Kenny LaRoche

http://videos.wittysparks.com/id/2225504929

parking rage

The French Consulate in West Philly

Le Consulate Fronche dans les Forets de La Philadelphie de l'Ouest

Voici une grande maison. Here is a big house. Zee fronche classique have always known how to live it up in le style. After the Rapture, only the Francais de la Tiers-Monde, from la campagne and les isles, qui n'avait pas les TVs, inherited the quiet, classical elegance of this charming and elegant consulate in the Backwoods of West Philadelphia.

Charles Dickens on the Eastern State Penitentiary

Inspired by the Panopticon design of Jeremy Bentham, the Eastern Penitentiary is of radial design, with seven wings extending from a central administrative hub. In Dickens’ time, the “Pennsylvania System” was one of strict and absolute solitary confinement for the duration of the sentence. One hour of exercise in a solitary exercise yard was permitted each day, and soon after the initial incarceration prisoners were allowed to have some means of handicraft – a shoemaker’s last, a small loom.



The rather crude and simplistic device of solitary confinement was designed, of course, to achieve a psychological transformation, and Dickens’ imaginative depiction of the mental state of the prisoners from the onset of their imprisonment is a delight to read. Dickens also sketches a portrait of the facial expression of the typical prisoner:



“It had something of that strained attention which we see upon the faces of the blind and deaf, mingled with a kind of horror, as though they had all been secretly terrified.”



Most helpful for the purposes of the present survey is the description by the jail administrator of the demeanor of prisoners who are about to be released:



“ ‘Well, it’s not so much a trembling,’ was the answer – ‘though they do quiver – as a complete derangement of the nervous system. They can’t sign their names to the book; sometimes can’t even hold the pen; look about ‘em without appearing to know why, or where they are; and sometimes get up and sit down again, twenty times in a minute. This is when they’re in the office, where they are taken with the hood on, as they were brought in.’ ” [1]



The challenge in the area of social, psychological and neurolinguistic control today is to achieve the same effect without the time and expense of a lifetime of solitary confinement in an expensive institution.





Schwarzendruber, Nichiren. “New Dimensions in Affective Modulation Regime (AMR): Survey and Critique,” THE JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND NEUROLINGUISTIC CONTROL, 57, 3 (Oct 1997), 321-346.

we are stardust

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are caught in the devils bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

free street

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood , returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know how well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

free
street
How Does It Feel To Walk In A Street That You Won

Cassidy's Purse

I strolled into the Kimmel Center this evening for the Walker/Wagner program and there in the middle of the lobby stood Kyle Cassidy, looking impressive as usual. Tonight he was attired in a three-piece pinstriped suit, which, if not directly from Brooks Brothers, then was certainly from BB via the Second Mile Center.

"Dude!" I greeted him. He responded "Dude!" and we exchanged the secret hipster University City terrorist fist jab. Then I noticed with a start that he was carrying in his left hand a purse! Not a purse with a strap, but a garish number a little smaller than those new mini-laptops you see all the time, decorated with what appeared to be swirls of blue icing. I have to admit that I was taken aback. I hadn't seen Cassidy for awhile and he seemed taller than ever -- about 6' 4" and amply filling out the space around him. The effect was as if I had bumped into Arnold Schwarzenegger all decked out in lipstick and high heels.

Just then Cassidy's main squeeze, Jennifer Summerfield, the actress, swished up in some splendid iridescent duds, looking like Madame Butterfly. I have always admired her (from afar, of course) ever since I saw her as that hot Nurse Duckett in the Curio Theater's performance of "Catch-22" some years ago.

"Umm, Ms. Summerfield," I started hesitantly, "your man here seems to be carrying a purse..."

"Oh, that!" she laughed with her silvery tinkle. "That's not a purse -- it's a 'clutch'. It's a European thang."

I nodded uneasily and thought Cassidy seemed a little embarrassed too. Then he embarked on a riff about how he carried his toothbrush, a bicycle pump, and his lock-picking tools around in it, in case he was suddenly called off on a job. Sounded a trifle unlikely, of course, but if that was his story, I imagine it was wise for him to stick to it.

"Well, I need to begin my climb up to the third tier," I said, and they proceeded in to their posh seats in the orchestra section. Oddly enough, when I leaned over the railing from my seat up in the third tier Box 113 I was able to see them make their regal entrance -- they had seats right down in the first row center. Cassidy always pretends they sit there because that's where the good seats are for rock concerts, but truth be told I think it's because he's too cheap to spring for the really good orchestra seats a few rows back.

Anyhow, as the orchestra tuned up I pondered the strange incident of Cassidy and the purse. I had always considered the dude the manliest of men, but there was something about the way he stood there clutching his accessory, as I believe the term is, that struck me as just a mite effeminate, and I worried during the first act, a brand new violin concert by George Walker, whether there might not after all be something a little *wrong* with him, that he might have what my good friend Andy Warhol used to call "a problem."

Fortunately during the Wagner my fears were put to rest. The lovely couple were holding hands through the whole 70-minute performance. In fact, by the Ride of the Valkyries she was fondling his thigh. They were necking passionately by the Liebestod, and by the Gotterdammerung she was practically in his lap. I spotted one of the ushers eyeing them nervously and fidgeting with his walkie-talkie, no doubt pondering whether to call in the riot squad and give the lovers the bum's rush. But the Philadelphia Orchestra is so strapped for cash now that apparently if you're a paying customer, anything goes these days.

For those of you not into Wagner, you must know that his music is the height of sensuousness, or sensuality. The German word "Sinnlichkeit" absolutely says it all. I myself, in fact, was more than a little aroused by a particularly hot violist with a blonde pony tail whom I've had my eye on for some time now. When she repeatedly did that vibrato thing on the neck of her instrument I imagined that her fingers were doing that very same thing to the back of my own neck. And I'm a happily married Mennonite husband.

At any rate, I was relieved to know that my misgivings about Cassidy were apparently misplaced. It's just that in the increasingly hip and tolerant University City, where it seems that more and more anything goes, one does have one's doubts sometimes.

Random Encounters With the Fabulous Kyle Cassidy