BIG MACK ATTACK!

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MACKIE
perfume by Bob Mackie
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“How much better than wine is your love,
And the scent of your perfumes
Than all spices!”
~ Song Of Solomon
(The Holy Bible)
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I read through my Bible entirely each year, always dreading the day I’ll come to Song Of Solomon. Although I find it embarrassing, some people really seem to get off on it. Dr. Chuck Missler writes, “No book of the entire Bible has given rise to more commentary or difference of opinion. Some think it is just an allegory, others that it is literal, and still some as a handbook for sensual lovemaking… Great stuff. The rabbis wouldn’t let anyone study the book until they were over thirty.” 
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Yeah? Well imagine saying to a beautiful woman at a cocktail party, “Your hair is like a flock of goats going down from Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of sheep which have come up from the washing…Your neck is like an ivory tower… Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon which looks toward Damascus.” Would you like some cheese to go with that wine… that you’re wearing?
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And then there’s the passage in chapter seven: “How fair and how pleasant you are, O love, with your delights! This stature of yours is like a palm tree, and your breasts like its clusters. I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of its branches.”
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That always reminds me of the Steve Miller song The Joker, in which he sings, “You’re the cutest thing that I ever did see; I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree.”
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For me, the only redeeming aspects of Song Of Solomon are a couple of verses (such as the one I opened this review with) that remind me of the perfume MACKIE For Women.
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My most serious and long-lasting romance was with a woman I called “The Countess”, based on Jeanne Moreau’s character in filmdom’s greatest tragic romance, 'MONTE WALSH' (1970). In 1994, after five years and five months to the day, the Countess and I finally called it quits for good and went our separate ways, however, happily retaining our friendship.
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But we used to like to test the many perfumes and colognes at department stores even though I could never find any I cared for. They were always too “_____” (floral, chemical, overpowering, sweet, stinky ...you name it). With me, it was always ACK!, UGH!, YUCK!, GACK! and PHEW!
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But then one day the Countess said, “How about this one?” I inhaled and said, “MMMmmmm...” She had found MMMmmmmackie. And since the Countess liked it too, that became her scent.
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I wish I had some MACKIE now so I could accurately describe that fragrance, but relying on a 22-year-old memory, I recall it as being only lightly floral, more like luscious fruit, drizzled with warm honey, sprinkled with spice and talcum powder, then mixed with white lace and promises and a twist of “Come hither”. What’s “Come hither”? Danged if I can explain it, but believe me, a guy knows it when he encounters it. Take it from a “Real Man” whose nose knows.
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And that reminds me, we now have a term: Girlie Girls. These are females who revel in their femininity. In my youth, there was no need for such a category because nearly all girls were girlie; they all played to their “natural” strength of femininity. They knew how to manipulate men with their tender qualities. They knew how to be ladies and how to make men feel good about being men. And the men loved them for it.
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But now, most women I see come off more masculine than most males I know. (I think that with the death of Waylon Jennings, my Brother and I, and one other guy I’ve read about who lives in Chicago, are probably the only “Real Men” left. And really, my Brother may just be a little TOO “Real.”)
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But MACKIE For Women is a scent for that rare breed of woman today who still remembers what it means to be one, and who wants to present herself accordingly. If you’re one of those butch babes, tattooed and truck-driving, putting MACKIE on is going to be like putting a gold necklace on a grrrl gorilla. I’d say, save yer money instead for a really nice tattoo of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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MACKIE is a standout scent -- it isn’t just another perfume. Some time after the Countess and I went phfft, I found myself speaking with a woman who had a familiar aura about her. “Are you wearing MACKIE?” I asked. She was stunned that I was able to identify it. I let her go on believing that I was simply a knowledgeable, finely cultured gentleman. (Now that I think about it… maybe she thought I was one of those “funny” fellas. No, I don’t mean comedians.)
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And later still, I thought I caught a whiff of it emanating from a woman on the street. I nearly had a big Mack attack! Under ordinary circumstances, I would have immobilized her against a wall and said, “I wanna shmell ya!” But in this case, she happened to be walking an extraordinarily large and high-strung looking dog, so I somehow managed to pull myself together and let her walk on by.
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If you want to revisit a time when “girlie” was common, when women were ladies and ladies were so smart they knew how to get their way with men without even having to compete with them, then MACKIE is your first move on the way to “checkmate.” It’s probably not going to change your whole life, just your love life (of course, sometimes that too creates a wide-ranging rearranging).
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Just think how enjoyable it’s going to be to send men the olfactory signal that you’re a real lady, and to see them mysteriously compelled to treat you like one. ...But just to be on the safe side, you might want to keep Rover nearby -– a lotta guys are gonna wanna shmell ya!
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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Hitting It Right On "THE SWEET SPOT"

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[This review was published at Amazon.com on March 17, 2005. I was so pleased with the results that, for the first time in my life, I began to consider myself a genuine writer. I celebrated by taking my Ma -- the greatest lover of baseball I've ever known -- to her favorite Thai restaurant for dinner. A few days ago, I had an enjoyable discussion about Old School baseball with John Holton HERE, and felt inspired to re-publish this review here and now.]
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DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER:
Artists And Writers On Baseball
edited by Peter H. Gordon
published: 1987
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Can it really be that no one has posted a review of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER before now? Wow! "WHO'S ON FIRST?" It looks like I am!
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The recent pennant-clinching victory of the Boston Red Sox (hate 'em) over their arch nemesis the New York Yankees (hate 'em) and curse-busting Series sweep over the St. Louis Cardinals (hate 'em now -- the chokers!) inspired me to revisit my copy of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER.
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"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball", Jacques Barzun tells us on page 138. But I think Foghorn Leghorn said it best: "There's something - ah say - there's something kind of eew about a kid that's never played baseball."
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And although Football has now overtaken Baseball as America's favorite sport, the game played out on a green diamond is so ingrained in the American psyche that its idioms are commonly accepted facets of our lexicon. This is illustrated by Lesley Hazleton. Moving to the U.S., she was surprised to find that much of the English she had learned in Israel originated with our National Pastime: "I could touch base, give a ballpark figure, strike out and reach first base long before I realized that these were baseball terms." (page 15)
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DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER is a "gem" of a compendium celebrating the sport with baseball-themed art, photographs and excerpts from a variety of books, essays and poems. It truly reflects the mythology, the emotions, the poetry, and the mystique of the game. I like very little of the featured art, but the writing, being "uniformly" top-notch, more than compensates, and each of the smattering of photographs are worth a thousand top-notch words. This book really does get to "the heart of the hide"; a double-delicious dose of "Doubleday".
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Although free agency and the record-skewing, steroid-laden hulks like Barry Bonds with the 'Frisco Giants (REALLY hate 'em!) have killed off much of my interest, Baseball will forever be a part of who I am. Twice I witnessed perfection while in a Baseball stadium: Kirk Gibson's Game One-winning World Series homer in 1988, and the 1991 mound mastery of Dennis Martinez -- Major League Baseball's 13th Perfect Game. (Of course the combination of grilled Dodger Dogs and cold, tap beer was yet another type of "perfection" I often experienced at the old ballpark.)
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And if you're like me, then you learned some of life's most important lessons while on the green fields of Summer:
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* I once got drilled between the eyes by a hardball thrown by Craig Richardson, our team's strongest (and most erratic) arm. LESSON: Never sit on the grass behind the "Hot Corner" when Richardson is playing First Base.
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* After that, I always had one foot "in the bucket" at the plate. This was responsible for me striking out 21 times that season -- a team high that I was never able to quite match again, but leading to another LESSON: the importance of setting and trying to achieve personal goals.
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* The kid slid into second base on a steal attempt. I took the throw down from the catcher and applied the tag. And even as the umpire was signaling "Safe" I saw that no part of the boy's body was touching the bag, but the ball in my glove pressed against his calf. LESSON: Sometimes the "authorities" are wrong!
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* Called to "the hill" to pitch the Little League Yankees out of a jam, I saw that girl I had a crush on, Yolanda, was watching the game from behind the fence near our dugout. In my haste to get over there and talk to her, I fanned 3 consecutive batters. My Grandfather (the manager) came out to meet me. "You just struck out the side in order!" he excitedly informed me. I didn't know what that meant at the time and furthermore I couldn't have cared less -- I had nothing but that little cutie on my mind. LESSON: A man's love for a woman will supersede his love for the "diamond", but conversely, the diamond is a girl's best friend.
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* Growing up po' (not Third World po', of course, but American po'), one Summer my Brother and I played for a team in the "economically challenged" part of town. One day our Ma asked, "Do you realize that you're the only White guys on the team? Everyone else is Black." We both had to pause for several moments to contemplate that before answering, "Oh yeah, that's right, huh?" She later confessed that it was the proudest she ever felt of us. And she realized then and there that she had raised us well! LESSON: It don't matter what color your skin is, because when your team loses a ballgame, every player is BLUE!
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DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER really captures the magic of Baseball on several levels, but best perhaps in the photo on page 63: There's Wally Joyner, a California Angel in 1986, leaning against a thigh-high stadium fence, hand on hip, one leg casually cocked over the other, gazing off into the distant outfields -- oblivious -- flawless -- looking like a Greek god. There next to him on the other side of the fence, two blonde brothers, maybe ten years old, their heads tilted upward, mouths ajar, awe radiating from their eyes, and with their bodies leaning slightly away from Joyner -- one does not crowd a god!
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If you are a literate person and a true aficionado of the game of Baseball, but my review has failed to convince you that you need DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER in your bookcase, then there is no joy in DotComville -- mighty Stephen has struck out... again.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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ROMANCE MADE EASY! (Too Easy?)

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A THOUSAND KISSES DEEP
Chris Botti
2003
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Count me in with those people who feel that in the last 20 years talent in the arts has greatly waned. Most movies serve as nothing more than frameworks on which to hang anesthetizing displays of outrageous violence by spiritually and morally dead directors, or computer-generated special effects by self-infatuated, downloadable electro-geeks.
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"Music" is now the domain of inked-up, hole-punched, fabricated angst-spewing White college rejects armed with two or three chords and weenie whiny voices. (Ya gotta love them nonconformists! And they're so easy to spot because they all look alike.) Or their young Black counterparts, the monobeat, sideways baseball cap and tank top undershirt-wearing, boom box-blasting inner city youths rhyming rage at "the man" who denies them the jobs they weren't qualified for and never wanted in the first place. (Didja get all that? Or shall I run it by ya one mo' time?)
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And today's writers? Right! Like anybody'll be reading that stuff fifty years from now.
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So, ya gotta understand my skepticism when Friend Melanie gave me an "Aught" recording; in this case, "Aught three". (That's 2003 for my slower readers.) That was "Strike one!" It was called 'A Thousand Kisses Deep' -- Ugh! "Strike two!" And the performer was a young man with blonde hair and frosted highlights -- "Strike three! You're out!"
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Aww... but since Melanie is a good friend of mine, I humored her by accepting it with a lopsided grin and the promise to listen with an open mind. (SLAM! BANG! CLICK! BOLT! BAR! and the rattling of a heavy chain and reinforced padlock, with the incessant ambulating of a particularly agitated junkyard dog just inside the entrance. There! That oughta keep the frosted girlie-men outta here.)
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Late one night some time later, nuttin' to do. A little music might be nice. What we got here? Oh yeah, Felony Melanie's CHRIS BOTTI bit -- 'A THOUSAND KISSES DEEP'. OK, I'll spin it once, kiss it goodbye and deep-six it. That's what I thought.
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Next thing I know, I've recovered from my reverie to find that I'm bare-chested in the darkened room with the fireplace aglow, two glasses of fine Cabernet Sauvignon glinting like rubies on the hearth, and my best shirt ripped and lying in the corner. WHAT  THE  HELEN  A.  HANDBASKET  HAPPENED  HERE?!
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Forty-five minutes and forty-five seconds of some of the most sensual, romantic "make out" music ever digitally encoded onto a silver-colored disc is what had happened here! The frosted dude with the lusty trumpet took me and my imaginary dreamboat on a late night moonlit canoe ride up a liquid lover's lane. It's a good thing I hadn't programmed the disc to repeat because I might have been taken advantage of by my imagination. As it was, I barely escaped with my innocence intact. Is this the greatest seduction set of music ever recorded? Quite possibly! Every copy should come with a package of those little water balloons. Either that or a Bible.
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Make no mistake about it, Chris Botti is not just another "Artist of the Aughts" -- that is: fully styled but suffering from NDT (No Discernable Talent). No sir, he knows his way around that trumpet, and on 'A Thousand Kisses Deep' he sets a relaxed, romantically-infused mood from the opening track, (link:] 'Indian Summer', and with flirting phrases, trance-inducing tones, gentle aural gyrations and stabbing rhythms he carries it to its sweet and soft conclusion. There's nothing at all really "dirty" about 'A Thousand Kisses Deep', that's all in your mind.
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Even so, every would-be Romeo or Casanova really should have a copy of this album stashed between the candles and the crystal glasses. But be careful how you use it, and who you use it on; this could spell deep trouble -- a thousand kisses deep... and then come the cats, a white picket fence and monthly payments on a soccer mom vehicle and three brats. Again, just be careful!
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OK, I've got the perfect mood music, the wine, the candles and the fireplace. Now the only thing I need to find is a girlfriend. Anybody seen one?
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Oh, never mind. I think maybe I'd better just go read my Bible.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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DEAD MEN RIDING

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MONTE WALSH

directed by William Fraker; starring Lee Marvin

1970

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MONTE WALSH is haunting and lyrical; a slow, dark, and melancholy poem on celluloid. It's Henry David Thoreau in a Stetson and down on his luck. 
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The episodic story revolves around two friends -- older cowboys -- who are trying to survive in the dying days of the big cattle ranches, as absentee Eastern corporations buy up the Western landscape, altering the only lifestyle that these hard-working, free-spirited men know and can embrace. 
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While many cowboys are sent packing as ranches are being dismantled or rendered inactive, Monte (Lee Marvin) and Chet (Jack Palance) are trying to remain on horseback doing the work that defines who they are and gives them a sense of accomplishment. But these are dead men riding in the dusk of their times; and what's worse, they know it. The serene pale pink and blue canopy of the fading daylight envelops these men and symbolically illustrates the sundown that lays heavily on their hearts.
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The truth dogs Chet until, in a relaxed moment at the close of a day, he acknowledges what all of the ranch hands know but have avoided admitting. "Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever", he warns his friend. But Monte is incapable of adjusting, and he will remain astride this horse called Honor even if it takes him into the horizon of a sad and solitary existence. 
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For Monte and Chet, some solace can be found in retaining their work ethic for the faceless employers and in the relationships that they clumsily but sweetly form with a prostitute (Jeanne Moreau) and a lonely widow (Allyn Ann McLerie) -- two women who can understand the pain that these men carry and who can share in their growing sense of isolation. The subtle and beautifully rendered relationship between Monte and his "Countess" is easily one of the silver screen's greatest tragic romances. It would have received the critical acclaim it so justly deserves if it had been framed in any environment other than a Western.

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THE  COUNTESS  AND  THE  COWBOY

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This is a very special and haunting movie that addresses the loneliness of those who feel distanced from their surroundings, caught up in forces that strip them of relevance in their times. This is NOT an action-packed, rip-roaring, shoot-em-up, and it will disappoint anyone who comes looking for exaggerated Hollywood gun duels. MONTE WALSH is a character study that takes a hard, and realistic look at Western men and women who cling to each other for support during the halcyon hour of soft, golden light and elongated shadows. 
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If what I have just written means something to you, then MONTE WALSH will find an honored place in your movie collection. If it doesn't, then I would recommend great but more traditional and/or exciting Western Movies to you (e.g., Red River, Shane, Butch Cassidy, etc.) 
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There are so many subtle, authentic touches to be discovered in this movie. For instance, in one scene, Monte's shirt gets ripped, but notice how a piece of it shows up later in the form of a bandana around his neck. That's true Western economy! 
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MONTE WALSH contains more honesty than we are accustomed to finding in Western films, and for this reason, it may seem too sedate for most contemporary viewers. The unique dignity of this film is summed up perfectly when the nearly destitute and futureless Monte is offered a significant amount of money to act like a caricature of himself in a traveling Wild West Show, but he resolutely responds, "I ain't spittin' on my whole life." 
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MONTE WALSH seems to have an indefinable quality to it that transforms it into a transcendental viewing experience for certain individuals. It's something like Blues music: you either FEEL it or you don't, but words will never quite explain it. 

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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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