A New Era

Gentlemen (and those fortunate literate ladies amongst us) -

I stand before you today on the cusp of a glorious new era, defined by the wonders of modern invention. What you see now, of course, is not myself, modest but dapper in my Sunday best (and I assure you, that is what you would behold!), but the mark that I have left (one of many to come) on this electric roadway of information and entertainment, the inter-net. Yes, the habits of speech and physical interpersonal contact – those old and out-dated customs of yesteryear – have been replaced by a lightning fast cobweb of electricity and light (and more than a fair share of cogs and pistons, I dare imagine) all leading, miraculously, into each of these fantastic boxes featured prominently in the dens and family rooms of every good American home (and, I have been surprised to learn, in a number of homes abroad, from the austere townhouses of London and Paris to the confusing canals and tunnels of the mysterious and shadowy Orient).

Imagine the possibilities, my friends! To think that one can send anything he may care to think of, from a beautiful poem for his sweetheart to a tune – a recorded tune! – not on a folded piece of paper or a carefully handled and temperature-sensitive wax cylinder, but in a much less tangible quagmire of dots and dashes, flashes of light, and sharp, piercing electric tones, which are both encoded then decoded upon their departure from, and entrance unto, the box in front of which you now sit.

Why, the possibilities are quite endless indeed! If there were such a box in my wife’s kitchen (though I should dare say there is not, one of several reasons being that she hasn’t the faintest clue how to control the apparatus), I could wire my supper preferences down to her with the touch of several ivory-white buttons, rather than expending the unnecessary energy to make the trek in person, as it were – not to mention the unnecessary energy required to tolerate her harping! (This is in jest, I assure you.)

I could use this box as a sort of gateway between myself and any number of colleagues and acquaintances, relaying the day’s topics of idle chatter – the inconstant and unpredictable weather, the upcoming Brooklyn Dodgers contest, Gracie Allen’s astounding breasts – from the comfort of my own home. Lighting another man’s cigar – let alone feeling obliged to offer him one of my own – can now be a thing of the past.

And, dear readers, I have even heard tell of a dark and seedy underbelly of this fabulous network, one teeming with the kind of racy and prurient pursuits that one might see in the less travelled-by neighborhoods in Chicago and Amsterdam. Imagine, if you dare, a clandestine liason with an exotic fille de joie at any hour of day or night, and under cover of anonymity! And afterward, not the slightest worry about The Cupid’s Disease, nor the unsavory but pressing obligation to murder her.

(These latter diversions are, of course, beyond my imagination to engage in, and only mentioned here as a peek into the many depths of this glorious but frightening rabbit-hole, as it were.)

So join us, in our humble seat on the most fascinating new vehicle on a roadway of untold wonders. Miraculous discoveries abound! Let us embark together!

It Is Very Likely That This Is None Of Your Business!

I… am… a blogger.

And barely five years after the novelty of blogging became too dim to be discerned by the instruments of science!

In my idle moments, I’ve often wondered what I would write in a blog if I had one at my disposal. I guess that that’s a question we’ll have to answer together as an e-community. The early money is on pictures of Rudyard Kipling, I guess.

 

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Listening to: The Pretenders – Don’t Get Me Wrong

An Actor Reminisces

Justin Tyler, 1933, a young Macbeth

I may be nothing more than an old codger these days, but this photo does take me back! It was 1933, America was being crushed underneath the padded weight of the kitten’s paw that was the Great Depression. Back in those days we called it the Empty Copperpot of ‘33, because we didn’t know anything about depression back in those days. I was living in a two room railroad apartment with a troupe of travelling parlor dancers, went by the name of Hop Town Hoofers, on account of the opium that kept them afloat on their 32 city a month tour. A real belt a’ heat hit the Big Apple that summer, so I quit my job down at Freddie Thackary’s Mannequin Factory and hot footed it to the sticks to try my hand at play-actin’.

I’d had years of experience manipulating puppets for my hometown Medicine Show, Dr. Zif’s Gall Bladder Tonic and Old Testeament Puppet Players, so I figured how hard could it be to tread the pine myself? What a carbunkle I was in for!

An old chum a’ mine, Bean Jambles, pulled me aboard the Northbound Nip and Spittle Railroad, founded by Templeton Nip before he got into politics and legalized jazz music for whites in New York City. It didn’t take longer than a pimple wink and there I was in East Tickle, Vermont: the home of the Tickle Shakespeare Concern!

I’d never auditioned before, except for the Hop Town Hoofers, which by the way landed me three weeks in R. Don Foo’s Opium Recovery Clinic and Sexual Textbook Bindery. So there I was in the waiting room, looking to get a part in Shakespeare’s MacBeth, withh no idea what the hell I was doing. Here’s the candy though: I’m sharing the waiting room with none other than Art Carney, silent film star Tander F. Mustache, a visibly intoxicated Shirley Temple and a young, horny Johnny Carson!

It was a scorcher even in the countrified wilds of Vermont, and it didn’t take but a quarter turn of the hour wand before Carson was halfway up Shirley’s whiskey-sweat stained petticoat, Tander had punched a hole through a portrait of Napolean on the wall thinking it was a dwarf who’d wronged him in a mumblypeg match in aught-four and Art Carney was lecturing me on the ins and outs of midwifery, which, little known fact, he was quite proficient at, having ferried along the birth of future president Dwight Eisenhower. Excelsior!

By the time they called my name, I was shaking like a one-legged epileptic’s crutch arm, and not at all ready to dazzle my jury of castors. So I get into the room, which was a plywood sweatbox half-painted with Warner Bros. propaganda cartoons from the Great War, and completely lose memory of my 7-minute monologue from the lost Moliere play ‘House of Genital Decadence’. I got nothing! The panel of judges is blinking out me like I’m a unicorn’s ballsack and I’m sweatin’ like a nipple at a sandpaper party. So I just start talking and what comes out but a fully formed dialogue between myself and Bugs Bunny dressed as a lousy cross-eyed kraut!

Needless to say I end up with the title role in the show, playing opposite Art Carney in a blond wig made from his own body hair. Johnny Carson never forgave me for taking the part from him, and he almost had his revenge one cold winter night when he slipped a vial of hemlock into my Egg Cream at Sardi’s. All in good fun though; I stabbed Ed McMahon twice in the torso that night which left him with a codeine addiction and a belly laugh that would delight America.

That’s all for now actorinos!

Sidecar is online

Welcome, ladies and gents, to Sidecar’s blog. It’s been a long time coming, but we assure you it will be worth the wait. Read on, comment, and thank you for stopping by.

Love,

Sidecar.