Ringo

Yet another lazy inane post, but WHO CARES? IT'S FUN!

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Emir of Bukhara

I like his shoes.

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Photo courtesy of Library of Congress; originally published circa 1905-1915, taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, 1863-1944.

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The Trumpster

Make no mistake: I take the man at his word, but I'd just like to raise the question:

Is Donald Trump's hair really a natural pompadour?

I mean, can anyone remember ever actually combing Donald Trump's hair? Can anyone attest to actual hair follicles residing beneath that thick golden fold of hair on his pate?

If you ask anyone about my hair, you'll find people who remember me actually combing it. If anyone wants to come over here and study my hair follicles, I'm ready. Is the Trumpster ready for that level of scrutiny?

I'm just raising the question. I'm really concerned over this.

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Made in America

My Lucky Bag from Down Home Leather: Made in America!

Our Our Cuddle Circle Lounge by Lazar Industries: Made in America!

My Sugar Magnolia jigsaw by Liberty Puzzles: Made in America!



Our giant couch from Huntington House: Made in America!

As indicated by the four exclamation points I've used in this post, you can tell I dig stuff made in in the good ol' USA, so drop on into the comment box and tell me about your favorite American made products.

And lastly a "Made in America" list of manufacturers courtesy of ABC News.

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Brief cultural intermission with commentary

Yes, your life will improve if you spend 57 seconds watching this. No, I don't care that it's a cute animal vid.

My favorite moment is at the 40 second mark when he* thinks the fun has ended and disappointment spills over him. Then of course, the glorious second act ensues.

*Why do I assume it's a he? Dunno.

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Nothing grand about it

So this is what the Grand Ol' Party has come to. From Politico:

Maine’s governor has set his sights on a 36-foot-wide mural of the state’s labor history, which includes images of worker strikes and “Rosie the Riveter.”

Gov. Paul LePage has ordered that the mural, in the lobby of the state Department of Labor’s building in Augusta, be painted over to show business leaders that the state is just as friendly to them as it is to workers.

I am speechless.

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Swinging to the right

"The trouble is, swinging to the right is always dangerous. We end up losing so much in the rush to conservatism. But even Obama has fallen down that hole. He’s pushing a conservative agenda.

We have 700 military bases around the world. What do you think it costs to keep that war machine running? It’s not working. I thought Obama would be for peace, but he’s not. There are no peacemakers left. There’s no antiwar movement to speak of. America just keeps going, keeps fighting, keeps spending."

--excerpted from Playboy's interview with controversial former White House press corps member Helen Thomas.

And you can bet that quote came out of her mouth before the missiles began raining down on Libya. I recommend the entire interview. It is simply fascinating.

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Sailing away

Between Libya (how long do you think we'll be there? A month? A year? A decade?), Fukushima, Japan, the crazed righties (Ohio Senate Bill 5, the quiet dismantling of Wall Street Reform/the Dodd-Frank Act, NPR defunding), and all the rest of it, I can't handle the truth. At least not today, so here's a pic of Dad and me sailing on Lake Erie. I was probably about 15.

Quotation device

"No matter how cute the shoes are, you won't be cute if your feet hurt when they're in them." My Gram O'Brien

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." Dorothy Parker

"The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down." Whitney Brown


"Turtles always strike me as devastatingly serious. If turtles could talk, I'd believe everything they said." Guess who?

"Watch how he treats the waitress before you marry him." Unknown

"If you're going through hell, keep going." Winston Churchill

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The Irishman

Call it a Cleveland Goodfellas without the glitz.

Kill the Irishman gets so much right: the guys and their clothes and the grittiness of those parts of this town in that era. The filmmakers didn't try to stylize the scenes or the bombings with tricky camera angles and the resulting realism serves the based-on-a-true-story content perfectly. Ray Stevenson absolutely nails the role of Danny Greene. The Celtic music lacing the score is simply wonderful.

Oh for chrissake. If for no other reason, go to see the cars.

Shondor Birns' bombed out 1975 Lincoln Continental Mark IV
courtesy of CSU's Michael Schwartz Library, special collections

I was just a kid in the mid-1970's when the mob bombings took over Cleveland, but I surely remember that Mafia guy getting blown to bits on 25th Street (photo above). For months and months after the killing, I'd peer out the car window looking for an overlooked finger or spatter of blood every time we drove through the intersection of 25th and Detroit. The mobsters were at once a world away and in my backyard, murky in the background and bloody before my eyes.

Danny Greene
courtesy of CSU's Michael
Schwartz Library, special
collections

Because this is Cleveland, where local sports are a study in epic tragedy, where the gray permeates everything, and where you learn to be the butt of jokes at a very early age, Kill the Irishman was actually filmed in Detroit.

Huh?

Okay, fine. It's just another Cleveland injustice. I'll swallow it whole and move on. And for the most part the filming locale worked seamlessly. Old time Clevelanders, however, will know where the filmmakers have dropped a stitch.

Take the Theatrical.

Completely unlike it was portrayed in Irishman, the Theatrical was a legendary club on Short Vincent. It was big and brash with a huge kidney shaped bar that surrounded an elevated stage. The club was housed in one cavernous room, with tables and booths flanking that incredible bar. Giant figures graced the two-story walls: demure chicks in hoop skirts and devilishly exaggerated harlequin men lunging for them. There was a coat check. Attendants in the ladies' lounge handed you a towel and made sure the bottles of hand cream and cologne were properly arranged.

The Theatrical on Short Vincent

During college breaks, I pushed beers at a weird little joint called the Park Pub in the basement of what is now Reserve Square apartments. I used to go braless and wear cute little outfits with high heels in order to garner better tips (sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't). When my shift was over I would occasionally sashay over to the Theatrical to meet a friend or wait for my ride. The bar proper had four sections, each serviced by a regular bartender who was as legendary as the Theatrical itself. Everyone had their favorite. I always sat in Jim's section. I'd settle in as he'd straighten from his perfect bar lean, amble over and snap open his Zippo to light my Marlboro before pouring me a big icy tumbler of Canadian Club and soda.

"Hey Jim, can I have a paper and pencil?"

"Sure thing, girlie."

Girl from Ipanema? I'd jot on the paper, then hand it to Jim, who would in turn deliver it to the house pianist, who, if he had no other requests pending, would stop in the middle of whatever he was playing and start playing Girl from Ipanema.

On his break, the pianist (whose name I am purposefuly omitting) would ask me to dance. We'd step onto the dance floor and start swaying to and fro. He wasn't terribly attractive, but his sexuality was unmistakable as his cologne wafted between us. The fabric of his suit against my chin felt formal and expensive. When he'd pull me close, I'd look up into his eyes.

"Your lips are less then an inch from my own," he once remarked.

Perhaps not surprisingly, he would become aroused during these interludes, which were as pure and erotic as anything I can recollect. He would push hard into my torso as we moved ever-so-slowly against one another. He never once kissed me.

That's what it was like. Back then. At the Theatrical. In Cleveland.

yeah, yeah, yeah ...

And a few endnotes on Kill the Irishman:

-The Goat grew up in Lyndhurst, just down the road from where Greene was murdered. The Goat's dad grew up in rough-n-tumble Collinwood, Greene's notorious stomping grounds.

-Some documentary footage from Cleveland Mafia historian Rick Porrello.

-Comprehensive coverage with photos and video from WEWS.

-To the editorial team of Irishman: Why the hell didn't you cut the kids at the end? You really really should have cut out the kids at the end.

Now go and see the movie. You will not regret one minute of it.

The aftermath of the car bombing that killed Greene in Oct. 1977

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 October 1977 bomb photo and Theatrical Restaurant photo also courtesy of CSU's Michael Schwartz Library, special collections and credited at the bottom of this post because the IT Department here at the Offices of Erin O'Brien was unable to properly caption them.

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The United States of Failure

Japan is sinking in black turgid mud, cowering before a threatening nuclear monster and we're shaking our fists over murdering a furry little red one named Elmo and morally attacking our own brothers and sisters with unabashed glee. But I have complete faith in my Japanese brothers and sisters. They will react, rise, rebuild and move on with none of the incestuous acrimony that Americans scattered in the path of hurricane Katrina.

Stunning, it is, that I can send voluntary dollars to Japan to aid in the staggering aftermath of Mother Nature's omnipotence, but I have little say about my tax dollars being soaked in the blood of Afghan children. To the right-to-lifers waving an American flag over that operation in the name of self-protection as they call for the defunding of Planned Parenthood: GO TO HELL. You're already on your way.

America bubbles over at every seam with potential and greatness, yet we squander true exceptionalism by way of overblown self-importance, waving our guns in the Middle East with no end in sight, fighting over one another's pennies while clutching our own tattered coin purses. All the while, the elite Super Rich lounge in their purple silken robes, laughing and laughing and laughing.

Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?

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The catfish shakes his body inside the earth

**Love to Japan**


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Apocalypse Me: the Jaws of Life

At about 8:30 into this vid, the person talking to Sheen on the phone asks when he'll be posting the footage he's recording to Ustream.

"It'll go up when I feel like the people are ready to receive it," responds Sheen.

Perhaps because Sheen looks so much like his father, I immediately thought of Apocalypse Now, of Willard and Kurtz and Kurtz's lording ways. Then I thought of the opening scene in the movie, when Willard wigs out in a Saigon hotel.

In the scene, Sheen is naked and covered in whiskey and blood. He's doing some sort of freaked out Qigong style moves. It's an intense, brilliant scene that comes to a beautiful end when two MPs come to collect Willard. They step into the room, look at Willard and his destroyed surroundings as if it's something they see every day.

Sheen talks about filming that scene in the following vid:



As Kurtz and Willard danced in the back of my mind, Charlie continued to splinter on the screen before me. I didn't laugh, I just felt sad. Then Charlie's rant segued into talk about a book he intends to market, Apocalypse Me: the Jaws of Life.

As soon as he uttered it, Charlie Sheen was more naked and bloody than his dad was in that troubling Saigon Hotel scene filmed more than 30 years ago, when Charlie was just an impressionable teen and his dad was at once bigger than life and empty as a spent whiskey bottle.

It's about his dad, I thought. Some huge part of this is about his dad.

I sighed, nodded at my dead guys, and felt the sadness inside me melt into tragedy.

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The trouble with beavers

My friend Dan has an unhappy beaver infestation.

"Beavers are eating my trees. Grrr," bemoans Dan on his Facebook page.

Some things just have to be gotten through, so let's get this out of the way first thing: How in the hell did the pudendum end up with the label "beaver?"

Of course I can only speak for myself, but I've never known a pudendum that built a dam or ate a tree. I do not believe the organ resembles a beaver. And although many pudenda have surely been "eager," no one can truly say the same of a beaver. Dr. Doolittle notwithstanding, has anyone ever consulted a beaver?

"Yo beaver, are you eager?"

On to Dan's dilemma. It may irk my old buddy, but I'm sort of rooting for Dan's beavers. That tree is clearly adjacent to some water source and those beavers have a dam to build. Sorry, Dan.

Dan is a frequent visitor to the Owner's Manual. He is featured in the last photo of this post and comments under the name "danb."

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Daily vocabulary and other notes

brazoobie |brə'zu'bē|: a party at which all attendees (including the men) wear nothing but brassieres, although a tasteful strand of pearls is acceptable. Alcohol and light hors d'oeuvres are usually served.

-To freshen sponges, run them through the dishwasher along with the soiled plates and flatware.

-I just said "soiled." I just said "flatware."

-I use "shampoo" as a verb. It is this sort of subtlety that sophisticates me.

Not now. I just shampooed my hair!

Okay, baby, but first let me shampoo my hair.

-I also use the verb "launder." Laundering the bedding produces the happy result of Clean Sheet Day, which has its own implications.

You miserable Goat! I just laundered the bedding!

-I am proud of myself for not drawing attention to using the word bedding in the previous entry and I realize that I have diminished said accomplishment by noting my pride in this entry.

-My 27-ounce Klean Kanteen stainless steel classic with the sport cap in "Prevention Purple" squeaks when I drink from it.

-Sometimes I scoop Pierre's Premium Ice Cream (peanut butter cup) directly from the carton (with a spoon) and place a single Dan Dee extra dark/extra salty pretzel ring upon it and eat the two together. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I employ a marital aid.

-My long gray hairs imbue me with a certain regality.

-Use newspaper and a spray bottle of vinegar and water to clean windows. Let me know how it works out. I've never tried it.

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Sunday political ricochet

I wrote "A Conservative Eulogy" for the May 6, 2009 issue of Scene. Having just reviewed that work, I've come to the following conclustions:

1. I should be writing more.

2. Everything I said in that column was right.

3. The column as a whole was wrong.

Yeah, yeah.

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Steven Tyler, RuPaul, Charlie Sheen and Erin O'Brien

Phone cam round-up

Bill, frequent commenter on the Owner's Manual, recently paid a visit to Northeast Ohio.

BagTree commons.

Skullduggery.

Who in the hell eats Circus Peanuts?

The Goat in his cups

A dazzling array of microwave cookbooks! I wonder if Al the Retired Army Guy would be interested in any of these. Hm ...

I don't believe you. I think you'd much rather tell me to eff off.

Deflation in the United States of America.

Yet another image sent to my by Hal Perry, who denoted it thusly: One day, that will be me. Baby, it already is.

If you tried to save grapes in the tomato saver, would they go bad?

Eggstractor, Food Processor and Blender, assorted hot pots and Snow Shaver/Rape-Glace. Christmas shopping's finished for 2011! Thanks, Unique Thrift.

C'mon down and set a spell.

?~?~terrifying mystery vortex~?~?

Well hello, Dolly. (submitted by yet another mysterious reader!)

Lastly, a screen capture taken earlier today. Welcome Department of Defense visitor. We hope you've had a pleasant stay here at the Owner's Manual and invite you to come back often. Thanks also to Just An Average Joe for sending you my way.

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