Hooray for Hollywood

Whenever someone in Hollywood tells you “Hello,” their true meaning is “Goodbye.” If they come up to you and plant a kiss on your cheek and tell you how much they love you, it’s really similar to a kiss from a particularly odious cosa nostra Don who, after ordering your death contract, arranges your funeral with tears of remorse streaming down both of his swarthy cheeks. I have been in many negotiations where I knew the other side was trying their level best to screw me, but in H-wood, one never knows where they stand, even after a deal is consummated. The one thing you find out in short order is, they are going to screw you, and the only suspense is how they are going to do it.

            This particular saga begins in Paris in the early summer of 1975. Strolling around the Left Bank, hopping from one sidewalk café to another, I appeared on the surface to be a resolute, and possibly a secure man. But I was merely your pathetic hero, just waiting for the hunter to spring his trap. And spring he did.

            A friend of mine from college, Laurence Snelling, was a writer-in-residence in Paris. He lived in a pied a terre in the 14^th arrondissement where he plied his scribbling trade.

            Larry is a tortured human being. My guess is his father’s suicide contributed greatly to his psychological disorders. His academic brilliance was always offset by his laziness and reluctance to face head on, anything out of his structured world. His widowed mother forced him to attend Sewanee instead of Princeton, where he envisioned he would be aligned with the F. Scott Fitzgerald branch of that vaunted institution, and he resented this missed opportunity, greatly. As far as I know, he still writes his novels, in bed, with a fountain pen, and eschews the computer as if it were a pariah, most vicious. His sexual appetite is legion, and no prey is off limits to him.

            He attended Harvard Law School for one year and quit. His stated reason being, “The law was not for him.” I figured, once Larry realized he would be eaten up in a competitive world, he chose to write instead. He has had about six fictional novels published in his name, along with two mystery type books under the pseudonym of Peter Mallory. Most of his adult life was spent in Europe, primarily in France and Italy, and presently, he lives in New Orleans with his five cats. For all the time he lived in Europe, he was married to a lovely, intelligent, and long suffering wife, Virginia, whose saving grace was, she was rich as Croesus. Her wealth permitted Larry to live in a style far in excess of his means.

            Snelling was fairly successful with his first three novels in the early to late sixties, but since then, had found it more difficult to sell his works, particularly since he fired his agent, Sterling Lord. His way out of this declining slump was to have one of his first books made into a movie. He assumed once a movie was made, he could sweep out his closet and republish those books that formerly did not sell particularly well or those he had not yet succeeded in getting published. All I knew at that time about a movie was, you walk up to a little kiosk, plunk down a few dollars, they sell you a ticket, and you gain entrance to a theater where someone shows you a flick. That’s seeing a movie; making one is something vastly different. In my naiveté, I actually didn’t fathom the difference.

            Larry introduced me to a friend of his, Robert (Bob) Swaim, a movie director, who also lived in Paris. Bob Swaim was young and charming, with a beautiful French wife, and several children. He lived in a lovely apartment, spoke perfect French, and thoroughly enjoyed being recognized as someone involved in the movie industry.

            However, what I eventually found out is, everyone in that phony trade is constantly trying to be someone or something else. In Swaim’s case, he wanted to direct a major movie. Up until this point he had only done commercials and minor movies, all in French. He convinced Snelling he could write the screenplay and direct the movie made from one of Larry’s books, namely, The Heresy. This was a plot set in the south of France in the early 1200’s, about the time of the sixth crusade. It involved an obscure group of gnostics, the Cathars, whom the Pope, through his Holy Inquisition, eliminated at their fortress town of Monsegur, by stoking up a few stake fires and throwing the harmless Cathars in, feet first.

            The explanation and transition from Larry’s novel to movie was so convoluted, even I didn't think such an esoteric theme would translate well to the golden screen. However, Snelling was persistent, so we made a deal with Swaim to write a treatment for me to peddle to some naive investor. Swaim, being inherently lazy, began dragging his writing hand, and consequently I was still begging him in September to finish it. He never finished the treatment, although I believe Larry ultimately did finish one, which was horrible. It made no difference, for the hook was set. This boy wanted to be in the movie business.  

            When I returned to the States, I received Paris calls from Larry who told me I should go to California to meet one John Oldman, a mover and shaker in the movie trade, to see if a movie could be made from another of his books, The Temptation of Archer Watson. He indicated Oldman had read the work and was definitely interested in doing something with it. I felt this work was much better suited for the movies than Heresy was, and this revived my interest in doing a movie. Archer had everything; witty dialogue, sex, and tennis, which was served on every yuppie’s platter during that time.

            Oldman had apparently snookered poor Snelling into believing he was the reincarnation of Louis B. Meyer. Larry, being the only person in the world who is more gullible than I, convinced me to travel to Los Angeles to meet this captain of industry; John Oldman.

            How wrong first impressions can be. John Oldman dressed impeccably, drove a Mercedes, and sported a wad of cash. Later on I realized the clothing outfit was one of the few he owned, the Mercedes was leased, and the wad of cash he was sporting was borrowed from the absolute last person John could hit up. John was very reticent on first blush, and warmed to conversation, only after some verbal prompting. I saw him make several “pitches” to persons expressing interest in one of our projects, and every time, his voice never rose above an ear-straining level. I finally took over John’s duties as pitchman, seeing how everyone on the receiving end of his pitches, had to move so close to him, I thought they were kissing.

            My last contact with John probably best exhibits his personality. I got a call from him late one night telling me he was about to be evicted from his apartment and needed $400 to placate his landlord until his check arrived, from wherever he was working at that time. I sent him the check. Of course, several months went by and no Oldman call was forthcoming. Through a mutual acquaintance, I obtained his new number, found out where he worked, and finally got him to answer my call. “I was just getting ready to mail you a check,” he said, after the usual banalities were completed. True to his word, several days later, I received his check for $400. The check bounced.

            We formed a corporation known as Oldie, Inc., we opened an office in L.A. (the only way those people refer to Los Angeles), and we “took meetings.”  Everyone on the business side of the movie industry takes meetings in H-wood. I was loving it. I just couldn’t take enough meetings.

            Oldman convinced me he was a close tennis-playing friend of Jack Gilardi, a theatrical agent at International Creative Management (ICM) and reported Gilardi was poised to help us succeed. Oldman actually had a business card giving his address as c/o Jack Gilardi at his ICM address, so what more proof does a foolish lawyer need? I merely assumed my good buddy Jack was in on the deal.

            Gilardi was punctilious. A façade masked the hard, crafty underbelly of a theatrical agent involved in the promotion of a few of the piles of human detritus that orbit Planet Hollywood. He knew all the right people, dressed perfectly, spoke with an educated twang and, as best I could tell, really enjoyed what he was doing. Like everyone else in the town, he could lie convincingly, which is the only attribute I found permeated the entire society.

            Gilardi, at the time, was married to the ex-mouse, Annette Funicello. He lived in the appropriate H-wood mansion, drove the obligatory Mercedes, and was California charming. He convinced Oldman, and later me, he had under contract a budding young writer, Jonathan Axelrod, who was described to me as the next Raymond Chandler.

            Sitting in Gilardi’s office at ICM, anticipating the arrival of a young writer, who was allegedly on the cusp of greatness, my little heart was all aflutter. Once the door opened, I was confronted with this braggadocios, name-dropping, talentless kid, who would have been a permanent embarrassment to the founders of the Screen Writers Guild. My fears persisted, even as Gilardi and Oldman attempted to assuage them, after Jonathan left the office. Those suspicions were confirmed absolutely when I received the first draft of his screenplay.

            I remember a confrontation with Axelrod after he delivered the first draft of Archer, where I yelled, “this thing is supposed to be funny and there are absolutely no yuks in this crap you wrote.”

            “I can make it funny,” he pled, almost in tears. It certainly didn’t appear to me he could make it funny.

            Gilardi had told us we were getting a huge break catching this writing genius before he became a household word and Axelrod would do the screen version for $25,000. If we agreed, we had to post one-half of the total sum immediately. This I did, not wanting to lose another golden opportunity. We were told Axelrod had written the last Barbara Streisand movie and had worked on several other H-wood luminaries’ movies. "Worked on," as used in the movie industry, means anything from he wrote the entire script without help, or it could also mean he once fondled the front cover of an unsuccessful screenplay.

            In either case, the meaning is the same; you had no earthly idea what the guy did on any movie, ever. To hear any of these shameless people talk about their credits is an experience all by itself.  Everyone in H-wood has a meticulously prepared five-minute speech laboriously outlining their numerous talents, credits, and exploits. I’m not talking about the recognized stars; I’m talking about the lowly office clerk who is just waiting for Mr. & Mrs. Opportunity to come a-knockin’.

Ultimately, we got the first draft of this screenplay and I went into apoplectic shock. You think Franz Liebkind, writer of “Springtime for Hitler,” wrote a bad script; this was ten times worse. Had Mel Brooks known, he would have used the Axelrod masterpiece as a model for the world's worst script, in his movie “The Producers.” What was to be a script based on Archer Watson, a novel full of comic characters and situations, and funny, ironic, witty dialogue, was transformed into a juvenile piece of pap, which was tedious and ungrammatical. It was little more than a trite, heavy-handed, cliché-ridden message flick featuring a sixties atmosphere that was long gone, and never existed in New Orleans in the first place.  

In retrospect, there was no way Gilardi read the manuscript.  His interests were in the ten-percent commission and getting Oldman, his tennis-playing buddy, out of his hair, in that order. 

            As soon as I refused to tender the additional $12,500, the inevitable lawsuit ensued. Oldie, Inc., Oldman, and Abadie were all made defendants in a State Court in California. We hired our California lawyers and counter-sued ICM, Gilardi, ICM’s lawyer, Michael Black, and Axelrod, alleging fraud, misrepresentation, etc. After attorney fees, court costs, and a cost of defense settlement, I was out plenty. This coupled with the L.A. office lease, keeping Oldman alive, my flights to L.A., and my bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, it felt as if someone had vacuumed my wallet clean of all its dead Presidents.

            Later, Larry rewrote the Axelrod masterpiece and we then had a screenplay to peddle. For some inexplicable reason, I assumed once we had a product we all felt had commercial value, the rest of the puzzle would easily fall into place and then, we would make a movie. What I didn't count on was I, along with every other man, woman, and child in H-wood, had a screenplay to peddle. They walked down every street with it neatly tucked under their armpits and breathlessly anticipated taking a meeting with any producer or producer want-to-be, so they could flog their product. 

            For the next several months, I attempted to peddle the script, but each time was faced with more calculated resistance. I met numerous celebrities, quasi-celebrities, and others calling themselves celebrities, all of whom told me how much interest they had in doing this film, if only I had come two days earlier. If I hadn’t run out of cash, I might still be there, getting the door slammed in my face, and loving it.

            One of the people I met was a very funny man, a theatrical agent named Roy Silver. Roy was quick witted, intelligent, and exacting. You could tell he had negotiated many deals for his former clients, Bill Cosby and Tiny Tim, among them. His interests were eclectic as evidenced by his love of Oriental cooking. He regaled me with stories about the people he represented, and the best was one about his client, Herbert Khaury, a/k/a Tiny Tim. Right after the marriage on the Carson show to Miss Vicky, Roy booked the ukulele-playing songster into a Las Vegas hotel.

            One night, several white-on-white, dark suited behemoths forced their way into Roy’s more modest accommodations and announced to him they were the new managers of Tiny Tim and were taking over his contract. I asked Roy what he said to them. He replied, “Nothing. I packed my bags, left the hotel, and never saw of, or spoke to, Tiny Tim again.” Roy understood the business better than most.

            Presumably, Oldman wanted to deflect me away from the fact he could not get the movie sold, so he took a different direction. He came up with the brilliant idea of putting together a television tennis tournament, with the top four female tennis players in the world making up the field.  Up to this time, women’s tennis was almost unknown. They were just beginning to get a smattering of television coverage. It took a farcical match between Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King to vault women's tennis into the limelight.

            A lawyer friend of Oldman’s, Dennis Bond, said his client, Paul Williams was performing in Tucson, Arizona as the opening act for Olivia Newton-John. He convinced us to travel with him to Tucson to the Margaret Court Racket Club Ranch. At that time, Margaret Court, Billy Jean King, Rosy Cassales, and a young neophyte, Chris Everet were the four best women players in the world.             Off to Tucson, on my nickel, to convince the manager of this beautiful club he really wanted to host this TV extravaganza. Oldman swore to me he had an in with an advertising executive at Coca-Cola who would jump at the chance of putting up seed money and would sponsor this unusual event. The Margaret Court club manager was naturally receptive; he got a television first at his club at minimal cost to him.  

Several weeks later, a friend I met in California, Paul Schulman, set up a meeting with the head of sports at several major networks in New York, who unbelievably expressed interest in our project, providing Oldman produced Coke as a sponsor. Of course, the closest Oldman had ever come to a Coke executive was his putting a dollar into the slot of an airport vending machine to purchase this delectable potable.

I just couldn’t keep up with Oldman, because occasionally, I had to return home and practice law in order to replenish my rapidly evaporating resources. Only God knows what he was doing in my absence. Every time I saw or talked to him on the phone he always had some fantastic scheme that was going to break the bank.

It did; it broke my bank account. In October 1977, I was still passing out scripts to alleged interested persons, who either knew someone to whom they could create interest in the script, or they swore to finance it themselves–all a pack of lies. At the end of 1977, I had enough of the movie, TV, and entertainment industry to last a lifetime. I had taken my last meeting in Southern California.

“California is a fine place to live – if you happen to be an orange,” said Fred Allen

In spite of everything, I will always have the memory of Gilardi, a gorgeous Jill St. John, and me, lunching in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, with this pathetic drool cascading off the end of my chin and clinging to their every wink.

Eat your heart out, boys.

Bernie–the–Bear

Bernie-the-Bear

            I first heard of Bernard John Darré during September of 1954. His father died in the stands when his Fortier High School football team was playing my high school in the initial game of that season. Bernie was a sophomore and I was a senior. I preceded him at Tulane by two years and was formally introduced to him in September 1957, when as a 165 pound interior lineman, he was granted an athletic scholarship after the importuning by his high school coach persuaded the head coach at Tulane to add him to the roster. Rumor has it was more a leveraging of the Tulane coach than importuning, since the Fortier coach had previously persuaded several larger and infinitely more talented athletes to complete in the university’s football program. Tulane’s coach was forced to accept this token player as a down payment on future fledgling stars. After the death of Bernard’s dockworker father, the family, never very wealthy before, now fell on even harder times and without a scholarship, he certainly would never have been financially able to attended Tulane, and I would have been deprived of one of the great joys of my life; having known Bernie-the-Bear.

            One thing I failed to mention above, he was a straight “A” high school student, something that surely escaped the clutches of your humble narrator, plus he had just celebrated his seventeenth birthday at the time of his freshman matriculation. Once he began eating regularly, exercising, and growing, Bernard’s body matured. This skinny boy, whose family lived on a street in New Orleans opposite the docks and next to a raucous barroom, morphed into to this two hundred forty pound athlete good enough to be selected to play in the College All Star Game, the Shriners’ East-West Game, and subsequently became a high draft choice of the Washington Redskins Professional Football Team, where he labored for two years.

            Once again, I forgot to mention, he graduated as an ‘A’ student from college, with a major in chemistry; an unbelievable feat, given the fact football took up so much of his time. He was able to save enough money from professional football to quit that avocation, and pursue his doctorate in chemistry from Ohio State University, which he received in the mid-sixties.

            Returning to Louisiana, along with a fresh Ohio bride, he took up residence in Baton Rouge, with a job in the Ethyl Refinery as a research chemist. Several years later, and obviously bored with a mundane laboratory existence, he left for the more intellectual confines of Stanford University, where he obtained his Masters of Business Administration degree.

            Welding together those academic pursuits, he was hired by the Shepherd Chemical Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he rose to lead them as their president and CEO until his tragic death on April 26, 2006.

            When I think back over the last fifty years of our friendship, I cannot remember one harsh word spoken between us, and that from one who has harsh words with almost everyone. I never heard him utter one negative comment about any human, animal, or flower; but do not mistake that for weakness. For while he was never a syrupy gusher of complements, and he took the people surrounding him in stride, he exuded an unmistakable aura of strength, which brought reason to discussions and comprehension to opposing views. He was totally secure in who he was, and who he was dealing with, and had no time or understanding of those who would not play the game by the strictest moral code. Everyone got the benefit of the doubt; often to his detriment, but he never wavered from his unalterable moral position and never compromised his gentle behavior.

            But that was the mature Bernard. There was another side to this gentle giant.

            In undergraduate school, Bernie was infatuated with this young lady, Cathy Bishop. For some unknown reason, she and he were discussing the effects of underarm deodorants on the human body and she apparently was complaining to him about the cost of purchasing the designer products and how they negatively reacted with her super-sensitive skin. Bernie, in an attempt to impress her, told her what a magnificent chemist he was and he could brew up a batch of sweet smelling stuff that would make the Dior’s of the world ashamed to market their inferior product, and at the same time would treat her skin like talcum powder.

            “Oh, Bernie. Could you make some for me?” she asked, batting her eyes seductively.

            Well it’s all Bernie needed. His weakness for eye batting placed him at a distinct disadvantage and he repaired to the laboratory to brew up the promised elixir. In actuality, what he did was borrow a bottle of his mother’s deodorant and began replicating the ingredients listed on the bottle. Several days later he extracted the final product from his lab caldron and presented Cathy with the resulting brew.

            “Oh, Bernie. Thank you so much,” she said, still batting her eyes at this poor schmuck, causing his knees to buckle like a piece of overcooked spaghetti.

            Cathy took the little box home and couldn’t wait to administer it to her waiting armpits. In all fairness, I did get a whiff of the mixture before he gave it to her and it smelled pretty good to me. By this time, Bernie was bragging to anyone who would listen, that he had created an aphrodisiac that would turn his new love into this compliant slave.

            To Cathy, the deodorant smelled wonderful, and the dulcet aromas sneaked out from under her arms and wafted beneath her nose. “Smell this,” she said to all of her friends, producing the newly minted bottle from her purse. “Bernie made it just for me.”

            When Cathy got home and took off her clothes, she noticed any area where she applied Bernard’s mixture, was covered in a bright red rash. Over night, the rash blossomed into these horrible looking sores and she itched like a fresh dose of the chicken pox had invaded her skin.

            It turns out Bernie had added or subtracted several ingredients from his mother’s bottle and that, plus the fact he was drinking beer with me in the lab during the brewing process, certainly detracted greatly from the final product. That was the end of Bernie’s love affair with Cathy; even though he told her he could correct his mistake and brew a perfectly acting liquid the next time. Cathy was too smart for his line.

            The second Bernie story which accurately illustrates another side to this complex man, happened one summer while I was attending summer school at Tulane. Bernie didn’t have to attend summer school because he was a straight ‘A’ student, while I was often grateful for the professor’s gift of a ‘gentleman’s C’ and had to attend one summer session in order to keep up with my aggressive classmates. Bernie was hired as a laboratory assistant by the chemistry department, so we were both living on campus without much to do.

            I called Bernie one day to get him out of the laboratory and accompany me to one of the nearby watering holes. He answered on the first ring.

            “What do you want?” he asked, knowing full well I wasn’t calling him asking for the atomic weight of helium.

            “How’s about a drink?”

            “Come over here and pick me up. I have to finish this experiment before I can leave.”

            When I arrived at the chemistry lab, Bernie was busy pouring some awful-colored mixture in with a clear liquid causing the reaction to bubble over like a Doctor Frankenstein experiment.

            “Brewing up a little something else for Cathy,” I asked, never letting him forget about his romantic blunder.

            “No. This is grain alcohol mixed with something else.” Bernard was smart enough to know I wouldn’t have any comprehension of the ‘something else’ liquid.

            All I heard was the word ‘alcohol,’ so I asked, “Can you drink that stuff?”

            Bernie looked at me like I was crazy. “Yeah, you can drink grain alcohol, but you have to mix it with jungle juice or something, because it’s one hundred and ninety proof. That stuff can make you blind if you’re not careful.”

            It was all I needed. Before we departed from the local watering hole, I convinced Bernie we were having a party at a friend’s house that night, and he and I would mix up this delectable potable to be served to all our friends and their dates. That afternoon, Bernie, our friend, Cameron Gamble, and I began mixing up this homebrew with the primary ingredient being the grain alcohol Bernie had purloined from the chemistry lab.

            In order to make sure the brew was tasty and the juice-grain alcohol mixture was correct, we needed to sample it throughout the afternoon. By the start of the party, Bernie, Cameron, and I were giggling like teenage school girls; the liquor having already taken its toll.

            All I can remember about the party was most of the girls were passed out on the floor, and their dates were so drunk, they just left them there and presumably staggered back to the dormitory.

            I woke up in a filthy ditch in front of Cameron’s house, trying to get up so I could also stagger back to my room in the dormitory before I drowned in all the gutter muck. I have no idea how long I was lying there.

            I looked over to my left and Bernie was face down in the same ditch. I thought he was dead. Fortunately, he wasn’t dead and I sat him up and shook him as hard as I could.

            “Get up Bernie. We’ve got to go home,” I mumbled, with the ditch’s refuse still stuck to various parts of our bodies.

            “Hell of a party, Pierre. Hell of a party” my great friend said, as he sneaked a smile past his drunken lips.

Algiers

I felt this hand shaking me. Back and forth; back and forth, until I opened my eyes. Peering through my sleep-filled globes I recognized the offender immediately. I also recognized the voice. “Get up; right now! You’ve got to get a haircut.”

“Why?  I don’t need a haircut. I just got one last month.” Any objection voiced to this woman was a losing battle; and I knew it. When my mother wanted me to do something, it was a fait accompli. Either you did it, and did it quickly, or you suffered the unpleasant consequences that stemmed from even the slightest misdemeanor. Those unpleasant consequences were generally linked to a beating with a wooden hairbrush, causing my super-sensitive rear end to redden, like a turkey’s wattle.

“I’m only going to say this once, boy. Get up, get dressed, and go get a haircut. You’re making your conformation tomorrow morning and Bishop Jones will be there to perform the ceremony.” The bishop’s name was said with such reverence, that I thought we could have been in a receiving line at Buckingham Palace, and as we neared the Queen, her minion announced us, “Ma’am; may I present Ilda Agnes Boylan Abadie of Pelican Avenue in Algiers.” My mother would have bowed as low as she could, which was not very low given the fact she always wore a steel-banded corset about her lower body, impeding her every movement. Then the Queen’s snooty minion would have looked at me and with a caustic sneer on his lips, said to the Monarch,                       “Ma’am, this retched thing trailing behind her is her son, Little Buddy.”

Well, it was Little Buddy who hustled around the corner to Perkel’s Barber Shop, where a Mister Perkel and Mister Daigle plied their trade, trimming the hair of all legitimate males in our small community of Algiers. There was one other barber shop in town, but only those less fortunate went there and generally came out looking like they had just attended a private screening of A Clockwork Orange.

As was always the case when I would arrive at Perkel’s Barber Shop, it was crowded. Inside of Perkel’s, a picture window overlooking a green park on one side of the street and the Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church stood mightily opposite the park. My mother never allowed us to enter the church or the church yard, because for some insane reason, she hated all things Catholic. The one exception to her inviolate rule was made for my father; a devout Catholic. A man who went to church every morning of lent and never missed a Sunday, even though an archaic rule in the church forbade him from taking communion because he married out of the church and to a non-Catholic. Still, my mother grudgingly cooked his fish on Fridays, made the pilgrimage on the Algiers ferry to his mother’s house (my grandmother) on alternate weekends, and only rolled her eyes up into her head when a Catholic politician, actor, or priest, said something in my father’s presence. Otherwise she would have uttered a snide comment to whoever was closest to her.

Immediately across the street from Perkel’s, was Rosenthal’s Drug Store. Now old man Rosenthal was a rare creature himself. He had a hawk-like face with glaring yellow teeth when he smiled, which was not often enough for my taste. He could have played the part of Fagin if only we had an Algiers repertory theatre. There was a long counter in the store where Mr. Rosenthal would serve sodas, malts, and soft drinks, to wash down the over-sweet cinnamon rolls he sold and everyone seemed to enjoy. I had a minor spat with the man when I requested he put another scoop of ice cream in my soda. “Ya only gets one scoop; my boy,” Mr. Rosenthal said. When I insisted on a second scoop, I was banned from the store for a few weeks.

Once, my father got sick and I was instructed to go around the corner and ask him for some medicine. He gave me a bottle of pink liquid, from which my father took one giant swig and vomited it back into his bed. I’m pretty sure it was the last time we bought any medicine from Mr. Rosenthal.

On the corner across the park from Perkel’s was another drug store; Calderara’s Pharmacy. I never saw anyone go in or out of there. Presumably they had a few customers, but they must have entered under the cover of darkness. He probably sold a bunch of that pink stuff, like Mr. Rosenthal gave to my father, and that severely hindered his bottom line.

Once I made it inside Perkel’s hair emporium, the chairs racked up beneath the picture window were filled with middle aged men waiting their turn for one of Mister Perkel or Mister Daigle’s superb coiffures. Before I had a chance to sit down, I noticed something was different. For the first time ever, the third barber chair in the shop had a young man standing behind it, attired in a white shirt and trousers, with scissors poised at the ready.

The only problem was, this youthful fellow didn’t have anyone in his chair to clip, and furthermore, he had this faraway look in his eyes, that reminded one of a man in Algiers who used to bay at the moon all night. I remember waking one night to hear this strident scream emanating from in front of my house. For weeks, I didn’t sleep a wink. Finally, I told my mother about the experience, fully expecting her to explain about the horrid murder that happened on our street, but instead, she casually said, “Oh, that was just the Moon Man.” Everyone in this ridiculous village completely ignored this insane man, who nightly howled at the moon like a deranged werewolf.

As I stood in Perkel’s, I wondered why no one was in the third barber chair for I knew at least five men were waiting for their ritual cut. Glancing around at the other men in the shop, I could see them giggling among themselves, but I didn’t think anything about it. “They are probably saying things to each other about what the older boys talk about doing to the girls in our school. I can’t imagine anyone doing that with a girl.” I must have thought that at the time.

Finally one of the giggling men said to me, “Little Buddy, why don’t you jump up in the third chair. Mister Perkel’s son will take care of you.”

Well I knew my mother’s instructions to me were, “Tell Mister Perkel or Mister Daigle you have your confirmation tomorrow and Bishop Gerault M. Jones (a fervent bow of her head) will be there to confirm you.” She didn’t say anything about Mister Perkel’s son doing the cutting. “Cuz if she wanted me to see Mister Perkel’s son, she would have said so,” I thought silently. Paucity of words was not one of the woman’s shortcomings; she told you what she meant and you had better listen, or else.

“Go on son,” the Greek chorus sang from the chairs. “He don’t bite.”

My indecision was obvious, but I was afraid to say anything to either Mister Perkel or Mister Daigle; so poor Little Buddy sauntered up to the barber chair, like Marie Antoinette climbing the steps of the guillotine, and plopped down to the elevated giggles of the men seated by the window.

Before I knew it, Mister Perkel’s son was whipping those scissors around my scalp so fast, for a minute there; I thought he was Edward Scissorhands on one of his outings. When he finished with the scissors, he ran that buzzing thing all around my head, powdered my neck (he spilled great quantities of the powder down my back in the process), took my money and said “good bye” in the kindest fashion.

On my way out of the shop, I glanced over at the older guys still in the chairs, and their former giggles had morphed into gales of laughter. I couldn’t imagine what was so funny. It didn’t take long to find out, because when I arrived home, my mother took one look at Mister Perkel’s son’s masterpiece, and she shouted, “Who did this to you? It couldn’t have been Mister Perkel or Mister Daigle; who was it?”

“No ma’am, it wasn’t them. It was Mister Perkel’s son. The men made me get in his chair. I couldn’t talk to either of the other barbers before he called me.”

My mother pulled me by the ear into her bedroom and stood me before a full length mirror. With the hand that wasn’t abusing my ear, she took a mirror and placed it behind my head. Immediately, I saw this checkerboard looking back of my head that had a mixture of small tufts of hair interspaced between great gaps of gouged, naked scalp.

I was horrified. I knew I couldn’t go before Bishop Gerault M. Jones (head bowed) with my hair looking the way it did.
            “You go back there right now and tell Mister Perkel to fix what his son did; and I don’t care what he has to do.”

Back to the barber shop I go, my head was hanging all the way to my chest. I stopped at Rosenthal’s for a quick soda in order not to have to go into to the barber shop while the other men were still getting their haircuts. Finally I crossed the street and entered the shop with the back of my head looking like it was wacked with a meat cleaver.

I pleaded my first law case with Mister Perkel and he did what any father would do to straighten out the damage his prodigal son hath wrought. Even after the expert rendering by the maestro, the back of my head still looked like a killing field in the Civil War.

The next day, my mother was up early to inspect what an overnight elixir had done to my rear scalp as she had generously applied one of Mr. Rosenthal’s ointments to it before I was allowed to get into bed. By her tone, I assumed the ointment hadn’t performed up to its advertised high standard when I heard her say, “It looks worse than it did before. Look at all these scabs.” It appeared, once again, Mr. Rosenthal had let the Abadie clan down.

As I dressed for the my conformation ceremony, which was to culminate with my taking communion for the first time at the alter in Mount Olivet Episcopal Church on Pelican Avenue in Algiers, my mother slammed this winter knitted cap down onto my head. It reached my eyebrows in front and the nape of my neck in the rear. It was the most ghastly-looking thing I had ever seen. “I’m not wearing this,” I wept and dragged the offending object from my head.

“You’re wearing it or I’ll take the hairbrush to you and your back side will look worse than your head does.”

Needless-to-say I wore the wool hat. I felt such a fool crossing the street to the church. Standing in line with the other confirmees, only the girls and I had on caps. All the boys were teasing me, calling me a girl and things like that, but I sort of rose above them, affecting an attitude of ‘I don’t care what you think.’

Then a hush came over the parishioners as the back doors to the church opened and there in the frame stood Gerault McArthur Jones, The Exalted Bishop of the State of Louisiana Episcopal Church. He was dressed in a splendid purple robe with several red sashes ringing his massive girth. He carried a long golden staff in his right hand, and he looked capable of parting the Red Sea with it; or in our case the Mississippi River.

I now understood why my mother lionized this impressive and august man. He smiled at the confirmees and walked among us, much like Jesus did with the lepers, as his golden staff clanged against the stone floor with each step. When he got to me he uttered a sound as if he had finally found the elusive lepers, and in his basso-profundo voice bellowed out, “Take that cap off, boy. In our Episcopal Church, men are not allowed to wear a head covering. You will not approach Christ’s alter wearing that abomination.” With one of his magnificent hands he swept the cap from my head, revealing the scarred scalp for all to see.

However, as soon as the bishop began his rant, my mother left her prescribed pew and ran down the aisle, like a jilted bride bolting the church and snatched the cap from the hand of the bishop. She plunked the cap back down on my head, practically blinding me, and looked the bishop straight in the eye. She said in a loud voice, “Bishop, let me tell you one thing; he’s wearing this God-damned hat and that’s all there is to it.” 

Bishop Jones’ name was never again mentioned by anyone in my house. My father must still be laughing; wherever he is.

Shrimp Boat is Comin'

The Shrimp Boat

            In the late 60’s, already the victim of two abortive attempts in business, I blindly ventured into a third. Shrimp Boats of Louisiana, Inc. was a corporation composed of shareholders Reese & Abadi. Reese knew a fellow by the name of Dick Wasserman, who made a living selling cooking equipment to restaurants. Dick was about forty-five years old when I knew him, and was a man who appeared to consume copious portions prepared in one of those Wasserman stainless steel ovens. He was your typical salesman type, who spoke his memorized inanities, non-stop.

            Every time I heard his name mentioned, I could only think of the Wassermann diagnostic test for syphilis and wondered why I was eating anything exiting those ovens. He actually was fairly differential in his dealings with us and generally looked to his business partner to answer any of our questions. He was talked into his side of the partnership because he could sell his restaurant supplies to every franchisee, thereby making a hog’s killing before any of the franchisor’s profits were realized. Nice work if you can get it.

            Dick had apparently combined his talents with another man, whose name escapes me, and they founded a franchise with its defining signature being a restaurant shaped like a shrimpboat and specializing in seafood. After about an hour meeting with those two, George and I decided the only thing missing from our lives was a restaurant shaped like a shrimpboat and specializing in seafood; so we bought the deal. This was the first franchise sold by our antagonists, and neither of them had ever been in the retail restaurant business prior to this first sale. Reese and I missed that fact during our initial discussions.

            I once heard of a redneck from Mississippi and a Polish guy from Indiana, who opened a French restaurant in New Orleans. They were absentee owners, to boot. I immediately knew they had absolutely no chance of success. Neither one of them was trained in the business, as they were professional football players who got sold a bill of goods. They were well known luminaries in a city chocked full of fabulous restaurants, and obviously they thought the crowds would flock to their spot merely because their names were associated with the venture. I laughed like hell when I heard those two jocks got taken down by some hustlers. “How could they have done that?” I mused.

            Well, the ultimate laugh is on me. How could two lawyers succeed in the food business, whose only restaurant experience is sitting at a table d’hôte, with napkins stuck under their chins, a plate of boiled crawfish in front of them, and whistling up two more martinis? Answer is; they can’t. 

            As you drove down the main drag in a New Orleans suburb, up loomed this ugly structure resembling a hurricane-beached shrimpboat. It had a gangplank for its entrance, lifeboat rings with the name Shrimpboat of Louisiana written in a semi-circle attached to the front door, fish nets hanging inside, and it even had a crow’s nest upstairs to seat overflow diners. The kitchen had brand new, Wasserman-supplied, stainless steel equipment and all of the tables, chairs, booths, and pictures in the dining area were laced with a maritime theme. Then came opening night.

            “What can go wrong will go wrong,” is a motto this place thrived on. Opening night the rains came down in torrents. Now a little rain never stopped a Denny’s or Burger King from serving their customers, because their parking lots are paved and the customers have easy ingress and egress to these restaurants. At the Shrimpboat Restaurant, during this rain it became abundantly clear to everyone that our franchisors had not supplied a proper parking area to us.             As the few unsuspecting patrons, who braved the elements, attempted to exit from their parking spaces, they found their vehicles had sunk to about midway up the hubcaps in this thick, soupy, South Louisiana clay that held its prey like a jungle beast mired in quicksand.

            Of course, any sane person who witnessed the two lawyers and their secretary in the parking lot, up to their knees in goo, thoroughly soaked from the ever-present rain, pushing their initial customers out of this quagmire, would have suggested the doors to this august establishment be immediately nailed shut, and a “closed” sign should be hung from the doorknob.

            Rather than nail the doors shut, we merely ordered several loads of oyster shells to be dumped onto the parking areas, exchanging minor cuts to the customers’ tires for mud up to the floorboards. At any rate, the oyster shells did the trick and we continued in business.

            We did have to revise the gangway, since the moisture from the rain made it more slippery than goose grease, and several first night customers emerged rubbing their sore derrière.

            The next thing brought to our attention as owners was the packaging supplied by the franchisors was defective. Since I was the delivery boy for the first month (a lawyer in the restaurant business must start at the bottom), it was pointed out to me, in no uncertain terms, the food a take-out customer was receiving was a little off; maybe more than a little off. What was supposed to be crispy fried catfish, in reality was a soggy, flaccid, hunk of something resembling a fish, or at least in the same phylum as a fish.

            We discovered the delivery packaging was flawed in several ways. First, it had no holes in the box to allow the freshly cooked seafood to expel its steam. Second, the walls of the take-out boxes were lined with aluminum foil, creating more interior moisture, resulting in all of the boxed contents being drowned in a sea of evaporated steam, grease, and seafood liquids creating the fish sculpture previously described. To add insult to injury, all of the other accompanying foods (fried potatoes, rolls, etc.) were welded together with the mystery seafood producing an unidentifiable glob of the most uneatable omelet one can imagine. That was the end of our take-out business; at least, for return callers. Can you picture the looks on the patrons’ faces as they opened the tightly sealed aluminum-lined take-out boxes, expecting crispy fried seafood and instead receiving a rancid smelling collage stuck to the bottom of the container? As delivery-boy, I never saw so many jaws drop as the first glimpse of the boxed contents went from pleasure, to awe, to wonderment, to ire, to really pissed off, and finally to; “You expect me to pay for this crap?” In some cases, the box hit me in the back before I could beat my hasty retreat.

            Those were just a few of the startup problems. There were numerous others. As the business rapidly decreased, our investment increased proportionately, until such time we were forced to make a change. We told Wasserman and his buddy to buzz off, and finally, one night after closing, we had a face-off in the parking lot with the two of them versus Reese and me. Since I have always eschewed physical violence, particularly if it involves me, I invited Rod Saavedra to the party. Reese and I had long since forgiven Rod for his minor transgression of stealing our money. The night ended up with much shouting and posturing about who was at fault, and we verbally severed our relationship with those two unarmed bandits. Saner minds would say Reese & Abadie were at fault for participating in this boondoggle in the first place, but who listens to saner minds?

                        “Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”   Carl Jung

            We replaced our management (Reese & Abadie) with a friend of mine from high school, one Joe LaBella. La Bella, in Italian, is beautiful; whereas in Latin, bella is war. Something must have gone awry in the translation, just as something must have gone awry in the LaBella family.  Joe looked like he was descended from the Vikings; not the Romans.  Joe’s blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin certainly didn’t resemble the other Italian boys I grew up with, but his attitude was indeed beautiful. I can’t remember ever seeing Joe without a large smile and a kind word for me.

Joe was a great baseball pitcher in high school who specialized in a roundhouse curveball. The only curveball thrown here was the one the franchisors threw at us. Joe quickly told me he had enough of the restaurant business and we replaced him with another friend of mine from college, Carlton Sweeney, who lasted long enough to realize it was a sinking ship that could not be refloated; a virtual beached Titanic, and we were the ones drowning.  

            Carlton Sweeny had some kind of personality complex, because when he spoke to you, he did so with his head sunk down into his chest and he never looked you in the eyes. I understand he has been enormously successful in oil field ventures, since leaving his temporary residence in the food business, which proves the old axiom, “Slinging hash ain’t like drilling oil wells.”

One other person was tried as manager, and he lasted all of two weeks. I was actually a little dubious about his restaurant skills, when he instituted a breakfast menu to compliment our long suffering lunch and dinner fare. He was of Indian extraction (dot; not feather), and I guess he thought we needed to lose money on three meals per day instead of just two.  

            By this time we were losing so much money, Reese & Abadie had to return to the front lines taking over the day to day management. One particular night we ran an oyster special and several of the patrons suggested instead of serving the oysters on a mock oyster plate, we should serve them on real oyster shells, as most other seafood establishments in this area did. Not to be outdone by our competition, I raced out to the parking lot and collected about two dozen partially damaged oyster shells we had unloaded there after the opening night rains. I placed the bottled oysters on the fractured shells, salted them down and served ‘um up. You never heard so many wonderful compliments about those “freshly shucked beauties.” Our best selling item was a total fabrication.

Shortly after this brainstorm, Doug Atkins, a behemoth professional football player, entered this mock vessel, with a sidekick in tow, and ordered (demanded) oysters-on-the-half-shell. Try to imagine our half shells; they were not one half of the entire oyster as is customary in our local restaurants, but one half of one half, making them look a little weird, particularly with the majority of the bottled oyster sagging over both ends of the shell. The weeks of cars driving over the parking lot shells had taken its toll on the shell’s configuration.

Atkins, was about six feet eight inches tall, weighed well over three hundred pounds, and made Hulk Hogan look like Shirley Temple. He began slurping down our ersatz oysters-on-the-half-shell like there was no tomorrow. I don't know for sure what effect our oyster combination had on this big animal, but what I do know is; he never played one more down of football.

            One of my law professors, Hoffman Fuller, and his family came in one night while I was waiting the tables, handling the cash register, and trying to sober up the cook. He had taught a course in taxation, and he must have given me a donation of a passing grade, because to this date, I have absolutely no earthly idea what Congress has hidden in that IRS code. The man was literally so embarrassed he began to sink further and further down into the booth when he recognized one of his poorest students was wiping down the tables and shoveling hash to the few patrons left. His wife and family stared at him like he was a stroke victim. I, on the other hand, had completely lost all pride and approached the table with a, “Well, hello Professor Hoffman, how’s tricks?”

            “Ah, Mr. Abadie, er, er how er are you?” he stammered, turning red as a beet, while attempting to return to his original seated position.

            “Fine Professor, what’ll ya have?” For some inexplicable reason, I never saw him again. Presumably, he now instructs his tax classes in the pitfalls of attempting to circumvent his blessed IRS code and winding up like that Abadie boy.

            Several of my close friends frequented our little establishment, but only once; no relative ever dared show their face a second time. On a chance encounter in the business district, they were either at a loss for words, or I spied them dashing across the street to avoid a face-to-face confrontation with me, as though I had just contracted a fresh dose of the bubonic plague. The really close ones just laughed out loud and shook their heads in a physical show of disbelief. They didn’t have the gumption to ask how we were doing. I guess they knew.

            Two things finally did us in. Actually two hundred things did us in, but in reality the last two were devastating. When I came home one night my wife asked me if I saw the man land. I was so out of it, I asked, “What man?” Of course she was referring to July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon saying, “Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.” From growing up reading Buck Rogers and all of the other space comics, to this historic event, I was always fascinated by space and what is going on out there, and here it was I missed the most significant space adventure ever. Served me right.

            The last thing causing the close of this purveyor of fine foods was an event that occurred one dark and rainy night. It was also a night when the Shrimpboat proprietors featured an all-you-can-eat chicken special. I realize this was a restaurant specializing in seafood, but through some nefarious means, one of our longshoreman clients had located several crates of beheaded chickens and Reese and I figured, “What the hell difference does it make now? Let’s serve um up.”

            After a cursory inspection, our alcoholic cook swore to me the birds were just fine and he could fry them up to a golden perfection so that the old Colonel himself couldn’t tell the difference. I was particularly skeptical on hearing this proclamation, since he hadn’t changed the grease in the fryers for about ten days, and frying all the rancid seafood in them surely left a putrid residue, which would have sped the old Colonel to his grave many years sooner. But it was an all-you-can-eat special, and the combination of the inclement weather and our growing reputation for serving the worst food on planet Earth, apparently was keeping the wily patrons at bay. So I did not discontinue the promotional sale, feeling I was safe, or in this case, the unsuspecting customer was safe.

At this point, I worked at my law office from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Rushing home, I undressed and changed into my nighttime attire; old pants and an apron. I generally got to the Shrimpboat at about 6:00 p.m. and worked to 10:00, or even 11:00 o'clock, if any malingering customers had a desire to remain and chat after swilling the uneatable gruel.

            This final night a huge red-neck family waltzed in about five minutes before closing time, and spying the crow’s-nest, the big ugly one ordered his family to ascend the spiral staircase, leaving behind an entirely empty first floor. My bedside demeanor had waned over the intervening several months and as I approached his table, out of breath from the climb, I barked, “What do you want?”

“I want that God-damn chicken special, boy,” he shouted, popping several more veins in his already crimson nose.

“What do these two lovely children want?” I replied, looking down at two small malformed creatures, obviously a product of years of double-wide trailer inbreeding.

“They don’t want nothin’ boy. I’m the onlyest one eatin’.”

Now there was this loud-mouthed red-neck, what looked to be his wife (possibly his sister too), his two little cretin children, and an old lady who just sat there with saliva dribbling down her chin. I’m not sure how she got up those God-damned stairs without a hoist, but she made it in better shape than I did. So, down the stairs I went to see the cook, who was sitting in his favorite spot on the floor, sucking out of a bottle of cheap bourbon, and I barked the order, “One chicken special chef, on the double.”

While the chef was drunk, he was not stupid, and he replied, “What the fuck them other red-necks eatin’?”

“Nothing,” I said, with a wink, as the cook levered himself from the floor and commenced throwing the longshoreman’s headless monsters into his boiling cauldron.

Up I went to the crows nest the third time (second time to deliver drinks) and placed a large platter of faux chicken in front of this classic Bubba. About ten minutes later, I heard him yell, “Hey boy! More of this here chicken.” Another platter was delivered. Same request ten minutes after that, and I delivered yet a third portion. This time I noticed the grease was running down the faces of not only the obnoxious red-neck and his wife-sister, but also down the faces of the two no-neck monsters, and lastly, the spittle on Granny’s face was replaced by a puce colored gravy, which one can only assume was a product of the chef’s nasty cauldron.

“Sir,” I said, politely. “You can’t feed your entire family on one chicken special.”

“Listen boy,” he yelled, rising from his chair. “You jus’ haul yo’ ass down them stairs yonder and fetch me another plate of this here stuff, and don’t you worry none, about who’s eatin’ it.” 

I was about to respond when one of the no-neck cretins turned his head in my direction and said, “Big Daddy, I think I’m goin’ to be sick.” And sick he was. All down the front of my shirt, pants, belt, and shoes. Great globs of whatever animal it was the longshoreman stole, coupled with the chef’s ten-day-old grease, produced a chicken salad mosaic that stained my entire front.

I screamed maniacally, “Get the fuck out of here you red-neck bastard and take these retards with you.” I raced downstairs into the kitchen and came out brandishing one of the cook’s longest and sharpest knives, still screaming at this dysfunctional family at the top of my lungs. I chased that big bastard all the way to his pickup truck, threatening to castrate him and his wife-sister, as they sped from the depleted oyster-shell parking lot.

I went back into the kitchen, breathing heavily from the exercise, snatched the cheap bottle of bourbon from the staggering cook, and emptied it in one long pull. I turned to the cash register, unloaded the money, gave most of it to the cook, and told him, “Chester, we are officially closed.” I ordered him to hang a sign on the front door– Closed for Repairs– whereupon I drove to the nearest liquor store, bought a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon, and then on to Reese’s house for the final showdown. I relayed the most recent episode to George and told him I was thinking of how we could get out of this contract with the franchisors.

“How,” he asked sleepily.

“Sue the bastards,” I replied.

And sue we did. George’s nephew, Sam LeBlanc, was a real lawyer (as opposed to Reese & me), with a respectable firm, and George importuned him to take our case. We went all the way to the trial, empanelled a jury, and Reese and I testified to “the truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God.”  Our expert witness, Paul Sels, a Burger King executive at that time, testified and probably scarred the hell out of the defendants, because shortly after the morning recess we were offered a settlement, which we promptly accepted. If you had multiplied the settlement by ten thousand, we still lost a lot of money.

For several years after the conclusion of this trial, every time I waltzed into the courtroom where the trial was held, the Judge’s clerks sang out at me, “Shrimpboats is a’comin,’ their sails are in sight....”

Reese and I were the laughing stock of the entire courthouse.

            “Always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.”

                                                            Shakespeare:  As You Like It

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When handsome and urbane psychiatrist, Michael Amoretti, discovers his best friend and fellow colleague, has been murdered in a San Francisco office building, the psychiatrist is thrust into a labyrinth of death and deceit. After two of his children are murdered, Amoretti realizes this odious killer won’t stop until his entire family is destroyed. His only remaining option is to team up with an unlikely duo of homicide detectives and a mysterious Stanford forensic psychiatrist, renowned for his expertise in the pathology of serial killers. As the murders mount, so does the suspense, and only through a series of missteps will Amoretti realize the killer has been under his nose the entire time.

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