Little Casino

In a Mellotone

BUT WHAT ARE THE STEPS OF THE PROOF that inevitably concludes that there are no winter wonderlands here, no deep purple, falling or otherwise, no stardust or star eyes or sleigh bells or open fires or garden walls or angels singing? Shall we accept the conclusions of such a proof without insisting on a clarification of its steps; or, at the very least, a dry martini? And although it may be proved that the light of bowling alleys is romantic, it must be made clear that those bowling alleys are nowhere in this vicinity, brother! And if Cheech and Nickie marry Annette and Inez, that will in no way enable those bowling alleys, to, well, appear. Nor will it preclude the vomiting of black blood by old men, dying in little pieces from bad food, bad whiskey, bad luck, and humiliation, their hearts more or less broken; nor will such ecstatic couplings improve the ratio of tapioca to semen in reprehensible masculine dreams, dreams in which young women are treated with the utmost disrespect, ruthlessly undressed, and spoken to in language not fit for a barracks, and there isn’t much that is not fit for a barracks, and all this carried out within the very dreamwork itself! A person could die from embarrassment. So Freud is wrong, yet again, thanks be to God. And after the light of bowling alleys has been used to “help one get through life’s daily stresses,” what apologist for the shameless fraud of a shambling Viennese Jew, whom dimmest sophomores can smugly mock, will dare to attempt to prove that he was less a fraud than Georgia O’Keefe, whose least accomplished paintings are moreso, oh moreso than they ever were, scintillant in their location, insistent in the depth of a statement that controls the picture plane with the saturated colors that are certain in their regard for the iconoclasm of erotic love, and twice on Sunday. Like chicken and mashed potatoes and fresh peas, with a full gravy boat down at the end of the table. Hey, pass that down, ok, Georgia? And who first noted that Ms. O’Keefe once said that she painted well on Saturdays but badly on Sundays, chock full as she inevitably was with “chicken and taters,” as she affectedly called the dish? It was, never doubt it for a moment, somebody. That’s exactly the way things used to be in old Santa Fe, a town that can never be imitated, nor even vaguely suggested as to its color, shade, and charm around these parts, dear pal. And it’s a cinch that not one resident would tolerate for a moment an imitation — assuming such an unlikely horror — of the town that is often called “prettier than Frisco.” These residents, or representative samplings of same, would, instead, make their way to the Loew’s Alpine to see a double feature with such actors as George Brent, Veronica Lake, Rondo Hatton, Edward Arnold, and Jack Carson, plus coming attractions, cartoons, a Pete Smith Specialty, a Robert Benchley short, and the news. The Alpine took to sporting blue sateen banners, which, draped casually from its marquee, announced, in silver letters, that the theater was AIR COOLED BY FRIGIDAIRE. Many have tried, oh many, many have tried in vain to prove that the blue of the banner was the blue of Lake Como or Lake Tahoe or Lake Sapphire, or even, for that matter, Lake Hopatcong, but there’s no chance of such a serene and glamorous lacustrine blue existing around here, sport. You have, by the way, an honest face, something like Jack Carson’s.

Alfred Stieglitz, or so they say, wrote letters to Georgia O’Keefe in which he said more amorous, even erotic things, in barracks language, than you can shake a stick at. Nothing, by the way, is “prettier than Frisco,” often called “the Santa Fe of California,” whatever that means. Nothing.

Jack Carson, who regularly played loud fools whose bonhomie could not conceal — nor was it meant to — the larceny in their hearts, had an uncanny ability to let the audience see his tender vulnerability beneath the intentionally revealed cupidity and the hearty bluster, so that when he was on screen, one watched three people at once. He can be seen at work in many films, two of his best being Strawberry Blonde and Mildred Pierce.

“They don’t make ‘em like Jack Carson anymore,” Fat George the Armenian says. “Now any dimwitted dumb fuck of an actor is a STAR! You could die laughing.” His father, filling a huge jar on the counter of his Italian-Greek Food Products store, adds, “Bill Harris’s dozen or so choruses on his ‘In a Mellotone’ are worth any five movie stars you can think of, male or female. Hell, they’re worth any five Nobel laureates you can think of!”

Had Freud somehow known that Gloria Steinem once “worked” as a Playboy Bunny in order to get “material” for a “story,” would he have remarked: “Uh-huh” or “Worked?” or “An anal repressive, surely” or “Not a bad built, Klaus”?

George’s father filled the huge jar with, let’s say, Greek olives.

Barracks language is always everywhere vile, and yet, after a time, it takes on the homely qualities of security, familiarity, and, generally speaking, regulated domesticity.

“That is no fucking lie, you sorry sonofabitch motherfucker,” Corporal Wing avers, looking up from his fucking field-fucking-stripped M-1 carbine. Home sweet fucking home.