77 Sunset Strip.

There was a TV Series called 77 Sunset Strip; in the 50s or maybe even later, and it starred Efrem Zimbalist Jr and Edd (Kookie) Byrnes, amongst others.

Edd got the nickname Kookie as that was the name of his character and it kind of spread in to his private life.

Edd was also in the movie Grease; he played the famous deejay who came along to judge the dancing contest and he looked the same as he did in 77; hey I called it 77 as if I knew it personally.

He wasn't a great actor, he was kind of a third banana in it as Efrem (my pal – I mean I don't want to type out Zimbalist again, do I) was the main man.

Now Edd hasn't died, or anything, in fact he's 80!!
 

There was a hit song called Kookie, Kookie! Lend me your Comb he was featured in with Connie Stephens and if my memory serves me well it's a kind of rap as Edd couldn't sing – oh here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT9QZBGyXjU

Edd was in the pilot of 77 where he played a serial killer who combed his hair all the time.
The detectives caught him, sent him to jail and he was executed but . . . .

He was so popular with the girls that they brought him back as a regular in the show.

The first thing I did when I arrived there on Sunset Blvd, was to look for number 77 Sunset Strip and Sunset Strip is on Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood.

At the end of the strip is a coffee shop called Dukes where I had breakfast from time to time and that I suppose is about as far west as the strip goes which is number 8909; Dukes is right next door to the Whiskey-a-go-go where bands like The Doors got their start and when I went there it was too see a group called The Super Chunks and I discovered America humour when I asked the man on the door if they had pineapple testicles – yes it got the same laugh then.

The Laugh Factory is on the odd side of Sunset at 7901 (which is the north side), and the strip starts west of Crescent Heights which is 100 yards west so, shall we say, at 8,000 Sunset Blvd and ends at around Duke's Coffee Shop at 8909 Sunset but . . . and this is something I am only just finding out as I looked the street address up . . . . . it has closed down.

That's really bad news and kind of changes this post!!

Duke's was a place where all the rock'n'roll greats ate; they would arrive bleary eyed after a gig next door and is (or was) really a part of rock'n'roll history and like everything else it's bitten the dust.

The Sunset Bar and Grill, further east on Sunset (yes the same place as the Joe Walsh song) has been beautified just like everywhere else.

I mean look:

 

 

How can a place like that close down?

A moments silence!!

 So when I looked for 77, I found that there was no such number – the place they used for the series was owned by Dean Martin and was at 8532 and when I got there it was The Tiffany Theatre.

That has interesting history if you want to look it up but it's the place where Eddie Izzard got a break when he came to LA.

His pal, Eric Idle, bought every seat in the house for Eddie's show (no I don't know him but I'll still call him Eddie) so he was a success.

Now I see The Tiffany Theatre has gone too – it's made place for re-development.

Everything is re-development isn't it?

One of the greatest cities in the world is about to be beautified too – London.

They are ruining Soho – I'll be there on Tuesday getting my haircut – and a lot of craftsmen from Burlington Arcade, Mayfair, are being turfed out to make place for, as they call them, flag ship companies. You know who they are without me typing their names.

The phrase is everywhere in the west end – coming soon: flag ship companies.

I have great memories of those great places and if those photos of Duke's doesn't make you feel a little sad – a little sad for the memories you won't be able to revisit or a sadness that you never will have that great experience – you are welcome to your nut cutlets and muesli.
More about the strip next time.

Horace and Ada.

I've written on here before about Horace and Ada; when am I going to write the novel? Who knows – they may be part of a novel. They came in to my mind earlier this week.

It was the centenary of Billie Holiday and when I went in to the bedroom – the radio is always on in there - I heard someone mention it on Woman's Hour. In fact I went in at the end of a song by her, and the song was followed by 'I bet people are clapping all over the country, after that.'

Do people sit at home and clap at the end of songs?

What about when watching television when someone finishes a song?

Really?

No they don't – they can't unless they've gone mad.

You're saying they do – they sit there and clap; well that means you do.

You're mad!

Must be.

As my dad used to say, when we tried it as children 'they can't hear you.'

And he was right.

When I went to the movies in Los Angeles people would applaud at the end.

I always put this down to the fact that people from the film industry, who might be in the film– actors technicians etc – would be in the audience. In fact they were and I would see people like Jeff Goldblume but you know – I wouldn't put it passed the people of the rest of America; the fact that they clap.

But what has this to do with Horace and Ada?

When we were little kids we lived in a very small house – two up and two down and one of those down was a small kitchen which my mother managed to squeeze everything into – fridge, washing machine and any gadget she saw at the Ideal Home Exhibition each year.

If anything like that ever got delivered, by the way, the people delivering would have a long walk as you couldn't get a vehicle near the house and we were about 50 yards (child yards) from the road.

South View Terrace (remember from before?) but there was no view as a factory called Locomotors blocked it. The view would have been of Moseley Road and maybe, Moseley Road Swimming Baths which I wrote about on here a few years ago and that post still gets quite a few hits – not as much as My Teenage Love Story – but I digress.

So back to the small house – well a cottage, really, with a 20 yard (child yard) front garden.

So the man with the delivery would have to walk down the lane, till he reached a wall and after the wall he would only have about – put it this way - he wouldn't be able to spread both arms out as there wouldn't be room.

Unless he was Mickey Rooney – but as far as I know he didn't come.

When our parents went out, they would ask Horace and Ada to come around and sit with us as baby sitters. They liked this as they didn't have a television; they had a radio, which we could always hear, as Horace was very deaf. He had some hearing but had to wear a big hearing aid into both ears. The poor fella was also blind and carried a white stick; in fact he had one fifth of his sight in one eye.

So when they came around to watch the television, Horace would have to sit two or three inches from the screen if he was to see anything at all. I suppose he just saw a flickering light. He would sit slightly to the side so as not to block our view and we would sit on the sofa with Ada.

There seemed to be lots of variety shows on in those days and every time a singer stopped singing, Horace and Ada would clap and cheer. I didn't want to say what my dad would say 'oy! They can't hear you' so we would clap as well.

The other thing we would do was put the lights out so we could only see each other from the television glow and that of the fire.

I have no idea how old Horace and Ada were but to us, and my parents, they were an old man and an old lady. I think their name was Melia but we called them Mealey, and Ada called Horace 'lol. These days he would be called Laugh Out Loud, wouldn't he. He never did, though; laugh out loud, that is.

He must have really loved Ada as she shouted and swore at him from morning till night about the burnt toast he took to her in bed each morning after he'd lit the fire for her. We would hear all this from next door – the shouting and the swearing; maybe that's where the expression fucking Ada came from?

Billie Holiday

 

d'lection!!

Well here I am still kicking – I left things a bit late writing this as I had the flu and – would you believe – fell out of bed in the middle of the night, hit my head on the bedside cabinet and hurt my eye. Blood all over the place; making me look as if I had been 12 rounds with Mike Tyson.

But all is clear now and what has happened?

For a start the election campaign has started here; this is the first time the country – this country - has had a fixed term election; beforehand the Prime Minister would just call an election for three weeks after the announcement, but because we (they for some of the time) have had a coalition for the past five years the first thing they did was change the law. The reason being is the government has to win more seats in parliament than the rest of the parties put together. This is so that every policy, change of law, election pledge and the rest of it can be voted through. If one of them is ever NOT voted through the leader of the opposition can put forward a vote of no confidence in the government and another election has to be called – at any time.

That's what it's been like forever but now it's changed and the election is on May 7^th – always a Thursday.

When I was a little boy at school, there was to be a general election – it was imminent, it was the old days – it had to be I was a little boy.

I was the little immigrant kid and the teacher was telling the class that there was to be an election and said 'nobody knows when it is likely to be.'

Of course I put my hand up and said 'I know when it is, Miss.'

And the teacher shouted 'Nobody knows when the election is, Christopher; get outside till I call you back in.'

So I had to go and stand outside; I was too timid to say that it was going to be on a Thursday as all elections are on Thursdays here, but I have to say that a little fella, maybe not even nine years of age, to notice that General Elections (and others) are on Thursdays was quite brilliant for one so young.

But the teacher was having none of it, she sent me outside and my career as the number one political analyst in the world crashed to the floor at that particular moment.

Since Christmas we have been bombarded with the pretend election; a bit like in America where they have fixed terms. Fixed terms mean long campaigns and in America they are anything up to two years. The next Presidential election there is 2016 and you will see the campaigns starting pretty soon. Not pretend ones like over here but the long long process of selecting a candidate from each party.

There is a system there in some states, where people gather together and elect their candidate without voting – or without a secret ballot – and I think one of the states that do this is New Hampshire and it's called the state caucus; people get together and discuss, with the candidate, if they will vote for them or not and then they have to commit. No secret ballot – so when people openly vote for, say, Obama, he can see who's voting for him (how do you think he was voted in) and he can choose these people as delegates to go to the convention with him and vote for him and his veep.

But not here.

Oh no.

In America the two – or three – people who are standing for President will debate on tv.

But not here.

Oh no.

It's not a Presidential election here – it could be possible, that the Prime Minister's party could win the election but he (Cameron) might not regain his seat; quite possible.

In the sixties when Super Mac was the PM he resigned because of health reasons – not his own, maybe Christine Keeler's – and Lord Home was selected by the men in great suits to be PM.

LORD Home.

As if that was bad enough his name was pronounced Hume!!

So he had to drop his peerage and look for a seat – one was found of course but it just goes to demonstrate what could happen.

This time the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tory Boy Clegg, will probably lose his seat; he says he won't but he will!!

What will happen there I don't know.

As I say there are no debates here – but they had one the last time; Gordon Brown (the PM) – the man who saved the world; David Cameron – the man who wanted to save the world; and Tory Boy Clegg – the man the world saved.

They got together on TV after a lot of hooing and haaing and farting about and Clegg won. Tory Boy Clegg was all set to be the most powerful man in Britain – next to Jeremy Clarkson – but what happened? The people didn't vote for him; they hardly voted for his party but the few seats he did win gave the Tories a majority as he (Clegg) chose to support them in the house; for a price.

The price?

To have a few members of the Liberal Democrats in the cabinet and make Clegg Deputy Prime Minister; a post invented by Tony Blair to keep John Prescott quiet. It was a bad thing to have Prescott against you – as a right hook during the campaign proves – so they invented a job for him.

And what does all this have to do with the price of a hill of beans?

They are all – all of them – all the leaders of the parties standing in this election are having a debate tonight. Plaid Cymru, The Green Party, The Labour Party, The Conservative Party, The Liberal Democrats, The Scottish National Party and UKIP.

 

All of them with hardly a format - it'll be like a fish'n'chip shop on a Friday night!

UKIP???

Yes, ladies and gentlemen of America; just like the Tea Party of America; an extreme right wing party who are more like wolves in sheep's clothing. I can't believe that people are being hoodwinked and they are being hoodwinked just like the people who voted for The Tea Party in America because of their ignorance and they can somehow see an easy way out.

Watch this space!!