17-year old Steve Took answered an ad in the music newspaper Melody Maker. Guitarist Marc Bolan was looking for a drummer to join his band and Steve fit the bill. The band, Tyrannosaurus Rex, performed one disastrous show and Bolan fired everyone but Steve. They remained a duo, busking in subways with Steve accompanying Bolan’s …
Young Billy Haines ran away from his Virginia home, with his boyfriend, at age 14. They worked in a dance hall (that was most likely a brothel), until Billy was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout and offered a $40 a week contract with MGM Pictures. In March 1922, Billy was off to Hollywood. Billy …
Jenny Maxwell, a distant relative of Marilyn Monroe, began her acting career in small roles — mostly in TV westerns and sitcoms in the late 1950s. She made her big screen debut with an uncredited part in the 1959 teen melodrama Blue Denim, which dealt with the then-controversial subject of abortion. After an unsuccessful audition for …
Jack Kerouac carried a notebook with him wherever he went. He chronicled his life, his actions, his feelings… everything. He traveled across the United States and Mexico meeting people, observing their lives and writing about what he saw. His journeys and scribblings became the basis for his most famous book, On the Road. Viking Press, the publishing company that finally …
In the long ago days before eBay cornered the market on people selling their household castoffs, my wife and I frequented flea markets on a regular basis. Each Sunday morning, when the weather was nice (and sometimes when it wasn’t), we’d strap our unwilling young son into his car seat and head out to the …
Twenty-three year old Debora Sue Schatz, on the job as a mail carrier for just over a year and a half, was doing a favor for a co-worker. On June 7, 1984, immediately after finishing up her daily route, Debora drove to a more affluent section of West Houston to cover for a fellow mail carrier who needed some time …
Let me start out by saying I’m not going to vote, so fuck you. But, if I were to vote, it would be for Barack Obama. Why? Not because of his political promises or his vision for the country or his plans for the economy. He’s probably full of shit, just like every politician before …
Continue reading ‘from my sketchbook: they’re feeding our people that government cheese’ »
It was late in the 1977 baseball season. Dusty Baker, the Los Angeles Dodgers veteran right fielder, was coming around third base and trotting home on the final ninety feet of his 30th home run of the season. He was greeted at the plate by on-deck batter Glenn Burke, a youngster in his second year …
Aunt Nancy is awesome! In the thirty years since I was introduced to her, I have known her to be devoted to her friends and family (even family-by-marriage). She is a hard worker, reliable and dedicated to her employer. She is quiet and reserved. And, she is one of the nicest, sweetest, even-tempered people I …
Continue reading ‘from my sketchbook: the party’s just begun, we’ll let you in’ »
Nineteen-year-old Peggy Knudsen debuted on Broadway in the title role in the popular play My Sister Eileen, replacing Jo Ann Sayers, in the role she originated. Soon, Peggy headed for Hollywood, appearing in her first film A Stolen Life opposite Bette Davis. That performance led to her being cast as the icy Mona Mars in …
