels to Millers Grove, Massachusetts to investigate reports of UFO sightings in the area. It turns out that the town is suffering from a cockroach invasion, and that these cockroaches have been attacking and killing people. Mulder confers with Scully by phone, she is skeptical of killer cockroaches. In each case Scully has an explanation, the exterminator was allergic to cockroaches and died of anaphylactic shock, the teenage boy was using drugs and suffered from Ekbom Syndrome, a drug induced delusion of insects invading the body causing the sufferer to try to cut them out. And the medical examiner died of an aneurysm while on the toilet. Then Mulder catches one of the cockroaches and discovers it has a metal body.

4. Jose Chung's From Outer Space
Production Code: 3X20 Guest Stars: Charles Nelson Reilly and Jess Ventura
Fabulous, maybe the best episode of all! Funny and weird like a nightmare.
Renowned writer Jose Chung, researching for his book on alien abductions, interviews Dana Scully, who relates to him the case of a teenage couple, Chrissy Giorgio and Harold Lamb, who claim to have been abducted while on a date in Klass County. The only problem is, the victims and witnesses all have different versions of the events that took place. From Chrissy's first belief that she had been a victim of date rape, to the re-appearance of Harold with his tale of alien abduction. Jesse Ventura as a Man In Black is a great cameo, and the casting of Charles Nelson Reilly is brillant. But the scene with Mulder in the diner eating plate after plate of slices of pie is true magic. Like the best lost episode of Twin Peaks.

5. Home
Production Code: 4X03
Monumentally CREEPY and disturbing!
A baby is found buried alive in shallow ground and appears to have birth defects resulting from generations of inbreeding, leading Mulder and Scully to a reclusive family who have a history of inbred children. You will also never listen to Johnny Mathis again and feel comfortable. Truly great! This episode was so disturbing FOX only aired it on network TV twice.

6. Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man
Production Code: 4X07
A Lone Gunmen episode! AND a Smoking Man episode all rolled into one! An important episode in the X-Files mythology.
Frohike pieces together and recites to Mulder and Scully what could be the possible life story of the Cigarette Smoking Man; from a young captain in the US Army recruited to assassinate President Kennedy, to becoming the mysterious man in the shadows at the height of a global conspiracy. What measures will the CSM take to ensure that he remains a mystery forever?

7. Small Potatoes
Production Code: 4X20
Hilarious and sweet.
Five babies in the same town are all born with tails and the local OB-GYN is blamed for tampering with fertilised eggs. However, Mulder discovers the culprit to be a simple man with a genetic deformity who may have the ability to alter his appearance.

8. Unusual Suspects
Production Code: 5X01
Funny as hell and important to the mythos.
In this flashback episode, Mulder meets a straight-laced federal employee, a sex mad AV expert and a nerdy computer hacker who become known as the Lone Gunmen. They bond together to help Susanne Modeski, a strange woman with evidence of a government conspiracy. When their plan to expose the conspiracy fails and Susanne is captured by a group of men-in-black, they soon become a paranoid group of government watchdogs.

9. The Post-Modern Prometheus
Production Code: 5X06
Sweet, odd and sad.
Filmed in glorious black and white with a comic book feel to it, this is a modern retelling of Frankenstein as Mulder and Scully get caught up in a town where the residents live on Jerry Springer episodes and fear a two-faced monster who has been impregnating the women.

10. Bad Blood
Production Code: 5X12 Guest star: Luke Wilson.
Funny and scary!
Another episode that shows different people's viewpoints of the same story. After Mulder chases down and kills a young man whom he believes to be a vampire, Scully realizes that his fangs are fake. The agents then return to DC, aware of the mistake they just made. Faced with a lawsuit from the family of the man, they recount each of their sides to the story leading up to the event. Luke Wilson plays the sheriff with the hots for Scully, or maybe not, depending on who is telling the story.

11. Triangle
Production Code: 6X03
Exciting and romantic.
Mulder goes to the Bermuda Triangle when he learns that the Queen Anne, a British luxury liner which disappeared during WWII, has re-appeared in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Mulder's boat is wrecked and after floating in the water, he is hauled aboard the ship which has just been hijacked by the Nazis searching for the man who will build the atom bomb. Mulder tries to convince the crew that they have traveled into the future but evidence further suggests that it is he, who is back in the past. Mulder plants a REAL kiss on Scully in the time warp, knowing she will not remember in the real timeline.

12. Dreamland (1) Dreamland II (2)
Production Code: 6X04 Guest star: Michael McKean.
Mysterious and hilarious. One of the best!
While being detained near the famed "Dreamland" Area 51, a strange craft flies overhead and Mulder swaps bodies with an Area 51 'Man-in-Black'. While the other agent has fun in Mulder's body (seducing Skinner's secretary and putting the moves on Scully), Mulder himself finds it difficult to fit into someone else's life, especially a shadowy one. Mulder contacts Scully about the body-swap and tries to get her the Flight Data Recorder from the UFO test flight but his alter ego uses Mulder's FBI persona to have him arrested.
Mulder is thrown in jail at the Area 51 compound but is released when it is discovered that the flight data recorder he stole was a fake. Scully comes to her senses and realizes that the Mulder she sees isn't who he really is and heads back to Nevada to help the real Mulder. Meanwhile, the mechanism that caused the body swap is rapidly snapping back, undoing everything in its wake and Mulder and his alter ego must race to put themselves back where they belong.

13. Rain King
Production Code:6X07 Guest Star: Victoria Jackson.
Romantic, sweet and funny.
Mulder persuades Scully to join him in an investigation in Kroner, Kansas after being asked by the local Mayor, who believes that the drought they have been suffering from for the past nine months is caused by Daryl Moots. Following an argument with his fiancee Shelia, Daryl lost his leg in a car accident six months earlier, ever since then he has been able to make it rain at will. They go to Rain King Inc's office and meet Daryl's secretary, she cannot understand why Mulder and Scully are investigating Daryl who is just trying to help people.. Mulder and Scully go to a local farm where Daryl is due to make it rain. When Daryl arrives he claims not to know how he does it, but after a little dancing around, there is a clap of thunder and it starts to pour with rain. That night Mulder is nearly killed by a cow picked up by the wind and dropped in to his hotel room. Next morning Shelia claims to be responsible for the weather. Mulder doubts that she is the one controlling the weather but does believe that she is the key to the case as suspicions focus in on the local weatherman and his unrequited love for Shelia.

14. How The Ghosts Stole Christmas
Production Code: 6X08
Guest Stars: Edward Asner and Lily Tomlin.
Funny and creepy at the same time.
Mulder talks Scully into investigating a haunted house on Christmas Eve where several couples have met their fate on that very night. While there they encounter endless tricks and traps set by a ghostly couple who originally made a lovers suicide pact in the house. The ghosts try to convince Mulder and Scully to kill each other.

15. Arcadia
Production Code: 6X13
Hilarious!
On their first official case back on the X-Files, Mulder and Scully go undercover as a married couple at a prestigious planned community where several residents have recently disappeared after failing to comply with the rules and regulations.

16. The Unnatural
Production Code: 6X20
Great! One of the best!
It is Saturday afternoon and Mulder is in the X-files basement office leafing through New Mexico newspaper obituaries from the 1940's looking for anomalies, much to Scully's dismay on such a beautiful afternoon. But Mulder stumbles across a newspaper picture of agent Arthur Dales with a Negro baseball player and the alien bounty hunter. Ripping the page from the book, Mulder leaves the office and goes to Dales' apartment, only to discover that Dales brother, also named Arthur has taken over the apartment. But when he shows the photo to Dales, it turns out that the photo is of him not his brother.

In June 1947 Dales was a police office in Roswell, assigned to protect a Negro baseball star Josh Exley from member of the Klu Klux Klan, bent on keeping baseball white. Exley played for a Negro team called the Roswell Greys and had hit 60 home runs in the season matching Babe Ruth's record, and so was being scouted for the major leagues. Only Exley does not want to play for the major leagues, he is quite content to stay where he is and play baseball for the Roswell Greys. Only Dales claims this was because Exley was actually a grey alien who had fallen in love with the game of baseball and that was the reason he did not want to play in the major leagues. As the newspapers and reporters would dig in to his background and reveal the truth. A fear shared by Exley's fellow aliens who send the alien bounty hunter to deal with the problem in his own unique fashion.

17. Improbable
Production Code: 9ABX14
Guest Star: Burt Reynolds.
Weird and slyly funny.
When Reyes uses numerology to connect the murders of several women to an obsessed serial killer, she and Scully become trapped with a mysterious checker-playing man who may or may not be the killer. The question then becomes who is going to be the next victim. Burt Reynolds is very effective as the checker-playing man who may (or may NOT) be Satan.