Remembering a Giant..

Today I discovered Lenny Bruce. He is part of my introduction to essential comedians. I've also made it through Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison. Lenny Bruce sent the whole comedy genre in a direction far from the family fresh content of Johnny Carson or Frank Sinatra in the 50's and 60's. He used forbidden words like "Fuck" and "Goddamned" while ranting on stage about the injustice in Vietnam or getting rid of hard drugs with the reintroduction of pot. Bruce made good points to a generation sheltered and unwilling to take the rapid introduction to change. He spent most of his career in litigation, banned from England and Australia and blackballed from leading U.S. clubs. Bruce never agreed to edit his material to save his career. He fought valiantly in courts even as his money dwindled to mere pennies.

Lenny Bruce had exciting beginnings to this not so funny life of comedy. He gained popularity in New York City performing at nightclubs before taking the trip to none other than Baltimore. He performed at The Charles theater, now lost and forgotten. This club was an upscale supper club on Charles St. where couples went in expensive clothes and ate expensive food. The clientel had seen Dean Martin and Jackie Gleason as well as big bands from all over. I only imagine the Lenny Bruce, not yet notorious for his law breaking obsenities, but having performed shows in nothing but shoes and black socks and hanging signs from his penis enter the smokey supper club filled with Baltimore's upper crust. I'm still working out the historical detais, but we can pretty much assume that I would have come across that story by now had it been true.

What is a great claim you can now make is that Lenny hooked up with his wife downtown at the all night Mayflower Cafe. You can rest assured I will have more information regarding this hook up and the cafe in due time. BUT while my husband sighs at my nostalgia I find this whole situation exciting because I strongly believe that Baltimore is a city of understatements. We don't need to bring in the big acts that everyone has covered. Instead the city brings in world famous burlesk stars and Lenny Bruce the obscene comic genius that forever influenced the face of comedy. I've said it before but sometimes it needs reminding, it's the little things that really count so eat it up!

When you watch this Lenny Bruce clip please remember this is him 50 pounds heavier than when he started. This is also after many many years of arrests and litigation. It is still a good example of his style, but his younger stuff is also fascinating!

Sin in Movies

Dim the lights and roll the drums...Sin in Mobtown's first movie review! While this movie has nothing to do with Baltimore it has lots of strippers in a seedy club. While you watch Zombie Strippers keep in mind the scratch houses of the 1960's and 70's filled with rats, roaches and desperate men. The girls entered the stage and quickly stripped down to pasties and g-strings amidst cat calls and slobbering men before grabbing their slinky clothes and rushing backstage. While there may have been no literal zombie strippers, those girls lived a life wiggling for a few bucks until the end of a shift and then hitting the bars on The Block to seduce men into paying a few more bucks for their services. Think about that while you watch Zombie Strippers and the movie will feel just like it was filmed on Baltimore Street.

Zombie Strippers is a film starring Jenna Jameson and written and directed by Jay Lee . Jenna finally looks a lot better than some of those refugee shots of her floating around the internet. Robert Englund, of Freddie Kruger fame, stole the entire movie with his outrageous portrayal of a purple velvet suit wearing strip club owner obsessed with earning money and saving his ass. His acting saved a lot of otherwise poorly written and terribly acted moments. This was a zombie movie and not intended to be presented to The Academy for consideration. Director and writer Jay Lee threw in an unnecessary dose of Nietzsche and political jabs at George W., but he got every bit of zombie stripper *movie clips 5 & 6 correct. Lee understood that these girls weren't spoken word performers but masters of the pole and 10 inch heels. He let the majority of the film encompass super hot strip teases and topless stripper tiffs behind the scenes. The zombie virus affected Jenna and her super stripper pals pulling flesh from bone and glassy eyes an eerie black. Oozing death the girls used their super zombie tricks to whip around the pole at inhuman speeds. The make-up was top-notch and the creation of sentient female zombies moved the plot along in very interesting ways I have yet to see in a zombie film. Overall, I haven't stopped thinking about this movie as a great and super creative zombie adventure. I laughed hysterically start to finish. All you can hope to expect is 1. hot naked chicks  2. sweet strip scenes 3. kick ass zombies 4. gratuitous filth and gore. I rate it right up there as a Sinful Perfection. Thank you Jay Lee!

But....don't have to take my word for it.

N.Y. Times Review

Rotten Tomatoes Review

Cinematical Review

Stay Tuned!

School has started. I am hoping this will be my last semester as an undergraduate. Nine years of liberal arts drivel has created a monster out of me. I do credit Goucher College for opening me up to the wonderful world of History. I do not appreciate Goucher College because it is making me take a Wellness class. Today I learned how to rent an apartment. That would have been helpful about 10 years ago. Just three more months. Just three more months. I'm clicking my ruby slippers together every chance I get!

The real story is, I am swamped with school work that is so boring compared to the naked world of The Block and the scandals of good ol' Charm City. I think the City Council meant nice things when it decided on Charm City for our nickname. History has a lot of evidence to show how charming this city can be in so many other ways! Hang on for just a few months and I'll show you what I mean. I intend to get a film review out by the end of this week. Don't miss this one because it is a modern classic with a legendary porn chicklet for its star. It's link to Mobtown is a stretch, but I promise you underground history buffs won't be disappointed when you see what I'm talking about. Look for it on Friday!

And that's right, for those of you interested in my little picture. I am a Gopher, a Goucher Gopher. We are the small amazingly adorable animals that have underground cities to avoid the large birds of prey that snatch us up in the open sun. That's who we are at Goucher. Fear the Gopher. We may be burrowing under you right now. Show that fear! 

Never Be Lost Again.

Check out this amazing bibliography compiled by great historians including Dean Krimmel. He spoke to my history class a year ago and he is an awesome historian that is a completely self-made man. One of my personal Baltimore heroes.

                                                www.baltimorecityhistory.net

Happy Days Indeed!

Mencken and his autobiographical account in Newspaper Days has much more to offer me but already I have learned of the public hangings the city held. City law required the sheriff to commit the act and Mencken mentioned that he had never seen a sober sheriff on hanging day. I learned that some cops had the job of scooping floating bodies out of the Patapsco as they floated by.
     "There was a sort of derrick overhanging the water, and on it the harbor cops would pull up the floaters that they found, and let them dry. Some of them were covered with crabs and barnacles when they were brought in, and Hackman (morgue supervisor) had a long pole for knocking such ornaments off."

He also described the lack of an adequate sewer system in the city.
     "The Back Basin, which made up into the town so far that its head was only four blocks from the main crossroads, received the effluence of such sewers as existed, and emitted a stench as cadaverous and unearthly as that of the canals of Venice. In Summer it took on extra voltage, and became almost unendurable, but the old-time Baltimoreans pretended that they didn't notice it, and even professed to believe that it was good for their sinuses and prophylactic against the ague."

Not only does Mencken describe a Baltimore rarely revealed, but he makes me feel smarter for reading him. His vocabulary requires me to sit with a dictionary on hand. His descriptive prose brings every character to life. Reading his descriptions of Baltimore life allows one to view The Block in a different and deeper way. Now I may envision the businesses on Baltimore Street bathed in the stench of rotting human waste and washed up dead animals in the Back Basin. Girls would be soliciting sex or hawking beer as the horse draw buggies filled the air with dust or mud and manure.


Mencken's Baltimore allows me to forgive the nostalgia of those who existed in these times. I certainly wouldn't want to admit I hung out with hookers on The Block while smelling like an overflowing public toilet. Read some Mencken and you too may have these delightful realities thrust upon your senses. It's worth it.

Mencken's Law for an Enlightened Age

I hesitate to get too detailed about H.L. Mencken and his writing career in Baltimore. The Mencken Society and Friends of the H.L. Mencken House are incredibly knowledgeable about this prolific writer and thinker of the early 20th century. Both organizations were really helpful to me when I contacted them to find information regarding Mencken and his writing. Thanks especially to Oleg Panczenko secretary of the Friends of H.L. Mencken House and Garin Hovannisian of The Mencken Society. These guys certainly passed some Mencken love my way.

What I will venture to say about Mencken with my miniscule knowledge of his work is the fact that every scholarly website or person that I have contacted for information regarding social history of Baltimore has asked me weather I have consulted the works of Mencken. Finally...I can say that I am in the process. As suggested by the men mentioned above I picked up some of Mencken's autobiographies. The second in his trilogy is titled, Newspaper Days published in 1940 and chronicles his first years in the newspaper business from 1899 - 1906. I admit to being only on page 62 at this writing but already understand why this guy is such a Baltimore legend and why his influence was felt nationwide. The reason I trust Mencken's view of Baltimore society is summed up on page 38. It directly states:

     "I made up my mind at once that my true and natural allegiance is to the Devil's party, and it has been my firm belief ever since that all persons who vote themselves to forcing virture on their fellow men deserve nothing better than kicks in the pants. Years later I put that belief into a proposition which I ventured to call Mencken's Law, to wit:
               
     Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, then A is 
            a scoundrel."

It's like one of those postulates from Geometry class that I never understood, but now his law gives me confidence in my abilities of comprehension once more. There is no account this man can give of Baltimore life that I will not trust. One of the greatest dangers of researching The Block and the murky moralities of its life forms is the fact that so many who write and recall it later want to provide a shiny and virtuous account of the past. The past that I am intending to portray has never been nor will never be shiny or virtuous. The more I learn the dirtier The Block and Baltimore history gets. Mencken understood this darkness was essential in reporting the truth.

The Little Wins...

Sitting in my little cubby at the B level of the John's Hopkins University library with only sharp fluorescent lights to guide my thoughts I made a jack pot discovery. I uncovered a book detailing the history of Baltimore's movie theaters. The first movies appeared on The Block in the early 19th century. This book must logically be an excellent account of early Baltimore Street and if I am lucky the author threw in the scratch houses as well (scratch house -  nickname for an adult movie house on The Block / the lice and filth in the theater left men scratching themselves when they left- gross!) Robert Headley Jr. and his book Exit: A History of Movies in Baltimore self-published in 1974 now sells online for no less than 300 dollars and up to over 1,000 due to its rarity and academic value. While the book is available to buy on several websites JHU does not have a single copy in their world famous library. The kind Information Man told me that it isn't there because it doesn't fit into their specialty categories of Science and Engineering. My joy was not hidden as I proudly told tell him about Blaze Starr and her movie Blaze Starr Goes Nudist and her famous smoking couch routine. He laughed to cover the fact that he was blushing like a pretty pig pink.

Consider it awesome that this stuffy name dropping nervous breakdown factory overlooked the one subject I have dedicated to my historical future. I would feel dirty and broken down if Hopkins had already sent their research pit bulls on the topic because a girl like me wouldn't stand a chance.

Enoch Pratt Free Library and their stunning Maryland Room rule again as their online catalog reveals 3 copies. I intend to speed over and lovingly read each page of Headley's precious work. Underground history may produce more frustration than content on occasion, but today's silly win keeps me going. It's helpful to know that some ideas are yet to be taken.

The original movie theaters on The Block represented a source of great pride for the city. They established the rich history of entertainment Baltimore Street would be infamously known. Stay tuned for some amazing and fascinating history of The Block as I unfold these pieces. Please send pieces of your own to sininmobtown@gmail.com.