2010 WILL BE A GREAT YEAR!

As I reflect back on 2009. Half was awful, and the latter half has been the best!
Look for more posts in the NEW YEAR!

Warm and safe Holiday's to all.

Jonathan

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

Simply one word. DIVORCE.

I have been so consumed setting up my new
life that I have not had a chance to continue
my saga.

I will get back to it as soon as I can.

Thank you for being patient.

"FIRSTS" in the life a person you thought you knew

First Love: Dorothy Williams. 6' tall and natural blonde.
I was 13 and a half and head over heels over this girl
who liked me a lot, but we never went past the kissing stage.
She lived in a military complex on the border of East Meadow
and Uniondale, Long Island. It was known as Mitchell Manor.

First time I ever stole something: Age 14, I was walking down
a street and saw a killer cigarette lighter on the dashboard of a
car that had the window open. Seconds after I copped it, a huge
Italian guy out of nowhere grabbed me from behind. He had a
firm grip on my white leather jacket, and kept on jogging his
fist into my jaw, until it bled. He had huge rings on fingers. :-)
I have never stolen anything from anyone again since that episode.



My Friends: Leon, Chris, and Kathy

First real friends: After running away from home at 14, I lived
in abandoned buildings with a bunch of a tough street urchins.
All we did was roam the streets of Hempstead, sneak into the
theaters, and drink and smoke a lot. Just getting in trouble.

First time I ever saw a woman naked: By accident, my mother.
Funny, at the time even though she was beautiful, I just
shook it out my head. I was 9 years old. I don't think it
affected me. Writing this brought that moment up in my head.

First time I was embarressed: Two guys I knew took a girl's
bra. Somehow I was implicated. I really had nothing to do
it, but I did think it was funny at the time. Stupid kid shit.
But when her mother called me out and started yelling at
me, I was totally embarressed, and the two chicken shits that
took it gave it to me to give back. I felt bad for the girl, and
the memory of me handing back the bra to her mother
as she watched made me turn red. Very sad at that.

First tattoo: Once you turn 16 in New York, you are treated as
adult in the court system. So after months in the children's
shelter, shortly after I turned 16, well actually it was the day
I turned 16 I almost killed a teacher. He had said something
to me I didn't like as I was leaving the school after signing
papers that I was officially no longer in school. I came back
an hour later with a few feet of chain and an ice pick.
I was all over this guy and missed his heart by maybe an inch
before two other teachers stomped my wrist and the pick fell.
I got up and swung the chain at them and left. Three days
later I was arrested at a job I had just started. A check factory.
That's where they printed the checks you use. After a stint
in Nassau County Jail, and out on bail, I fucked up one week
later, and was back in the jail again. Now I was facing 7 to
15 years for felonious assault with a deadly weapon, the
original charge. To evaluate me before deciding where to
send me, I was sent to Kings Park Institution. A fucked place
where if you fucked up you might never get out. At least back
then it was that way. It was a crazy farm.

Okay, so what's that got to do with my first tattoo? Well,
now I was in a place just like jail that the age ran from 16
to older adults. Banding together with six others, we formed
a click. An older black man Otis tattooed all of us on our
left arm with a cross and our name under it. I told him to just
put "John", which drove my mother insane. She hated that
tat. Now remember, this is not a place that had equipment.
This was 1962. While drinking Aqua Velva after shave lotion,
I shit you not (it has alcohol content), he used a large baby
diaper pin with bakery thread wrapped around the end, then
dipping it into a bottle of balck india ink. He then jabbed his
way through this ritual. At the time I didn't care how fucked
up it looked. But one side effect was that tattoo was raised
up on my arm. Literally. You could feel it. Took years
before it went smooth. I've had it covered twice over the years.

First sexual experience: Age 14. I picked up a girl walking
down Hempstead Boulevard. She lived not to far. Her name
was Carol. A large buxom blonde. She wore a girdle. We had sex,
if you want to call it that in the back of her house standing and
leaning against the garage. She says to me "don't make noise,
my dad is home." Trying to pull the girdle down and trying to
enter was becoming a problem, and I came so fast, it was over.
She got angry and told me to leave. Gladly I did.



Jayne Mansfield

First Celebrity I got to touch: Jayne Mansfield. For those of
you who don't know who she is, let's just say she was the
alternative to Marilyn Monroe.

She and husband, body builder Mickey Hargitay made a stage
appearance at the Hempstead Theater, and us street urchins
were in the front row. After they left the stage we all ran up to her
and I got to touch her hair and arm. It was awesome!

First real Celebrity kiss on lips: Well, really more of a friend.
Joan Jett always kisses me on the lips.

First Musician I told to Fuck Off: Eric Bloom of Blue Oyster Cult.
I was interviewing him for my magazine Newsreal in Tucson 1977.
We were outside of a hotel where there were lounge chairs and
umbrellas. I had the tape recorder on and asking him questions.
All he did was ignore me and look at every "skirt" that walked
by. I got up and told him to "fuck off you asshole" and left. My
photographer grabbed the recorder and ran.

First concert: Burt Bacharach with opening act The Carpenters.
It was the first touring ever for The Carpenters. It was at the
Westbury Music Fair, a theatre in the round. I had been to numerous club
shows in the '60s, but this was the first official concert for me in 1970.

PARDON MY GERMAN continued

Although we had a terrible relationship, lately my
father creeps into my head more often.

His German bloodline, mixed with my mother's
Russian and Romanian's, makes for one hell of a cocktail.

He was a Sargent in the Army during WWII. Then demoted to a
corporal. It had to be his temper. He was on one of the first
ships to land on the shore of Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

I believe this event was the one thing that changed his life
forever. When he returned home. He married my mother
and they had me December 5, 1946. She was 30-years old
and he was 29. We lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York
in a converted garage on Avenue U. Can you say poor?

He decided to become a window dresser. Back then it was
a lucrative position. Most of his Army pals went to work for
Grumman Aircraft out on Long Island and were making
great money and bought nice homes. My dad was an
independent soul. He could not work for anyone that
would boss him around. So he chose to do it his way.




Mom on left...me on right 1951
in Levittown

My mother wanted more, and more. He felt the pressure,
and in the 50's moved us out to Levittown, Long Island.
I chose to stay in Brooklyn with my grandmother who
had a real nice place on Knapp Avenue in Sheepshead Bay.

I then joined them a couple of years later, but still went back and
forth to my grandmother's. She made the best chocolate seltzer
soda's with real seltzer. She spoiled me.

I was the oldest, my sister died at birth, and had a younger brother
Eric, 3-years my junior.

As window dressing became a thing of the past, dad turned to
sign painting. Small, large, the sides of trucks. Whatever he could
paint a sign on, he did it to make a living. After a few years
he was able to move us to East Meadow, to a house that had
a basement. This basement would become a place we he partly painted
and in a small room with a door became his reclusive space where
he would brood, and cut himself off from the world.

Even though he was a ticking timebomb, he would only
show that side of him occasionaly. He was shorter than me, but
one hell of a puncher. I would find that out when I hit my teens.




Age 14 with friend Linda

By the age of 14, I was already on the path of a juvenile deliquent.
After an all out fist fight and things being thrown, mostly by me, my
father and I completely wrecked my room as mom watched in horror.
I ran away from home. I always knew I had his bloodline
in me, and grew with the same pattern as he. He was running
away also, more from himself than anything.

Here is what he taught me.

Quiet, and them BAM! My troubles began when if some
guy wanted to fight, while they were threatening me, I hit first and
hard. It was not beneath me to come back with a weapon, be
it a home made zip gun, a car antenna, or a plethora of knives.
Mostly the switchblade variety. I was living with other runaways
in the predomintly black city of Hempstead. We roamed the bus
station where many suburban kids would flood to, to pick up
the coolest records, clothing for cheap, and be seen. We took their
money from them with or without force.
It was hip to be seen, lol.

Every so often I would sneak back home to my room to
grab some fresh clothes or other things. One night, my dad
caught me climbing in the window, almost as if he was waiting
and knowing I was coming. He slammed my leg with a wrench.

Right around that time, I had a friend Jerry Valleo. He did
something a friend should never do. Blame me for something I had
not only nothing to do with, but wasn't even in the area at the
time. So I beat him badly. Real bad. His parents came to see
mine, and a warrant was put out on me. I was arrested, and
thus begins one path of my life. Six months in the Children's Shelter
in Westbury, on the border of Mineola, Long Island.

The irony is Jerry gets thrown in there too a month later, and due
to his big Italian mouth, I spent 5 months protecting him from the
others. How weird is that? Fucking weird I tell ya.




Age 15

At almost close to now 5' 8" and weighing about 135 pounds,
I was afraid of no one. Why was that? I inherited that from
my father. Don't talk a fight. Fight!

More incarcerations were to come. Too many court rooms, leaving school at 16,
two not so short stays at Nassau County Jail, Kings Park Institution
and eventual parole and long term probation up to the age of 24.

The first chapter of a book, if I was to finally write it would be
"From womb to groom by 18"

A few months after being released from an institution at 17 1/2, I got
married to a girl my friend (he was driving), and me, almost ran over
before I was put away. My first wife. She was a foster child and
of Polish decent and a year older. Also a recipe for disaster.
It lasted for 19-years painful years.

Two daughters. One speaks with me at present and the
other hasn't spoken to me in years.


Das Leben ist sonderbar, recht?
(Life is weird, right?)



to be continued

PARDON MY GERMAN

It is 1:29 in the morning, and I am thinking about
my father. We didn't have a good relationship.

Actually I think of him more often lately than ever
before. Is it because I play so much German music
on my radio shows? Probably yes.

I have mentioned on the air that my mother was a
Russian immigrant. She and her other four
siblings came here from Romania.

I never mention him.

Whenever I am asked what my heritage is, I say, American.
I was born in Brooklyn, New York. And, my mom
was of Russian/Romanian decent.

I never mention the fact that my father was a German
immigrant. He was born in 1917. My mother 1916.

That makes me a 'baby boomer'. It also makes me half
Russian/Romanian and half German.

Maybe that's why I've made numerous German friendships
from childhood up to the present.

Because it is late, I promise I will delve further into this
complex story.

Zu fortgesetzt werden.

DREAMING OF EUROPE

Europe. Yes! I think about it all the time.

The weather is so different than over here in the
States, and especially Phoenix, Arizona.


My German friend shot this from inside her home.
The cactus is resting on her windowsill.
So you are looking out her window. Awesome!

A wonderful blend of Winter and a wire cactus


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ein von derzeit, eher als später, hoffe ich, ich komme zurück zu
Europa. Zurück zu Berlin. Osten und West. Paris zum ersten Mal,
und ganz über dem Vereinigten Königreich. Besonders Schottland
wieder und erforschen neue Plätze wie Wales und Kleinstädte in
England.

Mittlerweile alle kann ich Traum über ihn tun. Ein guter Freund
Gabrielle von Westberlin hält mich nebeneinander von, was Berlin
ist, ob es Ereignisse oder malerische Sichtbarmachungen ist.

Sie ist ein fantastischer Fotograf mit einer scharfen Richtung von,
was sie auf Film gefangennimmt. Ich dachte, dass ich zwei neue
Fotographien mit Ihnen teilen würde.

Translation:

One of these days, sooner than later, I hope, I will get back to Europe.
Back to Berlin. Both East and West.

Paris for the first time, and all over the United Kingdom. Especially
Scotland again and explore new places like Wales, and small towns in
England. In the meantime all I can do dream about it.

A good friend Gabrielle from West Berlin keeps me abreast of what is
Berlin, whether it is events or picturesque visuals.

She is a fantastic photographer with a keen sense of what she captures
on film. I thought I would share two recent photographs with you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Gabrielle took this a week ago. Spring has sprung.
A beautiful shot.

WATCHAMACALLIT ??

Here is my son.



Russell (Brrr...taken in Sho Lo, Arizona. February 2009)

By day he is a laborer. But, he has always worked with wood.
He built my CD shelfs, a gazebo, and many other works
of art. Great with his hands.

So, his latest kick is carving these cool "watchamacallit's".

Kind of based on the Mexican "Day Of The Dead" theme.

Here are a couple of examples:





How about helping him give a name to these pieces of art.
I'm sure he would love your suggestion's, because he has no
clue as what to name them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~