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Welcome to the “Georgia Wasp…”

This blog is modeled on the Carolina Israelite. That was an old-time newspaper – more like a personal newsletter – written and published by Harry Golden. Back in the 1950s, people called Harry a  “voice of sanity amid the braying of jackals.” (For his work on the Israelite.)

That’s now my goal as well. To be a “voice of sanity amid the braying of jackals.”

For more on the blog-name connection, see the notes below.

In the meantime:

I have a Thanksgiving tradition that goes back – literally – a century ago. (To 1993, back in the 20th century?) Every Thanksgiving since then I do my best to listen to Alice’s Restaurant, the “musical monologue by singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie,” released in 1967. (All 18 minutes and 34 seconds, at one sitting.*) But this year brought some troubling news:

Alice Brock, who helped inspire [the] classic ‘Alice’s Restaurant,’ dies at 83. (A ripe old age, but I hope to go well beyond that.) And this was shortly after I learned that Arlo himself suffered a stroke on Thanksgiving Day 2019, leading him to retire from touring and stage shows.

Those two bits of depressing news gave me the idea for yet another post on Alice, her restaurant, and maybe on how the movie – inspired by Guthrie’s musical monologue – proved yet again how Hollywood often distorts reality to sell tickets. (A topic I discussed in On Conclave – “Worth a $17 ticket?” As in my saying, watching that film, “Geez, that [bleeping] Hollywood!”)

Something else happened too. In November 2015 I posted Alice’s Restaurant – Revisited. Then just a year later, November 2016, I posted On Alice and her restaurant – yet again. I did that quick reprise mostly because in November 2016 Donald Trump got elected to his first term. (I didn’t believe it then and have trouble believing it now.) Anyway, in reviewing that 2016 post I came across some information that may help decipher what his next four years will be like.

This country has now embarked on what we might call “the Donald Experiment…” Which means the question to be decided in the next four years is whether Trump can deliver on the veritable plethora of promises made in his recent campaigns… Or whether those promises are merely “negotiable campaign devices.” 

That’s what I wrote about the first Trump term. (Then too, in August 2019 I wondered if it might have been better if Trump got re-elected in 2020, instead of giving us at least three years of angst. See On “why it might be better…” (Gasp!) For one thing, next January 20 we’d be watching him leave the White House for good, at least according to the 22nd Amendment.)

Another side note: For more on those “negotiable promises,” see Before taking office, Trump signals campaign promises are negotiable, All the Campaign Promises Donald Trump Has Broken in the Last 24 Hours, and/or Trump backs away from some of his strident campaign promises. They make for some interesting reading, but we may have to wait for future events to see what kind of Déjà Vu All Over Again his most-recent campaign promises may mean.

Then too the 2016 post described the term “massacree” – as Guthrie used it in his song – as a colloquialism describing “an event so wildly and improbably and baroquely messed up that the results are almost impossible to believe.” In 2016 I said it “perfectly describes the election we just went through,” but how about the reprise in 2024? (I still find it hard to believe.)

But for now, let’s move on to something more pleasant. (Keeping in mind that I’ll probably be reviewing both Yet again and (Gasp!) a few times in the upcoming years.) A pleasant topic like how Hollywood often distorts reality to sell tickets. Which brings us back to the film version of Alice’s Restaurant. Wikipedia includes a section on “Differences from real life,” and it’s pretty lengthy. The original song was, “for the most part, a true story,” but “most of the other events and characters in the film were fictional creations.” (What a surprise.)

For example, the beginning of the film showed Guthrie getting kicked out of a town in Montana – he was attending a college to avoid the draft – and thrown through a plate glass window. Pure fiction, and Guthrie later expressed regret “that Montana got a ‘bad rap’ in the film.” (And yes, we used to say things like that back then in the late ’60s and early ’70s.) 

Brock herself panned how the film showed her. “That wasn’t me. That was someone else’s idea of me.” The part I remember was the film showing Brock sleeping with “Shelley,” a heroin addict. (Among others, including Guthrie). Then too Richard Robbins – Guthrie’s “real” co-defendant in the Thanksgiving dump incident – later described most of the movie as “all fiction” and “complete bull.” (In the film he was replaced by an actor.)

Finally, Guthrie thought the film “frankly, garbage” and “a terrible movie.” Mostly because it was too nihilistic. (What started out as a fun film turned way too depressing by the end. Much like the 1972 film Fritz the Cat, which I also saw several times in my early 20s.)

He felt that rather than rejecting “fundamental aspects of human existence” – like knowledge, morality or meaning – his song and his generation (and mine) made a major difference. “Those values are not sixties values; they’re eternal values.” Some of those eternal values still live on, in cases like Ringo Starr Celebrating His [84rh] Birthday With Peace and Love.

And that’s a 1960’s value we could use a lot more of in the next four years…

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The upper image is courtesy of Alice Restaurant Draft Body Inspection … Image Results. (I was looking for a telling image from the Whitehall Street “draft” sequence in the film. In case Trump brings back the draft, like maybe for political opponents? And maybe including Short-arm inspections?

Re: “All 18 minutes and 34 seconds, at one sitting.” Technically that refers to one sitting while driving my car. (Like I did that first time in 1993, to get the best Karma result.) Note also that Guthrie’s word “massacree” in the title is a corruption of the word massacre, “but carries a much lighter and more sarcastic connotation, never being used to describe anything involving actual death.”

Re: “A ripe old age.” See my 2021 post, On “Will I REALLY live to 120?”

The lower image is courtesy of Ringo Starr Peace And Love – Image Results.

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Re:  The Israelite.  Harry Golden grew up in the Jewish ghetto of New York City, but eventually moved to Charlotte, North Carolina.  Thus the “Carolina Israelite.”  I on the other hand am a “classic 73-year-old “WASP” – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant – and live in north Georgia.  Thus the “Georgia Wasp.”    

Anyway, in North Carolina Harry wrote and published the “israelite” from the 1940s through the 1960s.  He was a “cigar-smoking, bourbon-loving raconteur.”  (He told good stories.) That also means if he was around today, the “Israelite would be done as a blog.”  But what made Harry special was his positive outlook on life.  As he got older but didn’t turn sour, like many do today.  He still got a kick out of life.  For more on the blog-name connection, see “Wasp” and/or The blog.

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