The Electric Egg Cream

There is a certain show (I won’t mention its name; it gets enough undeserved attention) haunting the radio airwaves. It purports to analyze and discuss various topics that are either strange or preternatural and, in the end, remain just as unsolved and unexplained. From UFOs to Bigfoot, to Doomsday scenarios to government conspiracies, this show features them all. The only problem with this “top-rated” journey into the unknown is that it’s almost totally ridiculous and absurd. What it purports to “analyze” is, I think, based on the most spurious evidence and documentation, and what it “discusses” goes unchallenged and is “preached” to a mostly converted choir of listeners. However, it helps to keep everyone who listens within a constant state of fear and aura of doom.When Steven Spielberg decided to remake WAR OF THE WORLDS on the heels of 9/11 and center the destruction chiefly on New York City, it was no coincidence. Why not have the entire place reduced to rubble and clouds of dust, instead of having it confined to a 18- acre section of the city?…as indeed it was. Have individuals portrayed as helpless and hopeless (via a Tom Cruise), overwhelmed by an enemy that’s beyond their power to combat. (Why not go for broke?) Why not have pseudo-scientists on TV and radio shows, documentaries on PBS, predicting that the “End Is Near” when there’s an audience to attract and a buck to be made with such talk of doom and gloom? Be it a 300 mile wide asteroid that could strike the Earth in the year 2010 or a volcano that will blow us in half by 2015, etc., people seem to eat it up and just love to be scared while unknowingly exploited.

In the 50s and 60s, sane human beings dreaded the chance of nuclear annihilation. There was no need for UFOs or the chance of an asteroid impacting the earth, and so on, to keep people entertained and frightened. Films like GODZILLA and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS were based on either nuclear or “Commie” fears, respectively, and these were all the fears people needed in those days. My neighborhood’s local air raid siren was situated only a block or so from where I lived. In addition to running an air raid test every other Wednesday at 11AM, it wailed every weekday at noon to announce “lunch was served.” I was terrified of that sound, unlike any musical note played on any instrument in the known universe, even on the chromatic atonal scale, (a “note” like that was up to no good!). However, with the end of the Cold War (if it truly ended) and that Commie menace, new fears needed to be invented in our new and improved complex world.

Fortunately for governments, with fear comes a desire for security and with security comes a gradual loss of freedom: a tyrannical control by those who are only “protecting” us from real or imagined dangers. If our lives may be imperilled by an enemy scheming to blow everyone to smithereens, PAY any price for defense and security; even if the same dangers that existed yesterday remain today and will only get worse tomorrow, everything is “ secure” because yet more money is rolling in. If space agencies happen to be looking for an added 20 or 30 trillion dollars for their latest brainstorm, SCARE the people with tales of meteors that may strike the Earth: be comforted to “know” that they’re working on some laser system that will save everyone and everything from those dastardly rocks, whether they’re due to strike today or 300 million years from now. Scare people with reports of potential plagues that will ravish the world or solar flares that will turn our globe into a giant barbecue pit, and keep those stories of doom alive. They’ll just exploit the fear, then sit back and watch the profits soar: there’s always a profitable bogeyman out there somewhere, waiting to scare children in the dark.

(acknowledgements: Wikipedia/ related links, New York Times)

For an impressive, eyewitness account of this tragedy, read Ray Garcia’s “Sterling Place”:

midair-collision-over-newyork.co…

Butterscotch came upon us one moonlit and otherwise inconsequential night. There he suddenly and determinedly was, meowingly clawing at our door, and my wife and I gave him some milk. He came the next night and we gave him some milk and fish. He must have been so satisfied with these two visits that the next night he came to stay.This scampering-pattering puff-ball of brownish-tan and white, assuming the form and function of cat, wouldn’t have himself feel like a stranger for long. As soon as he concluded that our door was opened to him, IN he rushed and quickly made himself at home on our bookshelf: between my collection of Dickens and my wife’s collection of Proust, which was right below the shelf that contained our collection of Greek drama and comedy, and right above my carefully concealed stash of Playboy magazines. As with Poe’s raven who sat atop his bust of Pallas and accompanied his days of forgotten lore, so did Butterscotch sit…but, of course, with moderation; he would move around every so often, especially during times of full moons and solar eclipses.

Butterscotch, we were and are still certain, is a cat with a game plan; there must be something behind those blue eyes (one of the few cats I’ve ever seen with blue eyes). When we had him examined, the vet found that he was very healthy (for which we were glad), very fat (which was an understatement), about 2 years old (which made sense) and a pedigree (which was one of the stupidest things we’ve ever heard). By this time we had long ascertained that Butterscotch wasn’t only the fattest and laziest cat in New York City, but second only to his talent for eating and sleeping was his extraordinary talent for not being able to do anything at all. However, we went along with the joke, paid the bill, and on the way home picked up another sack of cat food for Butterscotch.

However, I would be doing Butterscotch a great injustice if I didn’t mention one talent he does have indeed: he’s a ladies’ man. During one of his midnight wanderings, he must have gotten word to the local cat community that he had found two incredible suckers and was proud to announce that he had “made their home HIS home.” Before we knew it, more cats were showing up at our door and even more cat food was being stored in our pantry. Along with this increased influx of cats, there also arrived Butterscotch’s Personal Harem of feline female acquaintances. Many were the moonlight nocturnes and serenades of cat romanticizing that would screech and caterwaul into the quiet night. Many were the times when a revolt in Butterscotch’s harem would cause him to stagger home bruised and bewildered. But these high times and hot nights came to a rapid and happy finale, when we kept him in and finally trained him as a house cat…thus ending his “cool cat” career, if he wanted to stay in our house (like my parents once did with me…but that’s another story). Also, Butterscotch was getting older and may have been happy for some moderation in his life.

There were times when I was a kid and sent on errand by my mother, I brought home everything in existence but what was originally on the errand list. For instance, there was a time when I was sent to the grocery store for a quart of milk, a loaf of bread and a tub of butter…and brought home a snake (but you’ve heard of those things before). It’s nice to see, now that I’m in my latter and more amused days, that unexpected creatures now come looking for me. What can I say?…or deny?

(Written last June when autumn seemed so far away):

Romance tends to become lost in the cracks and crevices, noise and turmoil, of New York City. The steel and concrete of overwhelming edifices and crowded streets seem to swallow-up the “best laid plans” of our emotional artistry and transcendental intellect; these are flimsy and are subject to the whims of immutable reality.

Summers have a way of adding insult to an already existing injury. The romantic mystique is scorched in the heat and drowned in the humidity, dissolving into pools of delusion and flowing through the insidious haze of grimy streets and subways. The deceptive allure of New York City legend is exposed in the glare of a pitiless and unfeeling sun which exposes all.

I usually suspend my love for the Romantics when summer arrives in this city; they seem tired and worn by antiquity in the torrid modernity of the present. Wordsworth’s idyllic fields, Coleridge’s impassioned dreams, and Byron and Shelley’s majestic passions are reduced to feeble singing in a wilderness of confusion. My oftentimes misplaced and mistimed sympathy with Romance is usually repaid with indifference and contempt, and goes unanswered in the heat and distraction of summer.

The next few days promise to be exceptionally hot and dampen my plans for imagined and proposed masterpieces in sweat. Writing becomes difficult and even sitting down to the piano becomes a chore. My expected attendance at season-purchased beloved ballets and operas will also include cases of underarm wetness and brow-drenched discomfort, mocking my efforts at well-dressed romantic appeal. So it goes.

Of course, summer will inevitably and once again fade into winter, with accompanying freezing temperatures and snow-blanketed streets. I’ll once again look forward to summer in my artistic introspection and expression on winter’s thin ice. The heat I’ll long for and hopefully find will be the passion of the soul and the illusions of dreams: the cracks and crevices, noise and turmoil, of New York City will still be here…but a little less bothersome, with the Beauty which is Romance a little easier to find.

She lives in the arabesque musings of GNOSSIENE #4 and other Satie eccentricities, reverberating and unfolding as the The Princess. She was the pride and joy of Soho, and proudly and joyfully would walk its streets. The Princess was the desire and envy of all the guys and gals, as her countenance would pass their attentive eyes. She was dressed not for the present but rather for both the past and the future; the “secret” in Victoria was a secret revealed in the Princess and she carelessly and seductively revealed it to all. Her high heels would pierce the cobblestone streets as her stockinged legs would glimmer in the sunlight and glisten in the moonlight, her raven hair caressing the upper-curves of her swaying torso. The Princess may have been 25 going on 16 in her child-like exuberance or 16 going on 50 in her child-like wisdom. She could have out-breakfasted Holly Golightly at Tiffany’s, lunched with professors at N.Y.U., dined with the Broadway elite at Sardi’s, and been home by 8 to reconfigure her circle of acquaintances.

No one seemed to have names but rather quaint pseudonyms in those fanciful bohemian days. Along with the Princess, there was the “The Duke” and “Plato” and “Salome” and “Calphurnia”…and so on, and these served as clever appellations in our artistic anonymity residing in grotesque lofts and garret abodes. Hidden away in their busy playrooms and plying at creative playthings, everyone was playfully working on their own individual masterpiece. But the Princess made a particular display of the masterpiece that was herself and would boldly display it to her select group of connoisseurs…I being an awkward one of them.

The Princess’ loft was a dazzling swirl of multi-colors and patterns, resonating off richly-woven tapestries and deeply-piled rugs. In the sky-lighted atmosphere were revealed sculptures and curios sitting beside books, impulsively arranged on numerous shelves, which hovered next to paintings and photographs that lined the walls and converged on the Princess’ piano and diverged on all as she played. We would be captivated by the lustre and swept off to her magical kingdom and baste in the sounds as of a Siren. If she knew two or three chords it was giving her too much credit, but those two or three chords went far and the Princess seemed to master the etudes of the Masters and suddenly add them to her accomplished repertoire. Her paintings which might have been the mischievous idleness of a little girl, seemed like a cross between Pollock and Monet with a dash of Renoir thrown in for good measure. She would read some of her poetry, which might have been the doggerel of a drunk, but from her lips they echoed the music of T.S. Eliot to Keats in the glow of her enchantment.

Among the the Princess’ many talents, and by far her most unforgettable, was her unparalleled “art of dying.” Never since Shakespeare’s Cleopatra was anyone so skilled at the art of either on-the-verge, attempted or even accomplished suicide (her most stunning achievement) as was the Princess. In what would have made Lazarus’ rising from the dead look like a second-rate sideshow attraction, many were the times the Princess would die and resurrect herself as if in one graceful motion. Many were the times we had learned that the Princess had once again died and was then miraculously seen in vigorous circulation on Bleecker Street in less than an hour. Once she had died at 6 but was still able to promptly make an an 8 o’clock curtain at the Metropolitan Opera. Many of the Princess’ suitors would arrive bearing gifts of flowers, candies or teddy bears, when some time later to the accompaniment of hysterical weeping and screaming, shattered glasses and dishes, said suitor would fly into the night with his respective flowers, candies or teddy bear briskly following behind him. Then all would await the inevitable arrival of the police followed by the inevitable ambulance because yet once again the Princess had died.

Time, however, has no patience with royalty nor with spectacles of death-defying suicide. The Princess soon fell on hard times and her daily appearances were becoming less joyful and less proud…in fact, they were becoming less looked forward to by our self-consumed community. Having just married, I had other diversions to occupy me: for instance, facing the horrifying reality of finding a profitable job. The Princess’ final moments on the stage of my recollections are scant and few (unfinished, along with a now lost feeble piano etude I had feebly composed for her) and I could only remember saying Goodbye (I, the most untalented of the Princess’ suitors, joining the rest of my departing neighbors going out with the tide). She looked older (more like 30 than 25 and maybe much older) and called me by my real name in defiance of anonymity. I think she asked me about a certain piece of music or some other thing in a hoarse, unintelligible voice…but because I couldn’t help nor understand her I told myself I didn’t care, because I would never forget her.

Over the years, many apes of various shapes and sizes have passed through New York City’s tangled confusion with varying degrees of success. Some have prospered and thrived, while others were left penniless and forlorn. Some have become renowned and legendary figures, while others became figures of derision and ridicule. Some apes were even elected to city government, joining other less-developed forms of life there. But one ape experienced the entire spectrum of highs and lows; working his way from the very top to the very bottom, one week in April 1983.

King Kong (formerly of Skull Island) was forced to relocate to NYC (if only, as it turned out, a short-lived move) and make it his home…and make it his home he did!!! Never before, or since, did an ape “do the town” the way Kong did it, with time and energy to spare. Learning self-reliance and initiative from his free and easy days on the island (battling a prehistoric beast here, a strange-looking intruder there), Kong was more than ready for his trip to New York and his star-crossed but high-spirited romance with Fay Wray. Alas, just when it seemed that the Big Ape had made a monkey of the Big Apple and had achieved the heights of love and that of the Empire State Building, a squadron of biplanes ruined the King’s plans for a triumphant municipal and nuptial future.

Any ape that comes to New York and makes a spectacle of himself atop the Empire State Building will invariably run into trouble: the bigger the ape, the bigger the trouble. This is what King Kong experienced in 1933 and this is what happended again in 1983 when the 50th anniversary of the film was being commemorated.

A probably well-meaning but hopelessly unfortunate group of promoters constructed a 3,000 pound, eight-story nylon balloon model of the late and legendary ape, which they intended to tether outside the 86th floor of the Empire State Building (minus Fay Wray, of course) for all to see. From the start, things went wrong: the ape-balloon suffering a blowout in its armpit during a test and dangling in a heap from the side of the building, bringing disappointment to eager onlookers. Undaunted, the promoters (after correcting the tangled tethers and repairing the punctured hole) cheerfully announced that Kong was still scheduled to make his debut for his seven- to ten-day appearance the next day. With millions of people watching on television, and hundreds of thousands along the streets and highways of the city craned for a glimpse of the ape, the Empire State Building was there…but no King Kong. And the next day came and the next, with no King Kong or just sporadic, momentary sightings of his inflated image that would as quickly deflate…looking more like an escapee from a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The promoters continued the ballyhoo as if nothing untoward had happened. While Kong continued to foolishly dangle above, hemorrhaging air ( the fact being that the promoters couldn’t repair the puncture in the balloon), in the lobby an endless series of press conferences featured government officials and corporations pledging services to the Kong Project in glowing terms and cynical posturings. King Kong-related memorabilia and souvenirs were on display and sold nearby, accompanied by a week of continuous showings of the film in revival theaters and on television. Hundreds of dignitaries and press representatives consumed hor d’oeuvres in the building’s observatory while a man in a gorilla suit standing next to Harry Helmsley (then the owner of the Empire State Building) greeted everyone.

To add to the absurdity, dodging helicopters carrying news photographers and a few airliners flying special routes to give passengers a glimpse of the Kong balloon, two biplanes (replicas of those that had shot and killed Kong in the film) buzzed the building. By this time, however, no one really cared and most New Yorkers couldn’t wait until the dignitaries, the officials and (especially) the promoters would get lost and take their balloon with them. King Kong had to have been rolling over in his grave during all of this…but such are the ups and downs of show biz concerning issues of ape and man.

New York City has never been known for its haunted houses…and for good reason: there aren’t any here!!! Throughout the entire city, there’s not one genuine haunted house of any fascinating distinction or old-fashioned merit. Ghosts and goblins never seemed to blend into the city’s “melting pot” of fast-paced nine-to-five hours and meat-and-potatoes grittiness. Since the time that New York City was called New Amsterdam, and despite millions having resided and having passed-on into the “big sleep” of destiny, not one dearly departed resident is known to have ever dearly returned.

Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, for instance, would have as much a chance as a snowball in hell next to the squeal of the IRT speeding through the ground and a construction crew boring through the ground for its haunted ambience. How the eerie peace and hallucinating quiet, crucial to ghost-seekers everywhere, would prove to be ultimately impotent. Henry James’ Bly Manor would also fail NYC’s stark reality; its governess, her two precocious charges and the alleged spooks influencing their play, fading into absurdity. Even the PSYCHO Home of “maternal devotion” would look more like another shack awaiting the wrecking-ball, and Norman Bates just another psychotic in a long list of similar psychotics (of course, not quite with Norman’s versatility).

Which brings me to Alfred Hitchcock the Master of Suspense who, in 1956, came to NYC in search of an authentic haunted house, in his own playfully eccentric and ambitiously perverse manner.

Meyer Berger, a former columnist for the New York Times, wrote that “the town has gone so utterly modern in mid-twentieth century that, even with more than 8,008,000 souls in its 2,000,000 dwellings, researchers have not been able to turn up a single ghost for a haunted chamber.” Hitchcock planned to host a “haunted house party” in the city along with such macabre touches apropos to its novelty: “coffin bars, spectral voices (hi-fi) behind drapes and old paintings” and all the other clever gimmicks and quaint devices that complement a haunted setting. But where would that setting be found?

Hitchcock had his publicists, Young and Rubicam, scour the town for a flat or house that was haunted by anyone or anything. He probably thought that a haunted house would be as easy to find in NYC as it may have been in his native Britain and, at first, his team “just asked around” for a richly haunted abode at a modest rental cost. After weeks of futile searching, Y and R were ready to settle for any house that “just looked haunted, even if it wasn’t.” At the suggestion of a colleague, Hitch began considering the abandoned wine cellars along the Manhattan end of Brooklyn Bridge.

“Hitchcock was delighted with the deserted old wine caverns. They were dank. Their walls had phosphorescent glow. Even whispers started noble rolling echoes in the place….Mr. Hitchcock could have complete freedom in these spooky precincts.” There was one “hitch” to Hitch’s sinister party plans: there was no plumbing which meant no washrooms…of course, the many women Hitchcock was expecting at his party would never attend such an inadequate affair, despite its ghostly potential. When he learned that temporary fixtures for the caverns would be too expensive, that location fell through.

Hitchcock then went to the Old Merchant’s House at East Fourth Street, the former Tredwell Mansion, which is vaguely reputed to contain a ghost (albeit a somewhat feeble and senile one). The Tredwell kin who were running the place as a public museum, “coldly” turned Hitchcock down when they learned that the great director intended to use their property for a party. While still recovering from that disappointment, Hitchcock received more bad news when he consulted the American Psychic Research Society which reported that “there are no ghosts left in this city of chrome and concrete…though New York ghosts were active up to a decade ago.” (This supports my own long-held belief that ghosts moved to the suburbs amidst the 1950s mass migration of adventurers).

Now Hitchcock REALLY became serious and took DESPERATE MEASURES: he advertised for a haunted house in the NY Times Real Estate section. After the usual string of phone calls that ranged from real estate agents to screwballs, Hitchcock narrowed his prospects down to three: a “house at West Forty-sixth Street with a built-in phantom lady; a private house in East Seventy-seventh street; a lovely old cobwebby mansion at East Eightieth Street, abandoned and gloomy.” (this became Hitch’s choice). While no actual spirits may have shown-up at the party, I’m sure that the spirits were flowing just the same…and for Hitch, what could have been better? But we’re in urgent need here in New York: Would someone please send in a ghost or two!!!

************

POSTSCRIPT:

Through the high-tech miracle of cyberspace, you ask for a ghost or two to be sent in and your wishes are granted. The following is from Cheryl McBee, who not only provides detailed directions to a genuinely haunted house located in Manhattan, but also describes her own experiences while living there:

Hi Micheal,

Just to make sure you find it; the house is on West 71st., off Columbus Ave. (between Broadway and Columbus).Walking toward Broadway, it’s the brownstone right next door to the Grace and St. Paul Lutheran Church (on the other side of the church is the Hargrave Hotel so you won’t be confused). When I passed by on Wednesday, the Church had a black and white, Keith Harring type banner flying above it. It’s a very small, dark, unexpected, church - so If you blink your eyes you’ll pass it.
The house belonged to the Everson family. Old man Everson died some time in the mid -eighties but, in his will, he stipulated that nothing be changed. When I stayed there, his glasses and medicine bottles were still on his dresser along with his brushes, comb, etc. He even had a decanter of some kind of yellow liquor on a tray in the library! Almost every night, my roommate and I would hear him shuffling down the third floor hallway playing with the chain in the light bulb socket - and he had respiratory problems - even in death! His unpleasant and judgemental personality became stronger over time - and so did his smell! And there were others. Family members? Who knows!
Until Dr. Osis of the American Society of Psychic Research came over, at my request, with a clairvoyant who told me, I didn’t know that I was sensitive to this kind of energy; but I really don’t like trafficking with ghosts. It’s all I can do to deal in this world, let alone the next. I left.

PS

You know the best way to get a ghost to leave you alone - is to tell it off! It worked!

Have Fun
CM
On Jan 17, 2008 11:11 PM,

Thanks, Cheryl. I’ll be on the lookout for the strange and unusual. However, in NYC, that in itself could be difficult to sort through!!! MJT