I had friends–Fred and Ed.   These were their real names and this is a true story.   As odd products of fate and circumstance both men orbited each other for several decades.   Both men were spawned from different backgrounds, and held very different political values.   Oddly, while both men pursued life from different points of view they cultivated similar passions and similar sensibilities and on a more abstract level held similar perceptions of the essence of life.   Life was art, and life was adventure.  Life was only realized through passion and when the passion died the party was over.

Fred was originally from Arizona from modest working class, solid English stock.  He went to public school, did a stint in the Navy and then in the late fifties, early sixties as his Marxist or Socialist views started to galvanize, he crossed the pond where he lived for over a decade.   He spent time in Paris and resided for awhile in Ireland and Switzerland.  He did his share of rabble rousing, an activist from top to bottom.  He promoted civil rights and and socialist doctrine.   He was arrested on occasion and spent brief time in jail.  Didn’t matter all that much.  Fred was never the sort to believe he and his politics existed on some exalted or transcendental level.  He was a blue collar guy at a near genius level who knew any gains were made through the nuts and bolts and all its  incumbent vicissitudes.  You didn’t whine about your plight against the forces that be.  You bled for it.

It was more than probable that he served as a bag man for various left wing groups, including the IRA.    From what I was told he was on more security watch  lists than Trotsky.  Hence the trips and the residence in Switzerland.   He also made films, art films on noted subjects, a couple of them low budget productions based on the work of vaunted authors.   As a kid, either in high school or college, I saw two of them at the Philadelphia Art Theaters, never thinking I would later cross paths with one of the writers and producers.   The films themselves were  decent enough as Fred and company did their best to stay true to the material.  Fred loved the arts and as an artist himself he was a defender.  Even his politics wouldn’t supersede his love for the arts.

Fred was a romantic.  Never a bomb thrower.   Not violent.  A lover.  He enjoyed his romantic affairs and he immersed himself in the European art scene.   By day he made war on the ruling classes.  At night he made love.   Fred, if nothing else was a kind an caring guy.   His inherent sense of humanity would always trump his anger, even when the anger was righteous and directed at the social injustices of the world.

Ed, on the other hand, was of a very different stripe.  Ed was born to wealth and privilege the descendant of a Southern Jewish Family who over the decades migrated to Beverly Hills, California.   He was they archetypal rich kid, a product of private schools and then a football jock at UCLA.   He was a prankster with a keen sense of humor and a great brain.  Early on, he had no direction.  Direction came less through his own volition and more through the accidents of fate.  His family’s business went broke.  A bad sales deal left the business in shambles, the money drained through lawyers and theft.

For Fred, it meant a new start–pick a direction.  He, like Fred, ended up in Europe.   He wrote screenplays, mainly for the cheaply produced Italian Sword and Sandal Epics.  He wrote for a few of the early Spaghetti Westerns. No lofty, arty pieces like Fred.   These were those early sixties versions of action adventure, Roman Soldiers, Hercules, Gladiators.   If it had hair on its chest, Fred did the writing.  If it didn’t have hair on its chest, then it was bare breasted and if it made it to the states it did so in a more puritanical form.

Ed didn’t care.  They paid him in the dark, but they paid him in cash.  He wrote enough scripts to make a decent living.   He resided in Italy, and later he lived in London.  He also lived in Switzerland. Around the same time Fred was living there.

Besides his screenwriting efforts, Ed had another source of income.  He was working for Army Intelligence.   He worked in Europe, usually playing Cowboys and Russians.   He told me on many occasions how he hated working Venice, because in the night fog he never knew what was coming out of the shadows.   He nearly got himself killed in a small Venetian side street, but fortunately, when he heard noises behind him turned to his right to fire and not to his left.   The bullet caught him in the shoulder and not in his chest.   As for the shooter, it turned into a very bad day.   Ed was an excellent shot with keen eyesight.  His only fault, he lamented, was lousy depth perception.

In his spare time Ed chased down surviving wanted Nazis who choose to remain in Europe and not flee with the rest to South America.  They were called “Werewolves,” and many had assumed respectable positions as respectable citizens.  Under false ID, of course.   Some of the less fortunate had gone to ground and avoided Western justice courtesy of the networks and covens, who survived by working for either the Americans or the Russians.  Or both.  Otherwise, Ed spent his time in romance.  He was the true romantic, falling in love at the flash of an eyelash.  He loved women.  He loved romance.   Romance was rare and illusive in the modern age, he felt.  He preferred fantasizing about life in another era.

Fred and Ed both knew history.  I learned more from listening to them then I could from any college professor.   They were encyclopedic about world history.  Ed once remarked he would have given enough to learn what Pope Leo l said to Attila the Hun that turned him back at the Po.  It was those kind of  references that were wonderful and caused one to marvel at the passion that fed life into obscure and aging data.  When the two met up, years later, writers in Hollywood, the would discuss such facts for hours on end.   It was their world, a world that was inhabited by few others.   That and their passion and appreciation for the arts were what kept them going, even long after the glory days were put behind them and life was safe and at least somewhat predictable.   When their chief worries, the spooks and the gremlins had long faded into remarkable pasts and now there were only the bills to pay and the arrival of old age.

The two would argue every once in awhile.  Ed thought Fred’s politics were ridiculous and antiquated.   While Fred disliked the capitalistic system he had come to terms with the unlikelihood of its imminent collapse.  However, with the years, so came the dilution of absolutes, and both could view their own beliefs with humor and more than a trace of irony.   In short, underneath all the rhetoric, they were keenly aware there were places where sophistry prevailed, leading to at least the obscure conclusion both points of view contained elements that were totally full of shit.

The two didn’t meet that often, but they emailed and spoke on the phone, realizing  over years of correspondence how their paths were so intertwined.  How their lives intersected.  How Fred at times, in sensibility at least, was the object of Ed’s endeavors at saving the world from the great Red Menace.   Cat and mouse throughout Europe.  Each in the arts in some way.   Each with a hidden agenda.   And, later, each finding more commonality with each other than with most creatures in the world.   Even those who shared similar views were never bound to them like these two were bound to each other.   The layers of commonality were like armor against the corrosive intrusions of politics.  Sharing passions was far more compelling than sharing political similarities.   It is the true glue when sitting across from each other.  For two ideological warriors it was what was most precious and what they had left.

And then there was something else in common.  A woman.  I was sitting with Ed when he got a call from Liesel.  Ed and Liesel had once been an item, the two makings of an on and off passionate affair that spanned several countries, at least.   She was calling him from Los Angeles.  She was visiting a friend.  Oh really.  Who was the friend?   Fred.  She was dating Fred around the same time she was dating Ed.  Isn’t it wonderful they could all meet up again?

Yes, indeed.

Fred and Ed died several years ago, each from his own petty vices.  Ed from drinking and eating.  Fred was a smoker and died from lung cancer.   Ed died in Oklahoma, and Fred died in Venice, California.   With their passing, so passed a bit of living history.  And with that so did a great repository for history itself.   I miss them both as they don’t make many like them anymore.  Such a drag.

The original cover was designed for G.P. Putnams Publishing by Ron Walotsky. Ron Ron Walotsky was a science fiction and fantasy artist who enjoyed a long and prolific career painting book and magazine covers, including Stephen King, Anne Rice,[2] Bruce Sterling, Roger Zelazny, Robert Silverberg and many others….This cover was in Ron’s earlier years. He was kind enough to sell me the original painting for the book cover. It still hangs in my living room. The digital eBook version of the Constant Travellers, is adorned by the original cover.

Minstrel’s Alley will be discounting its ebooks for the holiday season. The discount applies to all electronic publication editions, including Kindle, iPad, Barnes & Noble, Sony eReader, Smashwords, and Kobo.

We thought the holiday season would be a good time to introduce new readers to our books, ” said Minstrel’s Alley Publisher, M.J. Hammond. “People will be buying electronic reading devices for Christmas and other holidays.

“The Blood Orange, by Gordon Basichis, is our latest publication,” said Hammond. “The novel is a modern day take on the classic Los Angeles Noir Detective novels of Raymond Chandlder. As with his work, Los Angeles is a principal character in a modern day romantic mystery thriller that incorporates old California Bandit legends with contemporary intrigue. It’s a great story that would also be the perfect LA film.”

Hammond recommended The Guys Who Spied for China, also by Gordon Basichis. “It’s a roman a clef, based on Basichis’ experiences uncovering Chinese Espionage Networks in the United States,” she said. “It was a quarter-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.”

For the complete story and the full public relations release… please go to this link.

Minstrel’s Alley has just published Gordon Basichis’ new novel, The Blood Orange.  The Blood Orange is a romantic mystery thriller set in California and is the tradition of Raymond chandler and other Los Angeles Noir msytery writers.  The novel is set in contemporary times but draws upon old Spanish California bandit legends.

Gordon Basichis is the author of several previous books, including the roman a clef, The Guys Who Spied for China, the non-fiction novel, Beautiful Bad Girl, the Vicki Morgan Story, and The Constant Travellers, a new age Western Fantasy novel.

Please find below the link to the Press Release announcing Minstrel’s Alley Publication of The Blood Orange.

A couple of years ago, I wrote on this blog about the need for the new commune.     The original article was entitled, Boomers New Commune for Retirement Post-Recession. My first posting came on the heels of the economic meltdown.  I could see where the economic downturn, in fact the major disaster cost Boomers, their houses, their savings, their jobs, and dignity.   People who had saved short money who depending on their pensions, found their savings wiped out, their pensions in ruins.   Things did not look good then, and now, several years, later, the largest segment of the unemployed are those who are fifty-years-old and up.  Boomers.

As a generation, most Boomers lack enough financial security to retire as it is.  Few have put even  a scant $100 Thousand away for the golden years.  And now, a few years later, public service programs and entitlement programs are under attack.   While governments, federal and state kick back to the wealthy by allowing major tax breaks for the “job creators,” not jobs are really being created.  Not on the scale that is necessary.   It’s like the country is being sold off one piece at a time, and those who worked for thirty, forty, fifty years, find themselves confused, caught in a device of their own making…in big trouble.

Back in the beginning of the twenty-first century, all right, seven years ago, Marcia and I pitched to the television networks a dramatic series about Boomers finding themselves confronting the realities of not a brave but dumb new world.  As Marcia had developed such hits as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and oversaw Dynasty, we figured pitching a night time soap opera wasn’t that big of a stretch.   At the pitch meetings, we pointed out that what services that were taken for granted would be diminished or rescinded entirely.   The proverbial carpet was pulled out from under, and now it was time for innovation.

We detailed how social services would fade into history and the aged and the middle income people would have less access to adequate medical care, food, and shelter.  You know, the basics.   I pointed out how instead of needing midwives, there would be a demand for hospice workers, nurses, and medical technicians who could administer to the commune at large.   While there would still be a need to grow crops and work the land, there would also be the need for advanced technology.   In the old communes technology was feared and rejected.  In the commune of the aging Boomer, technology is necessary for communication, access to information, and in some cases a means for some to continue to make a living well into their senior years.

The new commune would be very different from the communes of the sixties, even though the point of common ground is that on both occasions they were established by the same generation.Young Boomers back then, people in their twenties, rebelling against the system, living sex, drugs, rock and roll.   Now it would be older Boomers, just living, trying to survive.   Back to the garden. The commune.  The commune with computers.  The commune with more companionship than sexual experimentation, where the commune dwellers had matured enough so they didn’t have to take a vote on who would wash the dishes and who would walk the chickens.   The drugs were of the prescription variety and the minding expanding process was relegated to things like scanning in photos of the grandchildren or organizing reading and education programs for the local schools and nearby communities.

You know, useful stuff.  Of course there would be comedy and drama, an audience keyed in to character interaction in this ensemble cast for a television series.   We pitched this idea to every network and some of the cable companies.   We told them that Boomers and such were a major audience and as their tastes and buying patterns were way different than the old elderly.  Boomers, unlike their parents, weren’t stuck on brands and were open to new products and services.  They were technologically oriented.    They had money.  some of them, anyway.

We described in marketing terms how sponsors would flock to but air time.    Here was a  culturally rich platform to sell their, designer jeans,  pharmaceuticals,  magical yogurts, nutritional health bars,  and luxury cars…the Valhalla of marketing platforms for the Lexus, Mercedes, BMW…and let’s not forget Viagra.

However, the networks were not run by Boomers.  The networks were run by people barely out of their fetal stage.   Little embryos and often with brains to match.  Network executives were largely people of privilege who had been largely insulated from the harsh realities of the world.  These are people who are largely not overly imbued with a sense of social empathy and as a group their historical understanding ranges all the way from Happy Days to Happy Hour.    This was a new marketing segment, an emerging marketing segment that had yet to be tested.  As someone who has worked in marketing, as yet to be tested, means that fifty people above and below have nary a clue of the issue  and its potential before you.   As  iconic screenwriter William Goldman has said about Hollywood, “No one knows nothing.”  And his sage-like statement is no truer than when essentially spoiled, self-absorbed and insecure people are confronted with a new idea.  Even it the idea sounds plausible, it can’t be because no one has proposed it before.   The system shuts down.   To the shock of no one, we were told no.

Okay, so now here we are.   We have politicians wanting to do away with social security and deny a fair amount of social services.  On one hand you have Wall Street, like Sirens of the Cosmic Peep Show promising that if you just give them your money, lush retirement awaits you…you aging fool.  You can have a new career, another business,  a chance to do all the things and have all the experiences you should have had the first place instead of saddling yourself with a thankless job where you worked for trinkets and baubles until they finally fired your sorry ass during the latest Recession.

Out of work, unemployed, not a lot of bread in the bread box, you have according to the actuaries another twenty to forty years of life on this planet, and the question is how the hell are you going to make it?

How indeed?  Well, there are all these blighted towns out there they could be restored and turned back into communities.    Abandoned urban areas that could be reclaimed.   Communities where there is close proximity to the shops and services.  Where as a commune or compound you can actually function and live your life.   The modern commune.   Maybe there are jobs and maybe the jobs are created from within the commune.  Internet commerce or whatever.  In any event, most commune members would have some Social Security income, some kind of pension.    Maybe it’s not necessarily stuck out in the middle of some boondocks paradise where you are a million miles from the hospital, should your heart act up or your hemorrhoids start to bother you.

Places that are reclaimed.  Where you can be cared for by people just like yourself.  Everything from retired healthcare workers to IT folk, chefs, and crafts workers.   Other Boomers pitching in, long evolved from the concerns or post-adolescence and focused on the ardors of survival in a world that may yet reject them.  It ain’t the Garden, but then it aint’ the Grave Yard either.   And it sure beats the hell out of Leisure World.