Sadly, my  beautiful, beloved pet Noble Macaw, McGee, passed over into Bird Heaven on Sunday night, February 7th, 2010, at the age of roughly 20.  I found him dead, at around 10:30 p. m., on the bottom of his cage.  It was very much of a shock, which I still haven’t gotten over, but I hope it’ll wear off soon.  

So saying, I’ve decided to write a memoir of McGee.  Here goes:

I had been wanting a pet bird for quite a long time.  After doing some research and looking in various pet stores, we hit upon one in Boston’s Back Bay area called Back Bay Aquarium & Pet Shop, which is no longer in business.  After looking at some Noble Macaws, I decided I wanted a Noble Macaw as a pet.   After going on vacation for a couple of weeks, I picked out one of the young, green macaws, with a blonde beak, red under the wings, and olive yellow underneath closer to the body.   Accompanied by my parents, I picked out the bird,  selected a cage, reserved the bird and, then my parents and I went to lunch at Chang-Sho, a popular Chinese restaurant in Cambridge’s Porter Square.  All during lunch, we kept throwing out names for the bird, and my mother finally asked me  “What’s the name that Ian (my younger brother) constantly calls you out of affection?”  “McGee”, I replied.  So, the name stuck, and we all agreed that the name “McGee” was a good name for the bird.  

The next day, Sunday, was a rainy, cold day, and I picked up McGee from the Pet Shop.  The pet shop manager put McGee in a cardboard carrier, and I drove him home and put him in his cage, gave him food and water, and allowed him to become acclimated to me and his new surroundings.  McGee squawked happily, and enjoyed himself.  However, the euphoria was relatively short-lived, when a now ex- neighbor who worked nights and slept during the day, complained about the noise.  The guy who lived with her was more amiable, and said that he’d prefer not to be woken up before 7:30 a. m. by McGee’s noise, so I purchased a dark brown cover for the bird’s cage, and made a point of closing my Venetian blinds with the slats facing outward to keep the early-morning sun out of the apartment.  It worked, and that part of the problem was solved.  Since I  then had a fulltime job, I ended up confining McGee to my studio, which was an OK compromise.  At the manager’s suggestion, I took him up to my loft to meet McGee, who immediately won him over.  

Although the woman wasn’t  satisfied, and continued to give me a hard time, it had to do.  One day, as I was going out for a morning run, and the complaining woman had just finished her run, I decided to confront her, saying  “Hey!  If you’ve got any problems, it would be very much appreciated if you’d come and talk to me about it first.”  The woman quickly ran upstairs.  A little later, as I was finishing my morning run, I saw the woman going towards the MBTA station, in the opposite direction from where I was going.  When she saw me, she fled to the opposite side of the highway, stumbling and almost falling down as she ran across the road!  

Hi, everybody!  

Oops!  Again…sorry about being late…by a day, yet!  I’ve been very preoccupied lately;  my mind’s been absolutely racing, if one gets the drift.   Lots of stuff on my mind;   busy adjusting  scheduled appointments gone wrong, missing my normal life of silversmithing work, TKD,  bicycling, and whatever.  Oh well, at least I’ve had the use of my legs, so that I’ve been able to take long walks for exercise afew times a week.  

My Labor Day weekend was uneventful, except for going to see a screening of the mid=1970’s film, “Jaws”, which played to a packed house!   I kid you not….they sold out, so it’s a good thing that I’d purchased a ticket for  myself in advance of this movie screening.   I have to admit that this is another movie, which, while it certainly doesn’t hold the special place in my heart regarding movies as West Side Story, that it, too, is an enjoyable film, although the fakery in it (such as the mannequin’s leg when they found the young girl’s leg underwater later after she’d been avulsed by the Great White Shark, plus the construction of the shark itself for the movie) was quite obvious.  Richard Dreyfuss was quite good as the Marine Biologist, Roy Schneider was equally good as the Amity Chief of Police, and Robert Shaw was certainly cool as the rough, drunken seaman,  Quint, who volunteered to go out in his vessel and catch the Great White Shark  that had been terrorizing Amity’s beaches, attacking and killing people, to the tune of ten grand.  There was much clapping, laughter and (some ribald) comments and joking from the audience, but it was a fun evening.  

I wanted an aisle seat, but couldn’t get anything except on the left side of the theatre, in one of the front  rows, so I had to be content with what I could get, if I wanted an aisle seat.  I ended up sharing a row with three men from Boston’s Charlestown section,  who seemed okay, and I had a pleasant enough conversation with one of them.  So, I came to realize that maybe, just maybe,  there were plenty of C-Town’s oldtimers who were decent human beings and not all racist yahoos, bank robbers or other criminals.  We exchanged pleasantries prior to the movie, and, the guy I’d been conversing with asked me if I wanted anything before he went out to the concession stand.  I smiled, thanked him, and declined the offer, since I’d already eaten before the movie.  After the movie, another one of the guys said, pleasantly enough to me;  “have a good night”  Again, I smiled and said.  “Thanks.  You too.”.

That conversation re-enforced my opinions that the accents  in Ben Affleck’s movie  “The Town” sounded totally phony and forced, although I did not say so publicly.  

The movie “Jaws” that was shown was a beautifully cleaned up, re-printed and re-mastered copy of the film, which, ideally, is the way to really see a movie, and that’s one of the purposes of coming to a movie theatre like the Coolidge Corner Theatre.  Being a member definitely has its advaantages;  I can get in on a considerable discount, and they often have special screenings of certain movies that’re absolutely free to members.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the kind of membership at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in which I can get myself and a guest or two admitted on a discount, or for free during special screening events, first because most of the other types of memberships they have are too expensive, and secondly, my friends aren’t as much into going to the movies as I am.  

One movie that I do not particularly want to see, however, is the new film  “2016”.  As everybody on here knows, I’m not a fan of Obama.  This film, however, sounds like a real piece of propaganda, which essentially refers to President Obama as a left-leaning Socialist, which, imho, he isn’t even the next fucking thing to!  Pardon my french, folks, but that’s how I see it.  Anybody who’d extend, expand and ante up G. W. Bush’s policies such as our stupid-assed, illegal and wrongheaded foreign wars, attacks on Civil Liberties,  start parroting AIPAC’s (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, i. e. the Israel Lobby) lines and caving into Benjamin Netanyahu the minute he takes office, and lacks the gumption to tell Israel to get the hell out of West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and allow the Palestinians their own independent, sovereign nation-state alongside Israel, and to pass an 20 y/o POS GOP-written healthcare “reform” bill into law and furthermore, allow abortion rights to be taken off the table to get it passed, is no goddamed Socialist.  I mean, seriously…who are the people (including some of my friends) who call Obama a Socialist kidding?  The fact that Obama took both Single Payer and Public Option off of the table for healthcare reform also disqualify him as a Socialist, among other stuff that would take too long to mention.  

Every so often, I think about and listen to my favorite oldies (1960’s-early/mid-1970’s) rock-n-roll music, which tends to promote a nostalgia for the days when things were crazy, yes, but not as crazy as they are now, and the music (as well as a lot of the movies) back then reflected a certain exuberance that existed in that particular era, which didn’t constantly borderline frenzy, or cross over into frenzy, at least not to the extent that it all too often does during the course of these days.  

Of course, however,  as some people will put it, the good old days weren’t always good.  Along with the good back in the 1960’s and early to mid 1970’s, a lot of bad happened as well, which, unfortunately, contributed a great deal to the United States’ slide to the extreme Right, something that had been waiting in the wings all along.    A strong streak of anti-intellectualism has always permeated the Unites States society and culture, from Day One,  and it has manifested itself in many bizarre or nasty ways, especially starting in the early to mid 1950’s, with the McCarthy Era.  

There are a number of people who claim, both rightly and wrongly, that the United States is sliding into somewhat of a police state, an authoritarian state,  or an outright Fascist state.  Sadly, if one really looks at the history of the United States, the trappings for such a state as what’s mentioned above, have been there since day one, from the old, old Salem Witchhunts to the McCarthy period, and even beyond that, where demonstrators, even peaceful ones (which most of them were), have all too often been roughed  up in the streets by the police, arrested, and even jailed for no good reasons.  It happened during the Civil Rights Movement, our Viet Nam War, the time of our 2nd Iraq war, and it’s happening even now, under this present Administration in Washington.  

Anyway, thought, back to the subject at hand:  I thought I’d write a little bit about a certain rock group that I liked a great deal…and still do;  The 5th Dimension.  I had the good fortune to see them several years ago, in concert, at the Charles River Esplanade here in Boston, as part of the now-defunct summer WODS (103.3 FM) radio (the oldies station), and they were quite good.  Unfortunately, for some strange reason, those concerts are not being done anymore, which is a shame, because they had some really great groups performing on the Esplanade for free, which attracted thousands of people.  I do  miss those days, but what can I do?  I have tons of CD’s of my favorite rock groups from those days, which I listen to a great deal.  I guess I’m somewhat old fashioned at heart, but that’s okay.  

Hey, folks, I’m in the mood to post this, so here I am.  I recognize the fact that most people really like Ben Affleck’s most recent movie,  The Town, and I would’ve wanted to like it, too, but imho, there’s too much wrong with The Town for me not to look at  this film with  much harsher judgement and a much more critical eye than many, if not most people.  

I admittedly liked Ben Affleck a lot in Good Will Hunting.  He and  Matt Damon also did a great job  working  together in this particular movie.    Good Will Hunting, imo, is a good film that really worked.  However, I think that Ben Affleck fell badly on The Town, and part if it is probably due to the fact that he took on two jobs;  directing and playing the lead character.  

Imho, The Town is an overrated, cheesy piece of junk that’s more like a feature-length made-for TV soap opera than a regular movie, which never, ever should’ve made it into the cinemas at all, in the first place.  Yet, I realize that, in order to get the democratic society that we all long for, different viewpoints have to be aired, no matter how much at odds they may  be with each other.  .

The cast is mediocre at best, the plot and story are overused, the Boston accents, especially on the part of Ben Affleck, are forced and way overdone, and the chemistry between Doug and Claire is non-existent to paltry, at best. One of the most, if not the most bothersome aspects of The Town is the message that it clearly conveys; People don’t have to be accountable for their actions and behaviors;  that it’s okay to steal and rob innocent people of money that they don’t deserve to lose, to terrorize, permanently maim, put innocent bank employees and customers’ lives and safety at risk, to abet an armed felon and wanted fugitive (Doug MacRay, the ringleader)to escape the law by getting involved romantically with him, allow him to buy expensive Tiffany diamond necklaces for one, and make utter dupes of law enforcement people who’ve been assigned to bring guys like Doug MacRay to justice and end their robbery careers once and for all, by lying to the Feds, and tipping an armed felon and wanted fugitive (Doug MacRay) off to them and helping them escape, and that it’s okay to take the law into one’s own hands and to kill a couple of people just because they threatened to do Heaven-knows-what to a girlfriend, or whoever. I think it’s totally wrong.

Oh, and why is it okay for good-girl Claire to receive stolen goods and spend  that ill-gotten money on the renovation of a seedy hockey rink and dedicate it to her criminal boyfriend’s mother who she never knew, instead of arranging to turn it into the police anonymously?

Hey…come on!  Doug put the romance moves on Claire when he met her, in order to shut her up and warn her oh, so subtely not to talk to the Feds or else! One’s supposed to think that Doug really loves Claire and is attrracted to her by her winsome personality, but nothing could be further from the truth, imo. He found Claire attractive, in that she was clearly vulnerable after being traumatized by him and his guys after they held up her bank at gunpoint, and therefore quite gullible and open to exploitation. Almost as soon as Doug got what he wanted out of Claire (a promise not to go to the cops or the Feds), he left the money in her garden and skipped town for Florida, because he was on the lam from the law and couldn’t elope with Claire and exploit her as a bargaining chip, the way he’d wanted to do.   Yet, there’s another reason why Doug left Claire behind when he skipped town for Florida instead of taking her with him;  Doug’s days of hiding out down in Florida in a house overlooking a bayou were numbered,  that sooner or later he’d be hunted down and caught, perhaps violently, by the Feds, and at some level, both he and Claire  must’ve known that.  It was especially obvious when FBI Agt. Frawley said to Claire  “You know the FBI is a national organization”, and then requested that the descriptions and photos of Doug MacRay be circulated.  Isn’t it funny how the vast majority of people, either naively or in willful ignorance, miss all of the above!

It’s funny how most people don’t realize that Doug was a sociopath who totally exploited the women in his life; Krista for sex, and he left her with nothing, even though he knew she had a young child to take care of (who might or might not be Doug’s), and Claire, who he thought he could elope to Florida with, but could not, after having charmed her into trusting him and then worming his way into her heart so that she’d shut up and not talk to the Feds. One is supposed to sympathize with both Doug and Claire, but, in reality, neither of them deserved any sympathy.

Imho, when the Feds had Claire and Doug meet at her Charlestown condo in a last-ditch effort to nab Doug MacRay and send him off to a Federal penitentiary for his crimes, the Feds should’ve made Claire keep her big fat trap shut, not call Doug or answer any of his phone calls, and let them do their job of arresting Doug and bringing him to prison for his crimes.

Doug deserved to end up in a federal penitentiary for his crimes, and Claire deserved to be criminally prosecuted herself, or at least put on some sort of probation for abetting Doug and for receiving stolen goods (Doug’s illl-gotten heist money).

I’m sorry, folks, but I cannot bring myself to be sympathetic to either Doug or Claire, who, imho, turned out to be the most dislikable, and annoying characters in The Town.  I also think the fact that Claire quit her job as a bank manager after the robbery without telling anybody, including the Feds, is also rather suspicious.   What most people don’t realize is that Doug is an armed felon and wanted fugitive who’s on the lam from the law, so he’s not going to Florida on vacation. Happily, there’s no way that he and Claire will ever meet again, which is what the final “I’ll see you again, this side or the other” sentence in Doug’s “goodbye, I’ll always love you” letter to Claire before he skipped town for Florida means,  but the fact that Claire didn’t turn to Frawley for help after learning the truth about Doug and reallizing that she was in over her head, is beyond stupid, and wrong.  

The fact that Doug and Jem beat the crap out of two Dominicans from a housing project who’d supposedly thrown bottles at Claire when she’d been stupid enough to walk by herself through a housing project (no woman in her right mind would do that, at any time of night or day) and permanently cripple them, especially since they didn’t even tell the two Dominicans why they are beating him up,  shows that underneath that smooth, sweet-talking, gentle veneer of his,  Doug, as well as Jem, is a man of  unprovoked violence, and more like his incarcerated father (who, btw, is serving several life sentences in MCI-Cedar Junction for bank robbery and murder) than he would’ve liked to admit. My, my…Lady Claire must’ve felt flattered that two armed felons who were also wanted fugitives from the law came to her defense! Pretty sickening, this whole thing.

I started writing an essay with this title early yesterday morning on docudharma.com, only to have it just disappear on me when I was roughly halfway through it.  It’s a royal pain in the ass when that happens, but I decided to wait until later today to try it again, as I was too exasperated to try to do it over again right away.  

I’ll start out by saying that my initial introduction to West Side Story was through the music of the original Broadway stage production of this musical.   It came while I was attending day camp out west in the summer of 1962, prior to entering the sixth grade.  A girl in the group I was with, who’d just received an LP copy of the original Broadway soundtrack of WSS for her birthday, brought it to camp and played it for the rest of the group.  My love of West Side Story took off…instantly.  

West Side Story-mania was in the air that summer.  Kids roamed the hallways, sometimes in groups, snapping their fingers, and the various songs from WSS rang through the bus to and from camp every day of the week, as the kids sang all the songs.  It was cool.  

I missed seeing the film version of West Side Story during the heyday of its popularity, partly due to my relative isolation from most of the other kids, and partly because my parents refused to  take my sister and I to see it, at least in part because they didn’t think (and my mom still doesn’t think) that West Side Story was a kids’ movie.  Having seen this great, golden oldie but keeper of a Classic movie/musical more times than I’m able or willing to count at this point, the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with my mom on this point.  

Since my parents also had an LP copy of the soundtrack of the original Broadway stage version of WSS, I played it on my parents’ Hi-Fi whenever I had the opportunity to do so, because I’d come to so love the music and the story of West Side Story itself.  I would not get to see the movie until seven years later, as my high school years were coming to a close, and WSS, although there was a big national re-release of it, had passed the heyday of its popularity, freshness and newness.

I finally did get to see it for the first time, at around Christmastime of 1968, as a high school Senior, at a now-defunct cinema that was roughly 45 minutes north of Boston, and fell in love with this film the minute I saw it.  Little did I, or my family know, that this was the start of my own love affair with the film West SIde Story that would last all the way up until the present, much to their amusement, chagrin and resigned acceptence of this particular idiosyncrasy of mine.