Lunatic Magnet

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This should be my new title, and not for a book, either.  I used to say, “What am I – flypaper for freaks?”  Guess I’m finally moving up in the world and my status has been elevated at last!  Oy.

Should this sign apply to you to, feel free to share!  Also come and joint the fun on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/coconutsunanimous

Gents, should you want to be bold and flaunt this little profundity, click here for the Men’s T-Shirt:

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/customize/product2.aspx?number=854815247&utm_medium=cp_social&utm_source=addthis&utm_campaign=CreateAndBuyPDP#.UZ2HeYFU8To.email

Ladies, here’s one for you, too!

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/customize/product2.aspx?number=854815247&utm_medium=cp_social&utm_source=addthis&utm_campaign=CreateAndBuyPDP#.UZ2HeYFU8To.email

Cheers,

Carolyn

The Ziegfeld Society’s Rudy Vallee Show

David Giardina as Rudy Vallee, Vanessa Altshuler, Dewey Caddell, Merrill Grant, Ian Whitt and Loria Parker in "VAGABOND LOVER: The Life and Songs of Rudy Vallee"

David Giardina as Rudy Vallee, Vanessa Altshuler, Dewey Caddell, Merrill Grant, Ian Whitt and Loria Parker in “VAGABOND LOVER: The Life and Songs of Rudy Vallee”

The Ziegfeld Society knows how to put on a show.  Today’s offering starred David Giardina as Rudy Vallee.  David’s a multi-talented guy.  He not only starred in the show, he also wrote it.  The production was directed by the Ziegfeld Society’s own Mark York.  It featured Vanessa Altshuler, Dewey Caddell, Merrill Grant, Loria Parker and Ian Whitt in a variety of other roles.  Everybody did an amazing job; everyone at the Ziegfeld Society always does.

The story of Rudy Vallee is one in the genre I most adore: one where life gives someone lemons but they make lemonade.  Rudy didn’t have a strong singing voice.  He had such a weak singing voice that he was given a megaphone to sing through as a joke – and voila!  A star with a gimmick was born!  He was a popular singer during the 1920′s and 1930′s, which was called “a crooner” back then.  He’d be a pop idol now.  His soft voice may not have been perfect for vaudeville, and might not have been able to be heard in the last row of a theater balcony, but it turned out to be a perfect fit for the radio.

A little known fact about the movie Casablanca is that “As Time Goes By” was not written for the movie, perfect though it was for it.  The song was originally recorded by Rudy Vallee in 1928.

I just looked Rudy Vallee up on the Internet to get some additional information before writing this and found out a pleasant surprise: he was born on July 28th.  Me too.

Here’s a recording of Rudy singing “As Time Goes By.”  He starts singing about a minute into the song.  Enjoy!

Freebies, Flakes, and the New Age Criminal Element

Hippie bug!

Hippie bug! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What would you do if someone blatantly lied and proclaimed online that you wanted to become an acolyte to a New Age crook?  That you were going to be “a presenter” at the crook’s convention, which is no better than a current-day Nuremberg rally?  And this extravaganza is to venerate not just any New Age crook, but the most dangerous mindf*cker of them all – one you’ve known about, spoken out against and reviled for years?

This is what kind of a lie I’ve been contending with for the past two days.  Ha, thank God it’s Friday!

Awhile back a friend asked me to become a contributor on an online magazine.  It actually seemed a little too airy-fairy to me, but so long as I wasn’t going to have to contribute articles about stuff like meditating on the metaphysical meaning of my navel, okay.  I was writing historical pieces about famous people over there.  I thought it might be fun.  Everybody there was welcoming.  So I gave it a shot and became a volunteer, repeat, a volunteer, one more time, that word was volunteer, contributor.

Funny thing about a lot of these enterprises that use volunteers: some of ‘em seldom get it that those who don’t get paid are there doing them a favor.  Volunteers aren’t bad people.  We’re usually pretty nice.  We give of own free time (which is often our first mistake).   We should never be taken for granted, but it happens.  If I’m working for you free, if you’re not paying me to assist you, if my enjoyment is supposed to be my compensation, then the very least I should be able to expect out of such a deal is to 1) truly enjoy myself and 2) be treated with some professional respect.  Not lies.

Hence my shock when I found out that my name was on a list, on a public forum, of “future presenters” at the worst of the New Age Flake forums – run by the very crook of a “guru” I’ve been speaking out against for years!  That guru is one sick old criminal broad.  There are a lot of people who died because she convinced them not to get medical help for critical illnesses.  Oh no – in her exalted opinion, if they think happy thoughts, it can cure cancer and HIV!  Those who believed this money-grubbing bitch died.  They bought her unscientific, destructive books – and died.  Obviously, she’s not a doctor – not even close.  She’s not much of a human being, either, if she’s taking advantage of people who need medical attention and are instead buying into her creepy philosophy out of hope born of desperation.  This guru-flake has books, videos, speaking engagements, and her own publishing house so she can crank out disreputable claptrap and drivel without having to answer to a scholarly editor, but no matter what she owns, and no matter how she may think it “legitimizes” her, she’s dangerous and belongs in a jail cell.  My co-workers from China tell me that if such a character were actively conning the gullible over there, they’d lock her up for preying upon the sick, the stupid and the weak; here, though, the guru-flake is allowed to set up herself up with her own business, and it’s complete with conferences, yet!

So when I received an email notification yesterday from Facebook about being tagged in a post, apprising me that the individual who runs the online magazine I was volunteering for had put a sign up on Facebook saying that next year “all the magazine contributors” were going to be “presenters” at that very same guru’s Conference/Acolyte Festival, I was livid.  I wasn’t asked if I wanted to be a presenter, wasn’t really invited to be a presenter, since the one who made the sign made that up like some kind of wild wishful thinking, and I never would have set foot anywhere near that ridiculous guru or whatever passes for her conference.  I had planned to contend with that defamatory sign a little later, but then the one who wrote it wanted all of the magazine volunteers to attend the guru’s conference online this year.  As if I’d ever lower myself that far…

I have never been so mad in my life – so guess what?  I threatened legal action!  I said the sign falsely proclaiming that I would be a “presenter” at that maniac’s conference was defamatory and libelous.  I contacted my attorney and I demanded – and finally got – a retraction of the stupid, untrue, false, misleading, ridiculous, insulting-as-Hell sign.  Now here comes the best part.  The retraction included the admission that the woman who runs the magazine doesn’t even know if there will be a conference next year, let alone who any of the presenters will be!  Well, Sweet Cheeks, if you don’t know if there’s going to be a conference, and you don’t know who’s going to be a presenter, and you don’t know me well enough to realize I’d never want to participate in the rally of a New Age Nazi, then why in the name of all that is good would you put my name on such a list?  Ever heard of having some integrity as a writer?  Ever heard of good, old fashioned, basic common sense?  No?  You haven’t?  Surprise, surprise!

Let it be known:  I am not interested in attending any love-fests for any member of the criminal element, and that includes the fouled up, frou-frou New Age criminal element.  A meditating crook in a crystal is still a crook!  I wish everything I wrote for that online magazine had not happened; I wish it could be taken down, undone, removed; had I known my efforts over there were for a magazine owner who would DARE to publicly associate me with, or expect me to revere, that criminal guru, I would never have participated in the first place.  My bad – it didn’t feel right from the start.  It didn’t feel right from the magazine conference call where so many white people were using a term in, I think, Lakota, as if they wanted to appear to be Native Americans.  Uh-oh!  While the sentiment behind the appropriation of another culture’s terms and ideas is usually appreciative and benign, “usually” is the operative word, so it made me wonder.  Had I  just entered someone else’s dream world?  I’m friends with quite a few actual Native Americans, including an elder, and I know what they’d say if they had heard this was going on.  From that moment forward, I wondered if I should stay.  I’m very relieved not to be contributing to that magazine further.  Yet I am also beyond furious about what happened.  I gave of my free time, and although I didn’t expect a medal for it, I didn’t think I’d have my character publicly defamed by association, either.

The strangest part of all this is that the contributors claim, on that magazine, to want to empower people.  So one of my parting shots to the one who put my name up on that sign was this:

If all of you REALLY want to empower people, I would suggest you start by realizing that you don’t empower them by telling them lies or by asking them to lie to themselves – both of which are things [that guru] does. She lies, then sets herself up as the solution – for money. That’s an old con artist’s game. It’s called “set them up – save them – win them.” It’s found in books on criminology, not empowerment.

Tonight, May 14th: I’ll be on the Radio about MAMA ROSE’S TURN!

Please tune in tonight, May 14th, to http://www.gcrinternetradio.com to hear me on the radio program Moebanshee’s Lair. I’ll be discussing my upcoming book, MAMA ROSE’S TURN: The True Story of America’s Most Notorious Stage Mother. The times are:

9:00 pm Eastern
8:00 pm Central
7:00 pm Mountain
6:00 pm Pacific

The show can also be heard in the U.K. at:

2:00 am U.K. Time

Until tonight,

Carolynmoe weekly banner

Another House of Mystery, Part II: I’ve Freaked Myself Out Just Recalling All This!

wooden house from 1900s/1910s, Croatia

A house from 1900s/1910s, Croatia. The one I’m referring to wasn’t from Croatia.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Be careful what you blog about.  I have been all but haunted, ever since writing the blog post about joyriding near the mysterious house of yesteryear, by memories of that bizarre situation. So many years have passed, the people either died or moved on, but I’ve had a nagging bad feeling ever since putting the post up here.  One of them is still alive…

Feeling haunted by this, well, that’s nothing new for me, really. It just usually doesn’t hit me this strongly.  All along, even while it was happening, it was one of those scenarios where I always felt like there was something else, some fact or clue, that had been right there in front of me, but that  I’d missed. Certain songs always immediately bring the whole time and place right back to me, songs from early 1980. I used to turn the volume on my car radio all the way up when I was riding all over that area.  Fortunately I rarely listen to those awful songs now. The radio station I love the most doesn’t play songs from way back when, which may well be the main reason why I like it so.  A Broadway show that I saw awhile back featured songs from that time period, and I couldn’t get out of the theater fast enough.  The songs call to mind the eyes of two of the people who lived in that house, and one, in particular, used to give me such menacing looks…

My family member who worked with one of them read it and contacted me. “Oh, that pain in the ass! Yes, I remember it. I didn’t know they’d been lying in wait for you once in their car, though. That’s crazy, even for them.  Good thing you didn’t identify them in the blog post.  Well, don’t worry. They’re no longer living in the Northeast.”

No, but…it reminds me of what Billy Flynn, the shyster lawyer, says in the movie Chicago when Roxy Hart, the guilty killer, is acquitted.  ”You’re a free woman, Roxy Hart. And God save Illinois!” Even though Illinois isn’t the state in question, oh, do I ever understand the sentiment.

Other people who have read the post have spoken with me about it, too. The comments all have various versions of, “Oh my God!”  They ask me where the sole remaining member of that family now lives.  I tell them the place, then add,  ”It’s right near an international border.”  Everyone laughs.  They all say that figures, and does the country they live near extradite?  I don’t know.  I don’t want to know.  Yet having said that, I’ll be looking it up momentarily.

Well, they’re gone. If only that nagging feeling that’s haunting the hell out of me would go away, too.  Meanwhile, would anybody know if maybe Interpol has a Tips Line?  Tee hee hee…