Rosary for the win.

Bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme made headlines in April when he announced that Jesus Christ had appeared to him in a vision, "offering him a rosary and saying the words, 'Boko Haram is gone.'" From this the bishop concluded that the Lord meant him to know that praying the rosary was the means by which the evil Boko Haram would be expelled.

It probably was a good thing that the major news outlets of the West largely ignored the story, because they would have run it as a look-at-those-wacky-Catholics kind of piece.

Not that they have any answers to the problem of Islamic terrorism.

Boko Haram is usually interpreted to mean something like "Western education is forbidden," but the name literally means "Books are forbidden." You'd think the American Library Association, with its "Banned Books Week," would be calling to bomb them into the stone age, but they haven't taken a position on it. (To the organization's credit, they did have Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak last January at the ALA Midwinter meeting while timid little college campuses have run away from the author like scared mice. I'm an admirer of Hirsi Ali, but her staunch atheist views seem to have blinded her to the benefits of good religion---understandably, considering the brutal abuse she has suffered. Still, she ought to be welcome as a serious writer on any American campus.)

Anyway, a few weeks after Bishop Dashe Doeme went public with his vision, the Nigerian military claimed to have rescued 677 women and children kidnapped by Boko Haram, Coincidence? Pressure from the bishop forcing the military's hand? Answer to a prayer?

If the military accomplished this rescue as stated than they deserve immense credit. News reports following the mass abduction last year showed how difficult finding and defeating a large rebel army would be in Nigeria, a country about twice the size of California with 4.5 times the population, half of them Muslim. Like Cyrus, praised by Isaiah as the agent of the Lord, so is the Nigerian military and those who helped them.

Would it have happened without the rosary? Maybe not. We know God uses people to work out His purposes; otherwise there would have been no need to commission Apostles.

Well, the story is not yet over. The women rescued endured the most diabolical torture, including that favorite of mindless thugs, rape; many are pregnant with the children of their captors. And Boko Haram has just attacked Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, and they really don't care who they kill. A mosque was bombed with worshipers in it. This is not really a battle of Muslim vs. Christian so much as a death cult vs. everybody else.

If you're Catholic, or otherwise pray the rosary, consider doing so in support of the good people of Nigeria. They need your help.

Where in the world are the Bowery Boys?

As we get even closer to Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day on June 2, the tension mounts... the streets of New York are a-sizzle with excitement!

The Wikipedia entry on the Bowery Boys (of which Slip Mahoney was the one true king) noted that the BBs' many film plots followed those of Abbott and Costello---when Bud and Lou did a Western, the Boys did a Western; when A&C did a haunted house, the Boys did a haunted house, and so on. I enjoyed Abbott and Costello films, but hey---they made only 36 movies; the Bowery Boys made 48. How many easy comedy ideas were floating around in that era? B movies were not nor expected to be dynamos of originality.

Anyway, the Bowery Boys got around a lot in those pictures, although they always played the same characters---unlike Abbott and Costello, who played different characters (who were exactly like Bud and Lou). Sometimes it required taking storytelling liberties. For example, in Bowery Buckaroos, the characters were transported to the Old West by virtue of the story being a dream of Sach's. In a later film (Hold that Hypnotist), a hypnotist uses past-life regression hypnosis to send the Boys on an adventure in piracy. (Note that Slip was out of the series by then, so there's no crossover between Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day and International Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

Most of the Bowery Boys films were typical New York-based crime stories (although fantasy elements were featured in several of them), but the Bowery Boys often hit the road, especially in later films. If this should come up in conversation on the big day, you might mention that Slip and the gang had many adventures outside the confines of the city:

Let's Go Navy! -- the Boys enlist in the Navy to find thieves that rob a charity and spend a year at sea
Loose in London -- the Boys go to London when Sach gets an inheritance
Paris Playboys -- the Boys go to Paris to find a missing professor
Jungle Gents -- the Boys go to Africa to find diamonds
Bowery to Bagdad  -- a genie transports Slip and Sach to Baghdad
Dig That Uranium -- the Boys go to the western U.S. to find uranium
Crashing Las Vegas -- the Boys win a trip to Vegas

They go to the mountains in Spook Chasers, but by then Slip was gone, so for our purposes we're leaving it off the list. Talk to us if there's ever a Talk Like Duke Covelske Day.

The Boys wound up enlisting in the Navy, Marines, Army, and the Air Force in their adventures, which would make them unique in the armed forces history of the U.S. The Coast Guard is probably pretty sore about being left out again.

So as you can see, Slip Mahoney was not only a tough New York street kid, but he was also something of a world traveler. He could mangle words from several languages, too, which might make him describe himself as something of a polygoat.

Just a prelim screening, actually.

In case you were wondering. Looks bad for me.

Frank Herbert killed my friend.

Okay, not really, but in a small way he contributed.

The late Frank Herbert, shown without the blood on his hands.

Herbert, of course, wrote the Dune saga, which my friend and the other dorks in our circle began reading in high school. (Nerd herds didn't have book groups per se, but a book that got high marks got passed around, and discussed while doing other things.) I never warmed to the series, as much as I admired the writing and the complexity---basically I hated all the characters and got sick of the entire universe. I plodded as far as God Emperor of Dune, and then I gave up.

My pal continued for at least one more, but I don't think his heart was in it by then. (Spoiler alert!) I think his favorite character was Duncan Idaho, who was killed in the first book---although that didn't stop the guy from appearing in later books. It's complicated.

The problem was not D. Idaho; it was that my friend took some Dune mythology too seriously. The quasi-sciencey mystical types who populate the series are always on about focus and fear and stuff. Yoda totally ripped them off. One of the best known quotes from the first book goes like this:

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Yeah, well. Fear serves a purpose sometimes. So does pain. Over the course of years I think my pal had conflated the two, telling himself that pain is the mind-killer. I remember when still young, my friend clutching his stomach, saying to himself, "Fear is the mind-killer." Perhaps he said "Pain is the mind-killer." Either fear or the acknowledgment of pain might have prevented his untimely death.

He died in middle age of a massive heart attack that I feel he almost certainly mistook for stomach upset. He'd always been a nervous sort, with the kind of family of origin that could make anyone nervous. And a real type A type. We know now that ulcers are caused by bacteria, but it doesn't mean the stomach is not upset by stress. And he had a lot of stress. We know too that indigestion and heart attacks are often mistaken for each other. By the time he got to the hospital it was too late.

I wonder if he was quoting Bloody Herbert's philosophy to himself all the way.

Anyway, I don't really blame Frank Herbert for his death, as pleasant as it is to blame someone when terrible things happen. I don't even blame my friend. We all make mistakes. That's why pencils have erasers. Sadly, some things cannot be erased.

If I have a point to all this, I suppose it's that fear and pain can be our allies---vicious, horrid allies---to help keep us alive.

And don't believe everything you read in novels.

History's mysteries.

Historians still puzzled over the failure of Commander Ruthbert N. Mackinack's

ill-fated 1910 expedition to the South Pole.

Póg Mahoney.

The excitement mounts as we are a mere seven days from the second annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day!

"We've osculated by joy!"

To help buoy your enthusiasm for the king of the Bowery Boys during the seven-day countdown, here's seven things you may not know about the great Leo Gorcey, who portrayed Slip for more than a decade. Today we will take a look into the darker side of Leo, I'm afraid, but we shall want to know the whole man.

1. Gorcey's father, Bernard Gorcey, played shopkeeper Louie Dumbrowski in the Bowery Boys series, at whose sweet shop the boys frequently hung out. Bernard died in 1955 in a car accident, so Louie was not in any further films in the series. They couldn't CGI a guy into the film in those days.

2. Leo Gorcey, and consequently Slip Mahoney, did not appear in the last seven of the 48 films considered to be part of the Bowery Boys series. He got drunk and wrecked a movie set, then was incensed when the studio wouldn't give him a raise. ('Magin' dat.) He was replaced by Stanley Clements as Duke Coveleskie.

3. Gorcey's drinking was pretty horrid, especially after his father died, and ultimately killed him at the age of 51. Despite that, he managed to get married five times, which is pretty impressive. I mean, I know he was a movie star, but he was 5'6", kind of funny looking, and not always a cheerful drunk, and his movie career was pretty much washed up by 1956, when he still had two marriages to go.

4. Huntz Hall, who played Sach, is on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but Gorcey is not. He was going to be in the blank spot to the left of Hall. Supposedly his agent demanded $400 from the Beatles, which even in 1968 would have been pocket lint to Paul McCartney, but they just took him out. I don't know if Fred Astaire got any money out of it.

5. Leo's kid brother David actually appeared in more of the Bowery Boys movies than Leo, playing Charles "Chuck" Anderson. Funny that his character should have such as WASPish name, since he was just as much of an authentic New York ethnic blend as anyone---born in Manhattan, half Jewish, half Irish. After his acting days David became a minister and founded a halfway house for recovering alcoholics.

6. Leo Gorcey wrote a book toward the end of his life, the hard-to-find An Original Dead End Kid Presents: Dead End Yells, Wedding Bells, Cockle Shells, and Dizzy Spells. Reviews are mixed; seems he wrote like, well, a rambling drunk. But Gorcey really did have a great sense of humor and was known as a practical joker, and it seems a lot of that comes through in the book. The title is horrible, though.

7. Leo Gorcey's son, Leo Jr., wrote a book about his father in 2003 that sounds like it should have been a Mommy Dearest type of Hollywood complainorama, and certainly Leo Sr. earned it, with his drunken, explosive temper. But the title (Me and the Dead End Kid: Leo Gorcey, the Hollywood Legend: His Happy Ending) tells you that this is going to be a more loving story of survival and grace. I haven't read it, but the Amazon reviews have been mostly full of praise.

Considering Gorcey's personal problems, he was a monster for work, cranking out movies day in and day out for years. He was one of the most popular film stars of the time. Although working in B movies was never a means to critical acclaim. He would have to settle for the abiding love of the moviegoing public.

Keep thinking those Slip thoughts, and we'll have more Mahoneyist information later in the week.

Memorial Day 2015.

Went to one of the local Memorial Day parades this weekend. Most towns have some kind of tribute to our fallen men and women, but nothing really big. In fact, this one has dropped off quite a lot in the last ten years.

The weather was great, and attendance was meh. Not just along the streets; also in the parade itself. Past years have seen military trucks, police in dress uniform, pipers, Freemasons, you name it. None of them made it this year, except for one old Army Jeep. Thank God for the Boy Scouts. Maybe the others got a better offer from another parade.

Of course, we're tired of endless war, but it looks like radical Islam is tireless in bringing it to us and everyone else around them. We don't always have a choice in whether we want to fight. It's a hard lesson, and one that all too many Americans willfully refuse to learn. We do, however, often have a choice in whether we want to win.

When we left Vietnam in 1973, we were not whipped dogs; nor, whatever they say, had we gotten our heads handed to us in the Tet Offensive of 1968. The South Vietnamese were prepared to hold off the North, with the aid we promised to send. That aid was cut in a political move by Congressional Democrats, and Saigon fell in 1975.

When our military barracks in Lebanon was bombed and 241 servicemen killed in 1983, President Reagan chose to leave---a decision I suppose I will never understand, a decision that has encouraged terrorists for the last 32 years.

President Obama utterly wiped out our victory in Iraq by pulling out our troops lock, stock, and barrel in 2011, letting the nation fall into the hands of ISIS. Ramadi was captured last week, in case you couldn't hear the news over the rest of the blather on TV. Boy, that Letterman sure had quite a run, huh?

The bloody sacrifices made by our servicemen in these and other conflicts were completely undermined by politicians, pandering to the most panicky or deluded in our population. Our nation could never have won its independence, survived civil war, or beaten Hitler with this kind of bizarre combination of foolishness and self-serving.

Our phony-medal-throwing creep Secretary of State John Kerry once famously asked, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Here's one for you, Secretary Asshat: How do you ask a man to be die for a cause when he knows the jackwipes in Washington will make sure it means nothing?