The Search For Slavko

When I was a young lad, I had a friend named Slavko Limonczenko. We lived on the same street in Los Angeles back in the 1960's. We dreamed of the many things we would together, when we were grown up. One of the things we put at the top of the list of things to do was to attend a World's Fair. The ruins, depicted here, are still standing in Flushing Meadows in New York, from the 1964 World's Fair. I am still interested in visiting the site, all these years later. I also hope to someday visit Chernobyl in the Ukraine, where Slavko's family immigrated from.

The_Flight_of_the_Phoenix_-_1965

With no functioning radio to call for help, the survivors wait to be rescued, but the storm blew them too far off-course to be found. Although they have a large quantity of dates for food, they calculate their water will only last for 10 to 15 days provided they avoid physical exertion. Seely and Blevins attempt to walk to an oasis. Blevins leaves his monkey behind with the men. Seely and Blevins refuse to let Natch Biz go along due to his increasing mental instability, but he defiantly follows and dies. Days later, Blevly, a sort of amalgamation of the two men (Seely-Blevins) a twisted and grotesque abomination, returns to the crash site alone and barely alive.

Clockwork Angels

I have been asked by the "Boys" to mention very especial pair of young men, they are of course Dr. Heckle and Mister Jive. Born in a time, here in America, when men were men and beer was a cool, refreshing beverage, not a loaded gun on a nursery school playground, rocket ships were sending huge payloads off to space at hypersonic velocities, cartoons were rife with senseless violence and God had his hand firmly on the dome of of the White House like a fragile egg safely nestled in a cocoon of Tempur-pedic foam. No one really knows what happened to these lads, but their work in the mid-to-late 70's can still be felt today, especially in the world of journalism. Poets these chaps were, and poetry, as the the old saying goes, "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things."* We attribute much the those slayers of great dragons, those players-with-words, those Kings-of-things-that-always-brings-us-back-to-where-a-robin-sings-and-when-we-find-these-pretty-things-we-tend-to-cease-destructive-flings. Say good night Ed. *T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-English poet and playwright.