Dear Zucky,

Please forgive the informality, but guys who have Zuckerberg (EnglishTranslation Sugarmountain) for a name were always called Zucky in my old Brooklyn neighborhood.

I know you come from Scarsdale or some ritzy place but I’ll bet you were still called “Zucky” as a term of endearment…and above all, I want this letter to be endearing.

Because you could lterally save my life

Here’s how. I am a broke, hasbeen actor/writer. I currently have a flop at the Motion Picture Home for the aged. It’s not a bad place—it’s just not for me. Though I’m deep in my eighties, I still have hope, and there’s little of that around here. My fellow denizens walk around (if they can still walk) constantly complaining about their aches and pains. They also bitch about the lack of visits from their ungrateful children. But one visit they don’t complain about and that’s the one that’s inevitable, is the visit from the Grim Reaper.

I’m putting him off too because I still want to live like I used to. And I once  lived pretty good in Hollywood. But with alimony, bad investments, and the ever-shrinking job market for altercockers,(old man) I can’t find work!

Now by the grace of Hashem,(For those who are not MOT ( member of the tribe ) that’s how we Jews refer to God. As I was saying, by the grace of Hashem I finally got a helluva job and you Zucky, got it for me.  You recently made the first Facebook television commercial…it was a beaut. It depicted many people from around the world who use Facebook which essentially means the entire world and I was a featured player in that commercial. An Arab sheik.

And that’s where the trouble began.

Facebook TV Commercial

But I’m no sheik.

And this is the real, real me.

I know you didn’t know that I was  MOT because of the costume and my professional delivery. My consummate acting chops sold me as an Arab Sheik …

And here comes the rub for who knows for whatever reason, despite my stellar performance I was left on the cutting room floor.

Administrative oversight no doubt, but one that can be corrected by you for this Jew who looks like an Arab.…

It would be a mitzvah (blessing) and would allow me to rent a pad in Hollywood, where I could hang out with my buddies from the Super Bowl Taco Bell commercial.

I hope you can take care of this Zucky. Pick me up off the cutting room floor.

I will be eternally grateful.

And if you need further proof that I’m Jewish, I’ll show you my circumcised schmekel (penis to you Christians). I realize Muslims are circumcised as well as many Christians, so to proveI I’m Jewish I’ll recite The Shema (our holiest prayer). Of course I won’t do this at the same time I’m exposing myself, that would be sacrilegious.

Anyway in closing I hope you give this letter and my pleas some consideration.

Mazel Tov (Luck) to you and your Chinese wife. I hear that Chinese-Jewish children have the highest IQ’s in the world. L’Chaim (Life) to you Zucky.

Yours Truly,

Eric Kaldor

People invariably say when they find out I am a veteran. Some of these folks try to shake my hand—and some even try to hug me. Since none of my admirers are starlets or models, I try to avoid all physical contact. Moreover, I frequently tell these thankful people that I’m not particularly proud that I’m a vet. In fact, I’m downright ashamed that I am. If the well-wishers look horrified at that statement, I go into particulars.

I start off by telling them I didn’t go willingly into service and tried every way I could to get out of it. Besides, the fracas I got entangled in was not even a war. The Korean debacle was called a police action. It seemed like a war to me; over 50,000 American soldiers never came back from that police action.

Escape To The National Guard

I definitely didn’t want to add to that dismal number, but in those days, we didn’t have a standing army and the services were people with draftees. The mass refusals which saw their zenith in the Vietnam fracas were unheard of the Korean venture. Nobody went over the hill but helluva lot of us tried everything possible to get out of going.

The best way to remain safe and to keep the extremities was to join the National Guard; it was definitely the coward’s way out. A decade after my service, it was used by a drunken coward named George Walker Bush. He needed pull to get into the air national guard … and of course he had it with Daddy, who at the time was head of the CIA.

My family had no pull, so I was on my own, but it just so happened that Gene Rossides, a college All-American quarterback, was one of my best friends. He and I took our physical and were designated 1A, which meant it wouldn’t be long before we would be freezing our asses off in Korea … wherever the hell that was.

I may have had no idea about that country’s physical location, but in conferences with Gene, it was decided that we’d try to avoid Korea by joining the National Guard. It took some doing, but if you’re an All-American quarterback you get some perks. Gene used them and he dragged me along and we found ourselves in a National Guard camp.

The camp lasted two weeks and at the end of our hitch, Gene and I conferred about our future. By joining the National Guard, we had to agree to certain obligations: we had to attend one National Guard session a week, and give up one month out of the year at a Guard training camp. And these obligations would go on for six years!

It was a total intrusion on our lives and we decided to quit the Guard and give ourselves to the draft, because our service would last for two years and then we would be done for it.

Phony Flag Pins

Today I’m damned ashamed about that decision. The Korean police action was a senseless war, like all those that followed, and every last one of them was fostered, enhanced and engendered by downright lies from politicians who never saw a day of service. When I see these phonies on TV, I feel like breaking the set. And I feel so sorry for the poor souls who are duped by these criminally, insane politicians with their phony flag pins who are sending these poor people into harm’s way.

These unfortunate, duped men and women usually came from the lower class of our society. Yes, the infantry man who is brutally killing his way into the hearts of people in the Middle East last year was slinging hamburgers at your local fast-food restaurant. Their lives, though just beginning, were at a dead end— and the service seems a way to a brighter future.

Of course there are other reasons people willingly go into service. Some think they’re getting back at the evil doers. Others actually feel they’re bringing hope and freedom to tribes of goat herders who hate them. And then there are those amongst us who just like to march around and shoot guns and kill people. If they weren’t in the Army they’d be jail … and that’s where a lot of them are going to end up anyway … and another large number will be homeless or become PSTD laden street people.

So because of all this mayhem and criminality, I’m not at all proud that I served my country in its’ vain attempt at ruling the earth. In fact, I’m damned ashamed I was a small part of that insane, hubristic and criminal endeavor. And take that statement along with your tinny-flag pin and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. I used this overworked yet graphic homily because that’s all these flag-waving troglodytes can understand.

Then, I’ll follow that oration with a sloppy salute followed by the fuck you sign.

I hope I live through the experience.

Everybody Should Serve In A Draft

In closing, I don’t want to be buried in a veteran’s cemetery. Throw my ashes to the wind and write an obit that says I was a thoughtful, peaceful citizen of the United States—who wasn’t proud he spent any time in the service …

And I fervently hope this message gets to some poor kid who is about to be conned into the service by some fat-assed recruiting sergeant. Kiddo—don’t go. There are way too many deaths, plus arms, legs, penises and breasts, and eyes lying in the dirt of some god forsaken desert.

But lastly—and surprising even me—I’m not against the draft. Everybody should serve … but they should spend that time making the world and this country a better place … not by killing supposedly-wrong doers, but by serving sometime in the ghettos of the world.

If I were a veteran of that kind of an operation, I would be proud of my service. Yet, hope always resides in the human psyche, and a small sliver of that hope remains in my soul. May being in the service be a service to everyone. Throw away your guns and build wells, treat and cure malaria, build latrines, and look up at a sky without drones dropping death, but see the sun and stars and a blue sky over a rich and abundant earth.

Amen.

I saw the light on the very first day the damn thing started. My parents were refugees from Europe, which was rapidly becoming Fascist; and though my father was a respected doctor in Budapest, he arrived in New York penniless and didn’t know a word of English. Because of that dearth of knowledge, the only job he could get was at a hospital cleaning out bed pans.

That odious employment and meager salary was just enough to buy food for a family of four, but the rent was a different story. To keep a roof over our troubled heads, we had to rely on family members who had migrated to America a generation before us. These relatives owned a decrepit shoe store and the four of us lived in its back room.

The store turned out to be fortuitous… but the falling apart place was our mean of survival. The family burned it to the ground every year or so, in order to receive insurance money that ended up getting us through the worst of times during the Great Depression. We never got caught, but there were other problems; my father still had a hard time with English and he kept failing the Medical Board tests. He was so desperate to pass the exam that one year he asked the young, would-be doctor next to him if pneumonia was spelled with an N or a P. Unfortunately, a proctor was watching my father and he was thrown out of the test for cheating. After several more tries he eventually passed the Boards, but he had no practice, so we were worse off than when he was swapping out bed pans.

There was an out besides burning down the shoe store. Prohibition was the law of the land but people could get booze if it were prescribed by a doctor. My father partnered with a crooked druggist and the two supplied our Brooklyn blue-collar neighborhood with all the hooch they could drink. Of course my father got caught. It looked like he was going to lose his newly-acquired medical license, or even worse, go to jail. After much consternation, the family found a judge who would exonerate my father for $7,000. That kind of money  in those years was the equivalent of $100,000 today. We burned down the shoe store twice that year, but it still wasn’t enough. We needed a miracle and it came in the form of a gentleman named Louis Lepke. Lepke was a killer and the head honcho of a bunch of Jewish thieves and murderers known as Murder Inc. Luckily, Lepke’s wife was pregnant with twins; and even more lucky for us, it was a difficult pregnancy and was in danger of aborting the babies. My father saved the day. Mrs. Murder Inc. had her twins and for payment, my father told Lepke to get the crooked judge off his back. Lepke paid the jurist a visit. The debt was immediately cancelled.

Still our doughty, little family had problems. Number one, our meager diet and cramped surroundings had left me with a raging case of rickets. The cure for this disease is a good diet and plenty of vitamin C. We didn’t have the money for a good diet, but the sun occasionally shone in Brooklyn and I remember my parents pushing me out to the stoop to lap up the sunshine. I’d sit there all day and my health actually improved, but besides my health problems, there were serious problems in the land. Because it looked like the Great Depression would never go away, a large consensus of citizens felt that capitalism had failed. One of the answers to this dilemma was communism. My older brother fell for this idea and became a card carrying member of the American Communist Party. This allegiance drove my father nuts. He had escaped Europe and he had escaped jail time, but he was a paranoid wreck  because of my brother’s radical politics and the fact that he kept a loaded suit case in the closet, just in case the family had to make a hurried flee down the fire escape.

Besides our own family difficulties, the effects of the Great Depression were all around us. Most people in my neighborhood bought their clothes from itinerant peddlers who wandered our streets. Pants went for 50 cents and you could get an entire suit with a vest for $3.00 from these vendors. There were also a lot of beggars on our street and they frequently came up to our door around dinner time. Since we had no money, my mother would give them a sandwich, and on those rare times when we were a bit flush, she would give them a nickel. My father would shake his head at his wife’s largesse, but he went along with it. Still there was much talk about money and the lack thereof at our dinner table. Every morsel that went down our gullets was monetized. How much did the carrots cost? What was the price of the strips of beef in the soup? How much was the apple sauce? This constant conversation about money at the dinner table made me neurotic. I felt guilty every time I swallowed.

Besides the ever present discussion of money, Hitler had become a threat. Mixing that monster with a depression made for a catastrophe that was about to envelope us all … and yet we lived through it. My brother gave up his communist credentials, became a loyal citizen, and joined the Air Corps and served as a bombardier on B27’s during the war. My father’s practice grew, and after that conflict he moved from Brooklyn to New York and opened a small office just off Park Avenue.

All in all, after the Great Depression and WW2, the world was a much better place. It was the American Century. The world was ours, it was a happy, heady time … and what helped to make it just that, were the tough times we went through to get there.

There are still great inequities in this country. The poverty rate is abominable. There is hunger, and disease and vast inequities in America. But we got through the Great Depression and we will get through these tough times. And the vast majority of us won’t have to commit arson to do it. I’m so positive of that fact—I’ll bet the shoe store on it.

I have always wondered why we, Americans, dislike the French so much. I have always thought of myself as lucky to have spent a considerable part of my life there. So I’m more than a little baffled why we are always putting that country and its’ inhabitants down.

Let me start with something as simple as streets. In France, the streets are pretty much immaculate. All the main arteries and most of the side streets are hosed down every morning. What’s wrong with that? And then there’s the mail. It gets delivered seven days a week—even on Sunday. That’s pretty good isn’t it? And of course there’s the food. OK, the dreadful McDonalds arches are more and more prevalent, but overall, you can always find a swell meal in most restaurants or bars. If they didn’t serve great food, they’d soon be out of business, and everybody likes a good meal, don’t they?

Speaking of food … the French take their time. Lunch is a big meal and can last a minimum of two hours. What’s wrong with that? The French also have not only a great interest, but a great tolerance about making love. Their presidents have mistresses and passels of illegitimate kids, and the French don’t get in snit about it. In fact, they feel the bedroom is off limits and nobody’s business. Why do Americans find fault with that?

If you’re a culture maven, France maybe the best place in the world. Take museums—you could put a dozen metropolitan and national museums together and they wouldn’t come close to the Louvre. You could spend months in that great institution and be surprised every day—because around every corner you come face to face with a masterpiece. And that’s just for old masters. There are wonderful museums for impressionists (a totally French phenomenon), and modern museums all over the country that are superior to The Modern in New York or LACMA in Los Angeles.

Enough of culture. France is a treasure trove of sights. At St. Tropez, every other beach is clothing optional, which in most cases is a very nice sight indeed. Even if there are some fatties, there is always the 18 year old girl (or boy if you are so inclined) that could make your day—if you’re lucky. And in France, you have much more of a chance at being lucky than most places on earth. And who doesn’t enjoy making love?

Then there’s the politeness thing. Americans think the French are haughty and rude. I’ll give you the haughty because they got a pretty nice place with lots of pleasures and culture, and there are lots of chances at feeling good which can make a dude feel kind of haughty. But about the politeness—the French, I say sadly, are a lot more polite and gracious than we are. And that’s because they are forever acknowledging your presence. Take French elevators for an instance; get in one and the inhabitants in that conveyance are not looking at the floor make believing there is no one else in the contraption. I’ve always found it endearing that when a French man or woman or child for that matter gets in to the conveyance, he greets everyone with a Monsieur—Dame. And the greeting is most always seconded. It’s nice having people recognize you as a fellow human being … you got anything against that?

What I have just mentioned are some of the minor or major glories of France. So, they didn’t do so great in WWII; they don’t agree with us at the World Bank; they don’t commit their youth to endless conflicts; and they think Americans are hypocritical and prudish about sex (we are). The Eurozone is going through difficulties but France will survive. And on top of that, they will continue to eat better, have more chances at love, have better schooling, and a culture that goes back 2,000 years. Plus, they invented the bikini and motion pictures. Picasso also lived there, and now so does Johnny Depp.

So why do we, Americans, find the French so unappealing, even hateful? I’ll tell you in three words.

WE ARE JEALOUS.

I am an American. Most of the time I am proud  to be one … but as we mature as a nation, we could do worse than adopting some aspects of the French way of life. If we did so, our streets would be cleaner, we’d eat and love better, we’d be more friendly and less rushed, we’d have more chances at making love, we’d get our mail delivered every day, and we’d say hello to each other on elevators. What’s so bad about all that?

Seymour Butts, born Adam Glasser, was a nice Jewish boy from the Bronx who had two things going for him— a nice ass and a business acumen. When he put these two attributes together, he became a porno star.

Seymour was an instant success, but he went onto even greater heights—he went semi-legit. He convinced the cable company, Showtime, to do a reality show about his career, his love life, his illegitimate son, his brushes with the law, and his burgeoning business—which was run by his family. His mother was an office manager and his cousin Stevie, a total fuck up, was the head of production…and that’s where I came in. I got the part of Stevie’s best friend on the show but it didn’t stop there. If at all possible, Mother Butts, it was hoped, would fall in love with me and provide the show which was called, “Family Business,” with a B story line. It was my chance at stardom. I’d been a writer and producer in television for more years than I care to remember, but having a healthy ego, I always wanted to be in front of the camera. This was my shot.

“Family Business” was an unscripted reality show, but there were certain guidelines. I would have to meet Mother Butts on a legit blind date and convince her we should be life partners. I got a haircut and wore my best Polo jacket for our first meeting, which took place in a coffee shop on the Westside. I arrived on time, reeking of Patchouli.  Hidden cameras were everywhere as I waited. Mrs. Butts was half an hour late and as soon as I saw her, I was sure our romance would never get off the ground. The former Mrs. Glaser, now Butts, was a severe looking lady and my immediate thought was that she’d been laid once in her life—and that union had produced the famed Seymour.

In spite of Mrs. Butts being as sexy as a postage stamp, I longed for stardom so I was going to give it my best shot. To do that, I made myself an object of pity. I knew something about pity; I knew it engendered sympathy and sympathy is often wired into the female DNA, and once you get sympathy, you’re on your way. So on the off chance that I might be on my way with Glasser-Butts, I gave myself a harrowing childhood. I told my date that I was abandoned as a tot and then repeatedly abused by a series of twisted, horrible foster parents. All this tumult had led to psychological problems, but there was one good thing, my unhappy past spurred me on in a never ending search for love. I intimated that as soon as I laid eyes on Butts-Glasser, I had a premonition the search which had consumed my life, might far be over.

Mrs. Butts looked at me like I was crazy, so I went to plan B. Everybody liked to talk about themselves, therefore I inquired about Glasser-Butt’s past and her son, and I opined how much fun it must be as the office manager of a porno house. I asked if she had any other children, about her youth, and where she presently lived. I even asked everything in a syrupy voice, but I really didn’t give a shit about her answers. All I wanted was for her to like me—or at least show some warmth so I could get in front of the camera next week. It didn’t work. Mrs. B kept looking at me like I was nuts.

I’m a dogged kind of a guy and at the end of our rendezvous, I gave myself one more shot. I asked Mrs. Butts for her phone number.  She told me she would like to think about it. I started to kiss her wrinkled cheek, even though it was the kiss of death, but she pulled away. I was furious and never bothered to watch “Family Business,” but a year later, I was involved in a proper film in Brazil. I won’t go into the inordinate beauty of Brazilian women. Everyone’s seen pictures of the Copacabana beach in Rio. The women in that great country are pretty much gorgeous and I hooked up with a beauty who was one of the reigning queens of the telenovelas, or soap operas, which are very popular there.

One morning while my soap queen and I were making love, we had the TV on. You never know the power of American television, but suddenly  there I was on my futile blind date on “Family Business.”  The show had gone into syndication and I was on the tube speaking Portuguese to Mrs. Butts. The scene enfolding in front of my eyes was ruining my day. I was distracted and was no longer making love to a gorgeous Brasilana. I was glaring at the tube and pounding Mrs. Butts with a ferocity I had rarely known. I even called out the wrong name at exactly the wrong time. That most wonderful moment in life when two people climax together!  ”Take that Mrs. Butts,” I screamed at the television “And that and that and that!“

Unfortunately my Brazilian beauty knew English. She untangled herself from my embrace, donned her clothes, and over my protestations of love, left in a South American huff. I was never able to convince her to come back. Mrs. Butts had her revenge, she had driven me psychotic. I still see her on those occasions when I make love now. Of course this is deeply troubling and I’ve been to psychiatrists, psychologists, life counselors, shamans, yogis, sex therapists, and self help groups. Nothing helps. One of my shrinks is currently writing a report of my condition which he will present at the next American Psychiatrist Meeting. My case may be picked up the newspapers, and I might even make Maury Povich; perhaps Jerry Springer. And I’m a cinch for spots on TMZ  (they cover practically anything). Thus my dream will be realized, and it’s a dream of most of my countrymen. I’LL BE ON TELEVSION!  And just like a lot of my countrymen, I’ll be on it for all the wrong reasons.

It’s over and you don’t hear a damn thing about Occupy Wall Street anymore because it’s kaput, finished, shit canned and forgotten. They’ve hosed down and replanted the parks where the movement took place. It’s like they never existed. It was just a brief flame—always just flickering and it lasted for three months…then the powers to be came and in the name of public safety and obliterated any sign of it.

The troglodytes, aka Tea Partiers, who believe the world was created 6,000 years ago, that a woman’s body is not her own, that a spermatozoa as soon as it attaches it’s worm like body to an egg which is clinging to an ovary  is a really a divine spark, that signing a pledge never to raise taxes with Grover Norquist is the answer to America’s problems, that we don’t share 96% of our genome with chimps—-these are the guys who have won.

Look at the score card—do the math: Members of Congress who are 99 percenters. Zero

Members of Congress who are tea partiers: 76 and counting.

And Sheldon Adelson has said publicly that he will contribute one hundred million dollars to Cross Roads the super pac devoted to make sure that 99% percent of us screwed again.

Think your vote counts. Think again. Your puny ballot vs. 100M. Who’s gonna listen to you.? The answer is NOBODY.

I’ve been meditating for a half hour every morning for over 40 years. I know half an hour is a paltry amount of time, but at my reckoning, that makes for 14,600 times of sitting in a chair trying to calm my mind. Most of the time this quest has been an abject failure, though a few times I’ve witnessed something with a little stretch of the imagination that might be called Nirvana—and it didn’t involve Curt Cobain.

What I was feeling was a deep-inner peace—but it didn’t last long. I started my meditation practice with Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation. After a six week course, one of the Maharishi’s disciples gave me a mantra. The mantra was a Sanskrit word. I never knew what the word meant and I repeated it every morning, but never neared anything that even closely resembled a transcendental state.

I then attended three Yogi Ashrams. Along with Yoga, I was given a whole new group of Sanskrit words. They weren’t any more effective than the Maharishi’s had been, but then I discovered Zen.

The Zen center I went to was in downtown Los Angeles (well before the area was gent). In other words, it was in the ghetto, but it was an oasis in this tract of misery. The Zenists had taken over a turn-of-the-century house and turned it into a magnificent ashram that the locals respected. There was graffiti on the surface of every wall but not a touch on the Zen house. There was also something about this place along with the noise. The ghetto is a noisy place, but the closer you got to the ashram, the quieter it got. It was like there was an invisible shield that was guarding the building. From the first moment I laid eyes on the Hazy Moon Ashram, I was impressed.

After a week’s introductory course, I was allowed to partake in the group’s meditation practices. From the first day, Zen was a tough trip. First of all, Sanskrit mantras went out the Zen window. They were replaced with dictum, which was to just sit still and watch my breath. On top of that, I was supposed to watch my breath with my eyes open. This was different because in all other meditation practices, one’s eyes are closed and it is much easier than staring at a blank wall.

The neophyte doesn’t get a koan when he begins the practice. A koan is a paradoxical question to a student, and an answer is demanded. This is concentrated on until one rids oneself of rational thought and thus gains sudden enlightenment…hopefully.

I never got to the koan plateau. The roshi and the Zen leader didn’t think I was ready. He was right. I remained pretty much in the category of watching my breath and staring at a blank wall. The wall had a couple of knots in it.

My fellow Zenists (and I don’t mean to sound derogatory) and I admired the group. We would all arrange ourselves in the meditation room wearing black gowns. These gowns had to be purchased, and since I wasn’t sure if I was going to follow the practice, I settled for a black t-shirt. But there we would sit in our black garments, in absolute silence for 20 minutes, while looking at the knots.

A typical Zen mediation lasts 2 hours and 20 minutes of staring and 10 minutes of silent walking. The Zen center I attended had weekend-long sesshins (the Japanese word for staring at a wall for days). I wasn’t nearly ready for that, but for six months, I went to the 2 hour practice every day.

At the end of some sessions, I was certain that I flew back to my car because my feet never touched the ground. At the end of another session, I was so discombobulated and deranged. I felt that I should have called 911, and sometimes I felt that I should have drove directly to Forest Lawn without stopping!

After six months of this up and down existence, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I quit. I regret that decision to this day, and I’ve made a promise to myself that I am going back to Zen.

I have it all planned out; I’m going to ask the roshi if he’ll let me make up my own koan. If he allows it, I know what it will be. On my intake of breaths, my mantra will be:

“Ommmm…Oh mighty knot on the wall.”  And on the exhalation it will be, “Ommmm…oh mighty knot why are you there?”

I’m not going to them anymore. I’m not watching until they become more realistic. I’m not watching because they’re all full of shit. I’ll only go back to the movies when actors really screw each other. What we get now is partial views of actors lunging and moaning. I know I can get sex in porn, but porns are monosyllabic and have lame plots. I want real stories, and I want believable sex, AND I WANT FRONTAL NUDITY. I’m sick and tired of seeing women from the neck up, or in gauzy shots when they get out of bed after a night of torrid love. OK, they’re beginning to show breasts, but I want the whole damn thing. And that goes for guys too. No more wearing jockey shorts when they get out of the sack. No more carefully folded sheets or blankets obscuring their private parts. I want realism.  If George Clooney gets laid, I want to see his dick. And I want to see Angela Jolie’s pudendum. And I want to hear Brad Pitt fart. And I want to see beautiful actors taking a dump. Until they do all that, I’m not gonna watch their phony shit anymore.

I want to see male actors actually cry. Right now, practically none can, and they try to hide the fact by lowering their heads, shaking their shoulders, and moaning. That doesn’t cut it. I want to see real male tears and that probably will eliminate nine of 10 working male actors today.

I want people to look like family. Actors playing brothers or sisters look like they belong on different continents in the world. I want real brothers and real sisters. If we can’t have that, lets do away with all families in all movie plots.

I want real fights. Right now, actors clobber the shit out of each other and in the next scene, all they’re sporting is a tiny band aid strategically placed on their foreheads that doesn’t interfere with their natural beauty. When people fight, they lose teeth, they bleed quarts, and bones breaks. To get that, I have to watch the NFL,but that only lasts five months.

I demand real sex, real defecation, real blood, and broken teeth and legs 12 months a year.

Until I get it, I say to hell with the movies.

I know we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead…but what the hell, they’re dead so they ain’t gonna know about it. Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about the dead lately – dead celebrities that is. I have known quite a few of them in my desultory career in TV.

Lemme tell you, they put their legs in their pants or panties one leg at a time. They also defecate, urinate, suffer from piles and pick their noses just like the rest of us.

Today, I’m writing about a dead person that all of America loved, Walter Cronkite, the anchor on CBS News. For thirty odd years he was king and was America’s favorite newscaster by far. He seemed so cal m, so rational, so avuncular and he always told us the unvarnished truth on the six o’clock news.

That may be true, but the dude sure had an eye for the ladies. I witnessed this firsthand at my first TV job. I was Walter’s P.A. (production assistant). I got the job because I was a ski racer. I wasn’t a very good one, but CBS was broadcasting The Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley and in those days nobody knew much about winter sports so I was hired to coach Walter when he announced Alpine events.

Now, he’s a nice enough guy and when he’s in front of a camera he’s the ultimate pro, but when he wasn’t staring into the lens at The Olympics he was staring at other things. He was one of the horniest guys I have ever met. At Squaw Valley stretch pants were just coming in and Walter couldn’t keep his eyes off the female skiers, especially when they bent down to take off or put on their skis. The rehearsals would stop when that happened.

In addition to being totally mesmerized by women he put the make on every comely chick that came within 15 feet of him. Part of my job became finding the man to get him ready for the telecast and I usually found him in a hotel room with some hottie. But he was a pro. He’d rearrange his clothing, brush his hair and smooth out his blazer. It was the old reliable, avuncular, caring Walter Cronkite in front of the camera.

Walter’s sign off was well known. He’d look straight into camera and say solemnly, “And that’s the way it is – ” And then he’d give the date. He’d been doing that closing for a decade. All of America was familiar with it. But at the Women’s Downhill, Cronkite veered from his usual closing. The picture on camera was a pan of the glorious peaks at Squaw Valley and Cronkite said, “Today I’m changing my closing. Instead of that’s the way it is – let me say “That’s the way it should always be…”

The world TV audience thought Walter was referring to the magnificent pan of snow capped mountains, but he was only looking at the monitor with one eye. The other was on a comely young thing in stretch pants, who was bending over and taking off her skis. Right after the sign-off he whipped off his headset and started a conversation with the lady. I knew next morning my first duty would be knocking on various hotel doors until I finally found him.

And that’s the way it was for the entire Olympics…

But Cronkite was a good guy and wherever he is now, I hope there are lots and lots of hot chicks in stretch pants. “Because that’s the way it should always be.”

Next I’m gonna blog about my run-ins with Glenn Ford and I’ve already blogged about my problems with Adrien Brody. You can catch more celebrity tiffs if you go to my novel, Scars of David.

I’m a mild-mannered white guy, but occasionally  I’ve found myself in a position where I could’ve had my head handed to me. Luckily I’m still with head, but let me explain how I almost lost that important part of my body.

The first time was during the Korean War; incoming shrapnel tore off a sizable hole in the roof of our mess hall, and I jumped under a table to save my ass. I banged up my knee in the process. I know, I know, that doesn’t sound too dangerous, but you had to be there. I applied for a purple heart for my injury, but was refused. However, I did get something out of the experience: an honorable discharge.

The next two times I found myself in dicey situations (although they weren’t nearly as dangerous as dodging shrapnel), was in line with my chosen profession. Let me explain. I once had one of the best jobs in the world. I was a TV sports producer and roamed the planet shooting events for Wide World of Sports. It doesn’t get better than that, but sometimes it got dangerous. I always wanted to get close to the action.  In a Rams game, I was on the sidelines and Deacon Jones flattened me in an end-around sweep. I got a shoulder separation out of that one. Then I was creamed by an Olympic skier who lost it on a hairpin turn.  The result was facial lacerations and cracked ribs.

But these were small bruises compared to what I faced when I was doing shows with Howard Cosell. He and I got mixed up in two very important civil rights moments. Both of them were scary.The first altercation occurred shortly after Cassius Clay joined the the nation of Islam and became Muhammad Ali.  That decision started a s**t storm in this country—white America was outraged. But Muhammad Ali was defiant. Howard had a remarkable symbiotic relationship with the champ, and could get an interview any time he wanted to—except once

We were in the midst of one of our many unpopular wars; this one was Vietnam. Ali was drafted but he defied the U.S. Government and said he had nothing against his brown brothers and wasn’t going. The stage was set for confrontation. The place for the confrontation was Dallas where Ali was due to be sworn into the military. At the time, Dallas was still suffering from the after effects of the Kennedy assassination.  The Dallas cops were out to clean up their reputation, including the FBI, Texas rangers, and the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms.

Ali arrived at the induction center with an entourage of black Muslim body guards, who had their own score to settle. There was also a mash up of newspaper reporters, photographers, and onlookers, in addition to hecklers, white supremacists, black panthers, dixiecrats and dixierats, anarchists, atheists, evangelicals and average Joe blows. It was a seething microcosm of America. Cosell wasn’t a physically brave guy. I may have been a little more so, but not much. When we arrived at the broiling scene, we didn’t have to look for law enforcement, they were on the lookout for us. A burly undercover cop who was naturally white, whispered a stream of epithets punctuated by the n word—enough said about that. But he issued us a little, pink lapel pin. He said that pin was important because it would mark us as journalists. Howard looked at him like he was nuts; he didn’t have to say that all of America knew him, it was the truth, but he took the pin with a sneer.

I also took the pin and not to appear chicken, put it in my pocket. BIG Mistake. When we surged toward the door of the Induction Center, I was grabbed from behind and spun to the floor. Two 6-foot-5-inch white guys asked me who I was and where was I going. When I told them I was a producer with Wide World of Sports they asked to see my pin. I looked in my pocket but it was gone. I called for Howard to corroborate my existence and credentials, but in the melee he was nowhere to be seen.

“Howard!” I screamed. “HOWARD COSELL!!!”

“Oveah heahya,” he finally said in his Brooklyn accent.

“Howard tell these guys who I am.”

Howard approached me. He had lost his toupee in the fracas. For a moment the undercover guys didn’t recognize him without it, but when he started speaking in that whiney Brooklyn accent, they knew who it was.

The cops hated Cosell, as did half of America, but they grudgingly gave us two more pins. More than ever, the crowd was boiling around us. The cops said we were on our own, but if there were problems, look for guys with blue pins. The place was a madhouse and we were supposed to look for guys wearing blue pins the size of a hat pin. But we put on our own pink pins and then Cosell informed me he wasn’t going to go on camera without his toupee. I dropped to my knees and searched around on the floor for the damn thing. A lot of people stepped on my hands but I finally found it. It has been kicked and crushed and looked like road kill, so I brushed it off. Howard looked at it dubiously and then put it on. I didn’t tell him it looked like a dead rat and we pressed forward .

Just as we got to the door to the room where Ali was going to refuse to enter the service, Cosell and I were waylaid by five, fierce black guys. They were dressed in black suits, starched white shirts, and wore black bow ties. They were the Black Muslim brotherhood.

“Where ya think your’re goin’?”  the leader of the Muslims snarled.

“To inerveiw Ali,” Howard said.

“The champ ain’t talkin,” said the leader.

“What are ya tallin’ about I’m Howard.“

He didn’t get to finish the sentence. The five Black Muslims closed in and started pushing us away from the door. Howard bounced onto me or I bounced onto him, but the end result was the same. I was back- spread eagled on the floor. Somehow Howard was still standing, and he was screaming “Get me Bundini!  Get me Drew Bundini!”

Drew Bundini Brown was Ali’s trusted friend and corner man who came to the rescue. “Let these guys in,”  he ordered the Muslims, and they fell back and I got my hand on the door to the court room where Ali was refusing to raise his right hand. It was an iconic moment in the civil rights movement. I desperately wanted that shot, but I never got it.

The most famous sportscaster in America, and I bruised and disheveled were waylaid again. This time by the Texas National Guard. An entire company of them had arrived on the scene. Once more we were pushed back. Once more I landed on my ass. Howard helped me to my feet. I thought he was going to scream at the captain of the National Guard but he didn’t. He was confident that once Ali left the room, at the very least he would get his interview. It was an incorrect assumption. When Ali walked out of the room, he was under federal custody, and he and his custodians weren’t in a talkative mood. Howard and I tried to squirm past the feds that surrounded the champ, but the group barreled past us. The biggest guy in the guard stiff-armed me. I didn’t end up on the floor, but my head made a loud ringing sound as it bounced off the wall. Howard was unscathed but apoplectic that he hadn’t gotten a word with the champ, and I had to return to New York without an inch of footage.

Because of this unfortunate circumstance, Cosell and I made a pact. We swore that come hell or high water, nothing would ever stop us from getting an interview again. That promise was put to the test eight months later.

The year was 1968, the place was Mexico City, and the event was the Summer Olympics. Mexico City in a way was like Dallas. It was not yet narco heaven, but it suffered from a reputation of lawlessness. Mexico was the center on the world stage and they were determined to show that world what an orderly and law abiding place it was. To do this, they bussed all the homeless and criminally-inclined souls out of Mexcio City and stationed Federales (cops) who had a really mean reputation on every corner. The day before opening ceremonies, they killed over 200 students.

I personally had seen these poor students a few hours before they were ambushed in Tlatleloco Square.  They had formed a huge group and marched in front of my hotel. Most of them had placed bandages over their mouths which graphically depicted how the government was stifling their opposition. My heart went out to them, and two hours later, over 200 of those brave souls were dead. There was not a word of it in the newspapers. The truth only came out years afterwards, and to this day, no one has been prosecuted for the murders.

I was too busy at the track and field, so I knew nothing about the massacre. World record after world record was being broken in the thin Mexico City air. America was battling Russia for medals, and America was cleaning up. In track and field; most of the cleaning up was being done by black athletes. The Afro-American athletes stood respectfully on the winner’s stand and some even went as far as to mouth the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but then the great black sprinters, John Carlos and Tommy Smith, appeared on the scene.

Smith was first and Carlos took third place in the 200 meter finals. Howard and I were in the remote truck watching, and suddenly, just as the strains of the national anthem started, they raised their black-gloved fists in the air and looked down at the ground. The symbolism was obvious, but the image on our ground camera which was recording the scene, suddenly went black. We still had an audio connection with the camera man who was yelling that the Federales had just usurped his camera.

Howard and I didn’t have to say we remembered the Ali fiasco. We immediately tried to get out the door with our camera man and his hand held. The door to our remote truck wouldn’t budge. I heard voices on the other side. The voices were speaking Spanish but it sounded ominous. I grabbed a screw driver from a technician and started unscrewing the knob from the inside, while Cosell kicked at the door. Finally it broke down and we were facing a phalanx of Federales. Some had their hands on their holsters and some were fingering their bayonets. Screw the pact that we would never back down, both Howard and I retreated back to the remote truck, and then I had one of my most brilliant ideas.

Allow me another brief digression. I’m not out to demean Mexico—I find it a rather fabulous place—but then as now, and like everybody who has ever done business there knows, in Mexico there is graft and a lot of it.

La Mordida, or the bribe that greases everything. I was the advance man on the Olympics. My job was to make sure ABC got the best coverage and the best times for events which coincided with prime time in the States. In order to do this, I became a bag man to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. The main recipient of the contents of my black bag was Senor Alphonse Renard. In Spanish, Renard means fox. Luckily he was lurking (as usual) in the nether regions of the remote truck awaiting his daily dose of mordida. I grabbed him and told him he had to get us through the Federales. He looked at me like I was crazy. I grabbed my black bag and showed him row upon row of neatly stacked twenties. He gritted his teeth and headed for the door. There was a showdown and much yelling about presidents of Mexico’s past and present and finally the Fox won out. The troops glumly fell back, and Howard, my camera man and I rushed the 100 or so yards to the winner’s platform. Luckily Carlos and Smith held their positions and we got in real tight on their faces. They showed no emotion. We pulled back and got them full frame with their gloves in the air. Howard started to speak but I stopped him mid sentence. The picture we got didn’t need any explanation. Don’t you agree?

Oh, and by the way, that was the only time in broadcast television that Howard Cosell was ever told to shut up.