The Human Body and the Automobile

These two images appeared on separate pages as an advertisement for an auto manufacturer. I saw the ad in a Home and Garden magazine. The first page shows the people arranged in the shape of the auto. There is a shadow outline, like a reflective pool, beneath the figures, indicating what it is you are looking at. I cut that portion of the image out to make room for the next scene. Turn the page and you see the actual automobile.

At first, looking at the people, I thought they actually were making a living statue of themselves. My wife, who is an artist and has a keen eye, corrected me. These people had not created a statue figure with their bodies. "The lady at the bottom would be sagging," my wife told me. No, these people were all lying on the floor. The photo was taken from above. Only way it could be done. The dancers, or perhaps better stated, the acrobats, had made something more like a painting out of their bodies. "Ingenious,' I said, sucking in my breath.

My first impression was that. The whole idea was an act of creative ingenuity. But then I got to thinking about this kind of creativity. The whole idea of using people to imitate the shape of an automobile shows me how deeply interconnected the automobile and the human body have become. The auto has been around for over 100 years now. At first, the earliest shapes were similar to horse drawn wagons. People sat in them, actually on them. But gradually the style of the auto became enclosed and more streamline, incorporating aerodynamic principles.

And now, the style of the common auto suggests something truly alive, the front ends look like the mouths of imaginary creatures. What used to be fenders now look more like the haunches of this very same creature. Little by little, the auto has come to look like an outer skin, or a garment worn by the owner/driver of the vehicle, that offers some kind of psychological/personality representation of the 'wearer' who is barely seen behind the wheel. The car is the owner, so to speak.

And now, it seems, a final concept is being explored through this advertisement that has appeared in a Home and Garden magazine. I can't imagine what other magazines this same ad has appeared in as well. Now, it is the human body itself that is creating the vehicle. The true symbiotic relationship has come to reveal itself to us. And it has done so as an art form.

Now over the years, I have grown used to seeing cars depicted on TV ads in a much different manner. They are presented to us poor slobs as the ultimate in agressive manliness. These manly cars are shown tearing up the highway, racing across mountainous roads, making the curves at incredible speeds. They are shown climbing over rocky terrain, reaching the summit of peaks not even sherkas are capable of ascending. Or if the target audience happens to be the female of the species, the very same cars show themselves as docile family servants. They allow themselves to be filled with gaggles of screaming kids climbing in, jamming themselves inside with all their sporting paraphernalia. The women are represented merely as moms for the most part, while the men are as yet still allowed the blessed image of that fighting spirit breed from which this great and tough American city/landscape was built.

But now, everything has changed. The human body, through the generousity of performing art, has become one with the auto body. No longer does the auto reveal our hidden dreams. No longer can humanity be seen as having been technologically benefited by the creation of the automobile. If anything, it is the other way around. Humanity is the benefactor. Our bodies have become dedicated servomechanisms to the automobile. With our flesh and blood we give it its plastic/metal shape.

What to make of this, I wonder?

Down Memory Lane - Part 1

I'm on a Greyhound bus going from Los Angeles to New York City. The year is 1947. I'm 15 years old. This is my first giant solo step into the wide world. I'm going to spend the summer with my extended family, my cousins primarily.

If you weren't around in those years, you would have laughed at how puny and tiny those Greyhound buses looked. Narrow seats, narrow aisle, narrow windows, no restroom in the back, driver sees through a two-panel windshield, his hands and feet dealing with all kinds of levers and peddles. It was quite a bumpy ride. After four days and nights on this bus, my body felt much older.

The bus was full, but before we even pulled out of the LA terminal, six of us - teenagers ranging from 15 [me] to maybe about 20, all strangers - quickly discovered that we were going the whole distance to NYC together. So we immediately became a team. One was a sailor going home on leave. Two were a couple, who spent their time in the back seat smooching 3,000 miles. There was one black guy who claimed he was 16 but appeared to be more like in his 20's. The 6th guy is a blur in my memory banks.

Our first major stop was Las Vegas, early in the morning. The terminal was more a tiny hole in the wall with a door leading into a old fashioned greasy spoon. And this unsavory eatery sported another room decked out with a row of slot machines. and behind this room was a smallish gambling hall with roulette and poker tables.

Our sailor friend skipped eating and made a beeline for the gambling room. His pockets were bulging with cash. After six months at sea, he was ready for some excitement. I remember seeing him swagger into the gambling room the way sailors learn to walk, tipping his cap back on his head as if he were preparing to conquer the world.

The rest of our gang ate our breakfast complaining about our bones. Within ten minutes - can you believe it? - our sailor buddy was back...and broke, cleaned out, pockets empty. He had a funny look on his face, as if to say: "Well, that's life...ain't it always."

So, for the rest of our journey across the wide continent of USA, five of his friends chipped in from their meager pocketbooks the necessary for him to eat. No one complained about this. We all just naturally stepped up to the plate. It was a matter of sticking together. Six young ones facing the world in solidarity.

I don't actually remember all the talk that went between us. We chatted non-stop all the way. All our ideas about life, our plans for adventure when we got to NYC, our bragging beliefs in ourselves, and yes, our sex fantasies. But the couple in the back had no sex fantasies. They were making acting out every night under a blanket.

One other memory sticks out in my mind. We had gotten to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Another breakfast stop. It was 5 in the morning. We hadn't eaten since the evening before. I remember how cold and desolate the scene was, one tiny restaurant stading alone on a wide and windy plain. We stumbled out of the bus, bones creaking, and straggled up to the front door of the restaurant. And here, we were stopped cold. A sign was fastened to the door, crudely written.

It said "No Negroes Allowed."

We stared at the sign, dumbfounded. And without speaking a word, as if one body, we turned around and went back to our bus seats.

Suddenly, we had all become Negroes. For me, the civil rights movement began that summer in 1947.

Next time, I'll tell you about that wild summer in NYC.

Down Memory Lane - Part 2

New York - Manhattan, Brooklyn, Coney Island - these were the three areas where my summer of 1947 played itself out.

You may not have been around on this merry old planet in those days, so I'll give you a quick tour of the times - as it was for us teenagers.

World War II had just ended two years before. Most everyone behaved like a starved consumer, just now getting started on a long range, buying binge. Money was almost like water flowing in the streets.

Youngsters like myself had been exposed to all the war propaganda - mostly from sitting in movie houses. The war films were calculated to stir up one's patriotic blood. Kids like me went around dressed in some variation of a uniform. I wore surplus navy dungarees [what are now called blue jeans]. These were bell-bottoms. I also wore a surplus navy long sleeved blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I even wore a white navy cap. No one ever believed I was a sailor gone AWOL - I looked too young to give that impression. It was simply a matter of stating a preference had I been old enough to join the war effort.

Just a few years later, the Korean War presented itself, and it just so happened I ended up in the Army. But that is another story.

That summer, I stayed with my cousin in Brooklyn. It would be more polite to say I stayed with my aunt and uncle. But they hardly figured in my life. They had a business in Manhattan with their noses to the grindstone. My cousin, two years older than me, worked in his parent's business.

I needed to find a job. Not knowing which way to turn, I asked another of my uncles for advise. He owned a clothing manufacturing business in Manhattan. Being the oldest son, he inherited this business from his dad, my grandfather. It was a typical post-war small-time sweat factory employing mostly middle-aged black ladies who worked the dozen or so old fashioned Singer sewing machines. My uncle's sister was the clothing designer. The business had contracts with Sears and J.C. Penney. In other words, they made cheap schmatas for the working class.

My uncle was a kindly family man who loved his daughters dearly. He was short of stature with a balding head of hair that always needed trimming around the sides. He talked fast, like a racetrack gambler. He always wore a worried look on his face, having come out of the depression. He never seemed to catch on to the fact that these post war years were the beginning of boom times.

My uncle told me he had a job for me. In those days [I don't know how this works now] the clothing industry was like the book industry. Remainders were sent back to the factory. And my uncle had a lot of remainders. He showed me his storage space that was full of remainders dating back several decades. What he had on his hands were out-of-style dresses, shirts, blouses, slacks, summer wear, winter wear - you name it. Boxes of merchandise stacked to the ceiling.

"This is your job for the summer," he told me.

I gave him a questioning look. So he went on to explain his strategy. He would rent a cheap storefront on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. This avenue went for miles, a commercial street full of small shops selling everything imaginable under the sun. I would run the store.

"We'll get some plumbing pipes and you can construct racks with them to hang the schmatas on. I've got boxes full of hangers. In the morning you roll out the racks onto the sidewalk. We'll make a few shelves inside for more display. I'll get you a cheap cash register to stash the money in. I'll drive you in every morning, and pick you up at six in the afternoon. Each day, I'll collect the money you take in, and once a week I'll pay you a salary and a commission on sales."

"How much do I sell the schmatas for?"

"Sell them for whatever you like. This is all what I call fire sale merchandise. Hanging around here in this space all these years, these boxes of schmatas are a fire hazard anyway. Get rid of them all. That's your job for the summer."

Next thing I knew, my uncle borrowed one of my other uncle's trucks, and I loaded it up with boxes of schmatas. It took me several days to move the merchandise from the Manhattan warehouse to the store on Flatbush. My uncle drove the truck to the store, left me there to unload. I have no idea where he went on foot, nor what he did while he was gone. I guessed he took the subway, or a taxi back to the sweatshop in Manhattan. Later, I found out he never went back to the shop. There were places on Flatbush Avenue where businessmen hung out. To this day, I haven't a clue about what went on in these hangouts, but I can guess.

Well, it took me two weeks to get the store ready for opening day. I supplied myself with white cardboard to make signs with using garish crayon colors. I had a lot of fun playing around with the pricing. It wasn't long before I discovered that the ladies and men who came to the store weren't very concerned over price. They had money falling out of their pockets, and they assumed they were getting bargains.

I would load up one rack with a sign that read "Everything on this Rack $5.00." And the next rack standing beside it read "$3.00." I had five prices: $5.00, $4.00, $3.00, $2.00, $1.00, and 50cents. I'd stand by the cash register and watch the buyers rummage through the racks, picking out something, holding it up to the light, looking for moth holes maybe, showing the item to a friend. These people worked like beavers to find what they wanted. The cash register rang all day. I was having a ball. I really didn't know what I was doing, whether I was selling too high or too low. It didn't matter. My uncle was pleased as punch to get rid of the schmatas.

Halfway through the summer, his storeroom of old styles was half empty.

"Lower your prices," he said to me. "Slash everything to half-price!"

I felt emboldened. Next day, I put out a sign as big as I could make it with the marketing equipment I had on hand: GOING OUT OF BUSINESS - EVERY ITEM IN STORE HALF PRICE!!!

Mayhem broke loose. In two weeks, we were out of merchandise. My job was over. I dismantled the racks, and my uncle sold the pipes to a plumber friend. He had all kinds of connections. Maybe knew this guy from the place where he hung out on Flatbush.

Well, this was how I spent my days that summer of 1947. Next time, I'll tell you how I spent my nights and Sundays with my cousins and friends over in Coney Island. I was quite a hero among the crowd there, distributing schmatas to me friends - old groovy outfits. This was before the 60's when old-fashioned clothing was the thing.

Cheers for now,
Vitae

Down Memory Lane - Part 3

Looking back, I can truly say, the summer of 1947 was a defining point in my young life. At 15, I had learned the thrill of entrepreneurial freedom selling my uncles warehouse of schmatas. Either that experience, or simply something in my gene pool formed my overall outlook on life. To this day, my entrepreneurial juices run strong. Seems I'm always into promoting something. Let's face it. I'm a promoter. I was a chef and a restaraunteur for 50 years, pushing food in everyone's face. "Taste this!" I always used to say. But also, health - mental and physical. Look at my All Game site to see what I mean. I push higher consciousness, awareness, alternative healing, anti-aging supplements.

Back to 1947. After my day at work in Flatbush ringing up sales, my uncle drove me back to Brooklyn to my cousin's house. Everyone in the family - the aunts and uncles and the grandparents - lived in Brooklyn. This was on my father's side. On my mother's side, the families lived in Coney Island. Why we had to live in Los Angeles was one of my major questions. My father, an architect instead of a businessman, pursued his artistic passion, which ultimately took him into the filmmaking world. He became an art director and made some significant movies in his time. His sisters were artistically inclined in various ways. My aunt, my cousin's mom, for instance wrote reams of poetry in secret, her output coming to light only after her death. My other aunt was a designer for the schamatas. But all the brothers were businessmen of one kind or another. And their sons became businessmen.

At my cousin's in Brooklyn, the two of us would grab a quick meal, or we would eat out. His parents seldom got home as early was we did, they were so glued to their business in Manhattan. A black lady took care of the two younger boys. She was the pillar for the family.

But on Sundays, the whole family ate dinner in the dining room. My uncle sat at the head of the table, nothing unusual about this arrangement. It's been the custom down throught the ages. But at the other end of the table there was no aunt to balance out the picture. Instead, we always had a strange guest at that place. Strange to me anyway. Opposite my uncle there stood at the table a piece of furniture, what looked like a cabinet about four feet tall. It looked like a giant size radio with knobs and such. But instead of the usual square space of cloth covered speaker there was a glass screen about 8 inches wide and 6 inches high. This devise was the first TV I had ever seen, except what I had see at the New York World's Fare of 1939 - which I had forgotten about.

The picture on this screen was so tiny I had to squint to make out what was happening. I remember one Sunday at the table eating the midday meal and watching two stick figures dance in a ring. It was the world champion boxing match of the season. My uncle's eyes were glued to the screen inside that mahogany box across the table from him seven feet away.

If we ate out, which, actually, was most of the time; we generally ate in Coney Island where we were part of a gang [you might say] of guys and gals. We had the neatest hangout you could imagine. We were a gang of about a dozen kids, all older than me, ranging in age to about 18 years old. My cousin on my mother's side, who lived in Coney Island, was one of the members as well. We had pooled our resources to rent a two-car garage. We outfitted it with rugs and couches, tables and lamps, a cheap, old-fashioned refrigerator - and a phonograph machine.

This was a primitive hangout compared to what kids make for themselves these days. No high-tech fancy lighting systems, no high-tech sound systems, no microwave. But it was cozy, and it was ours. And if we weren't out on the beach swimming in the ocean or lying on blankets sunbathing, we were in our garage dancing, singing, smooching, making out you might say, although I don't recall how far anyone went. We laughed a lot and told stories about our day. Everyone had a job of some kind. Everyone had a funny, crazy, wild incident to report. We all must have felt like we had the world in the palm of our hand. We all must have felt invincible. I remember once wondering to myself if life could get any better.

One day, two of our group lost their jobs. This was a blow to our financial situation. They could no longer pay dues. Well, we had a quick meeting over this issue, and decided we could handle ponying up a few more dollars each. And we then did the most magnanimous thing one could imagine. We each threw in enough extra cash to give the two guys sufficient money for carfare and lunch so they could go to the city and find new jobs. We figured this sacrifice would not be necessary for long. But such was not the case. A week went by, and they hadn't yet landed anything.

In the second week, one of the gals found out through a friend that the two rascals were spending the food money in a different way. They were going to the Roxie every day. Well, you can imagine what hit the fan!

In those days, the major downtown movie theaters put on extravaganzas. For $1.00 you spent almost the entire afternoon - the matinee - seeing two full feature films, the news, and in between the two movies was presented live on stage a full blown musical performance, a famous band, dancers, the whole nine yards of what could be considered close to being a Broadway show.

These two clowns were spending their time looking at movies and the show instead of looking for jobs. It was Louis Prima they went to see. He was the hottest singer; his was the hottest band of the summer of '47. I know, because we all went to the Roxie to see Louis Prima at least once that summer. And our two clowns evidently got hooked. Our garage was the scene of an uproar when we heard this piece of news.

Louis Prima sang one song that sticks in my mind to this day:
"Many long years ago, lived a man named Robin Hood;
He used to rob from the rich at every chance he could.
With his trusty bow and arrow, he could part your hair..."

Those are all the words I can remember. I do remember thinking about that song on the train going back home to Los Angeles. In modern times, I was thinking, the rich seldom, if ever, get robbed. Even that young, I saw pretty clearly that it was other way around. It was the rich who robbed from the poor. The rich did it then, they had been doing it for centuries - since civilization began. They do it now.

By the end of the summer, I was totally broke. I woke up one morning realizing it was time to go home, and I didn't have a dime in my pocket. What to do? Well, it was my dear softhearted uncle who saved the day. He must have sensed I would end up broke. He probably remembered his own youth. He came over to the house, and told me that his brother, my father, had called to find out how I was...I hadn't called or written all summer long. Isn't that typical of a fifteen year old on the loose?

This was just a subterfuge. What he really wanted to know was if I had had a good time that summer. Of course I said I had. Oh, uncle, if I could only tell you now how much that summer meant to me...if I could only tell you now, in my late years, how grateful I am to you for having been my patron, my guide into the wide world of real life...meaning his trust in me, his ability to not run my life (after all, he was supposed to have been my official guardian). My uncle lived until he was 90. And when I finally did have a chance to thank him when I was 45 and hadn't seen him since that summer, he couldn't remember what the big deal was. Yes, he remembered I had been to New York that summer, and he did remember something - not much - about the schmata business, but his real gift to me had gone unnoticed. Why? Because, deep down, he was a modest man, a creature who loved without seeking love back.

So then he asked me how I planned to travel back home. Not the bus, he hoped. Better take the train. Then, with a twinkle in his eye - I think he had fathomed I would be broke by the end of the summer -he laid a $100 bill in my hand. This, he said, was my bonus for having made all the old schmatas in his warehouse disappear.

He took me to Grand Central Station. I got my ticket, and said goodbye with a handshake, no hugs in those days. My three days on the train - this run had a fancy name, which I have totally forgotten - were the crowning touch to my wonderful summer. A 23-year old redheaded beauty took me under her wing. My summer at the beach had tanned me. My body had filled out. I had become a man. She bought me alcoholic drinks, vodka somethings. We smooched. It was just like being in a movie of my own. We parted at the Los Angeles station never to see each other again. With my last dime, I called my sister to come get me.

The Latest Internet Solution?

You've most likely have already heard about AGLOCO. Someone I never knew, and still don't, sent me an email inviting me to join this new system. And I joined! Seldom do I join untried, so-called moneymaking opportunities. This AGLOCO system is so new, it's cast as being in the "Pre-Launch" stage, and it's most important ingredient is not yet in place.

Is this a true opportunity? Or a scam? On the surface, it appears to be a quite legitimate proposition. The concept behind it is something like a revolution. With AGLOCO, ordinary cyberspace citizens like you and me can get a slice of the business world's advertising dollar - much like Google gets it's income.

Here's one of the blurbs about the system:

"An explanation of how this no cost to you program works.
Free is too expensive... Own the Internet!
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Whenever you are online, either surfing, blogging, clicking on an ad, making a purchase, all the money generated by your activities is pocketed by a small number of players. At AGLOCO they say not anymore!

AGLOCO is a global community, whose owners are its Members (you and potentially the millions of internet users out there). Their goal is to capture a significant portion of the value generated by our online activities and return it to Members in cash. Best of all, it is totally free, Members will NEVER have to pay anything, nor will they have to disclose ANY personal information!

How does this work? Once you sign up on their website, when available you will be able to download the Viewbar software, a free toolbar-sized application (half the size of a traditional Windows tool bar) that quietly sits on your desktop without ever hampering your online habits. That's all you need to do! Just continue using the Internet as you used to? No need to change your habits!

Do you have several individuals using one computer? You can have different AGLOCO viewbars to fit the profile of each user.

Don't want to see or use the Viewbar at any given time? Just minimize it and the Viewbar stops working!

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The more people join AGLOCO, the more value the community can generate for itself. The company believes those that build the community deserve more: your own profits become larger the more people you refer. You can accumulate hours not only from your Internet activity but also from those who you refer, and their referrals too? Up to 5 levels underneath you! For example, if you refer 10 people and all of them refer 5 people each, you could make over 7000 shares a month*!

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The guys behind this idea include several Stanford MBAs and a few individuals who started AllAdvantage back in 1998, which gave over $100 million to its users before falling victim to the burst of the internet bubble. Today, the context is much more favorable: The sophistication of on-line commerce, the rapid emergence of communities, the wealth of advertising revenue sources, etc. Isn't it time you got your share of the Internet?

Dont wait any longer. This is a win-win opportunity, and you'll make it even more profitable for yourself when you start referring friends and relatives before others get to them!"

WELL, I MUST SAY, this line seemed irresistible. And so I went for it. I decided, what's there to lose? If the whole scheme is just a line of b___s___, just another slick attempt to get my name and email address in order to sell the information to some other outfit, so what? My name and email address is already all over the Internet.

Seriously, I doubt if this is a scam. The AGLOCO website is much too elaborate and reeks of integrity. Anyone wanting to get my information by filling out a form, needs only to make a simple splash page offering me a free something or other, a newsletter or a report. The AGLOCO people put up a very costly site. Why do that just to get my particulars?

Maybe I'm Mr. Gullible? Maybe so...

But I'm cheering for AGLOCO just because the people behind it seem to be modern day Robin Hoods. I like the idea of having something for the people. The Internet is perhaps the last frontier where everyone can have a decent chance at getting a piece of the pie of abundance.

So, this is my story and I'm sticking to it.

If you care to look into this "chance of a lifetime," just go to my site:
http://burkeshire-reports.com/agloco