Paddy Kelly's Blog
January 29, 2025
Paddy Kelly Novelist Playwright Writer
Paddy Kelly Novelist Playwright Writer is a prominent Irish author. Based in Dublin, he is also a playwright with an extensive body of work. To purchase books visit Fiction4All or Amazon or Google. Mr. Kelly has to date directed two dozen professional theatrical productions, written half a dozen feature film scripts and is a regular contributor to various film industry publications.
He has just finished his Thirteenth Novel, The Galileo Project.
In the course of his career Mr. Kelly has also written and directed a cookery television program and teaches cookery classes as an aid to reducing stress in your life.
Upon returning to California in 1982 Paddy further developed his interest in writing when he found employment as a script editor.
It was during this period that Mr. Kelly wrote his first novel, Politically Erect, (unpublished), a satire of the last days of the war in Viet Nam and the fall of Saigon. Mr. Kelly returned to the East coast and worked his way through graduate school earning his M.Ed. at Boston. He began writing plays and moved into writing and directing full time, focusing on farce, satirical and political comedy.
In 1973 he became a Hospital Corpsman in the U. S. Navy and, in 1975, assisted in the evacuation of Saigon and the resettlement of tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees to Westminster, Orange County where he was first exposed to the world of film making, and later worked as a set carpenter.
Following naval service in 1976 Mr. Kelly returned to City University New York earning a B. A. While at C.U.N.Y. he became involved in drama and subsequently acted in over a dozen plays in and around the New York area, again gaining work as a set carpenter and sign writer on films.
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January 28, 2025
Hello world!
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February 14, 2020
Love is a Contagious Disease
Space Between the Neurons Installation # 0.86St. Valentine is the saint associated with love, you know that martyr beheaded for helping couples wed?
17:35.14.02.20. You know that tingly feeling you get all over your body when you fall in love? That’s common sense leaving your brain.
A young lust-filled earth worm was after a young and beautiful female worm. To reach her he had to make the tedious climb across a field and over the railroad tracks. As he inched over the first rail a train sped by and chopped off his rear bit. Undaunted he pushed on. Ten minutes later, crawling over the second rail another train whizzed by and whacked off the poor worm’s front part. Moral of the story? Don’t lose your head over a piece of ass.
I’m sitting in a large corner convenience store in the middle of the city. It’s noisy, chaotic and crowded with the din of people buying shit they really don’t need at obscene prices they’d balk at anywhere else but after a hard day at work reminding themselves that their current job is only until something better comes along and believing there’s something better around the corner, even though there’s probably not, they politely fight their way to the till. Not wanting to remind themselves that this is not how they ever thought it would turn out, (take a number), they probably need that Coke Lite, pack of cigarettes or Snickers bar. Red Bull gives you wings!
Outside the traffic is bumper-to-bumper, the sidewalks are packed with shoppers, pedestrian commuters and the sporadic beggar are all punctuated with the occasional siren. Not the proper British EEE-AWW, EEE-AWW sirens but those irritating American screaming, screechy kind, the ones that snap you out of your comfort zone and remind you some poor bastard’s about to have a much worse day than you did.
Yeah, one hundred and twenty-seven, no twenty-eight. That’s how many people I’ve counted in the last fifteen minutes passing by outside with their faces buried in their mobile phones. ‘Cells’ if you’re American. Cells like in a prison where you’re trapped.
People love their phones.
Outside a pair of tourists wrestling with a map pass the big picture window for the third time going in the opposite direction they scurried past last time. They’re obviously in love.
A Caucasian Rastafarian stumbles into the place, ducks past security and nicks a croissant from the pastry rack. He attacks it with a long stare, considers biting into it but doesn’t.
I recognise him from the time I looked up ‘wasted’ in the dictionary. There was a picture of him there. Any more drugged up he’d be unconscious. Maybe he is and doesn’t know it. We call what he’s doing the ‘heroin dance’ that jittery, sporadic step-by-step reminiscent of St. Vitus’ Dance.
He suddenly decides he has a beef with the pastry and, perhaps in fear of it attacking him, starts pounding hell out of it beating it into the table and loudly cursing it. Indications that we are in a real city surface as everyone ignores him.
Everyone except the four foot tall, 50 kilo Nigerian security guy in the ill-fitting, poorly designed uniform approaches and tells the six foot plus human train wreck to cool it.
They stare each other down.
My money’s on the little Nigerian.
Suddenly deus ex machine strikes! Rasta man’s girlfriend flounces through the door, bear hugs him, starts crying and apologies to him. They kiss.
Cue romantic music, FADE OUT: ROLL CREDITS. Ain’t love grand?
Love is unquestionably a critical component in this life but relationships are either a bitch or a blessing, there never seems to be a median. Probably because there’ no secret formula. If there was everyone would likely know about it.
Having had three wives and dozens of girlfriends over the years, (almost never simultaneously), I consider myself something of an expert in relationships. Now love – that’s a whole other area.
Working at a relationship, really putting in the 9-5 effort at establishing, maintaining and improving it, appears to me the way to keep it sailing along.
Scenes like one with Rasta Man and girlfriend remind me why people believe in gods and goddesses. For most of this existence is so non-productive, so mundane, so meaningless otherwise, without the illusion of something after this most people would do a Hemingway and blow their brains out. No criticism on the god thing, although I’m not real big on the blowing your brains out thing either, mainly because it’s a lose-lose situation. If you succeed there’s no second chance. If you muck it up and don’t die, you have to explain to all those you tried to leave behind what the hell you were thinking by screwing up their day having to leave work and rush to hospital, after trying to check yourself out.
On the god thing whatever gets you through the day, or the night I suppose. Although if you Epstein yourself and punch your own ticket you won’t . . . never mind.
So after 37 years of travel, living in a half a dozen countries with a dozen cultures, I finally realise I am where I am.
Then it occurs to me, this is as close as I’ll ever come to a ‘home’ again. My travels have shown me that when you kiss mom and dad good-bye for the final time, you’re never really ever ‘home’ again. You’re just working to find a better place to live. Hopefully with somebody to love. Great title for a song, no?
Something else occurred to me as I sit here banging away on my ninth novel: I got what I asked for. I got exactly what I asked for. I bought the ticket and am taking the ride.
Regardless of all the negative shit I and others have put me through, I am exactly where I want to be at this moment in time and in the immortal words of that possessor of bizarre kitchen paraphernalia, Queen of homemaking and Mistress of tax evasion and insider trading Martha Stewart; “That’s a good thing!”
p.s. – Rasta man was finally escorted out by the cops, his wailing girlfriend staggering behind him. Ain’t love grand?!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
http://www.paddykellywriter.com/
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November 28, 2019
Thanksgiving in Athens
I spent a month in Athens Georgia one weekend.
A buddy I wrote a medical discharge for to get him out of the Navy back in 1974 while we were in the Big Blue Boat Club together, and whom I hadn’t heard from since pints were cheap, contacted me out of the blue with an invite up to his place for Thanksgiving.
The balmy, sometimes scorching heat, mosquitoes and geriatric-filled streets of Jacksonville, Florida where I was stationed was not the ambiance I remembered suitable for the Autumn and Winter holidays so, not realizing Georgia was but a suburb of Florida and the weather wasn’t much more amenable, I accepted and we firmed up plans.
Having never seen or been exposed to the stereotypical ‘Southern Fried Rock’, hillbilly, trailer, shot gun rack in the back of the pick-up truck, cousin marrying culture I welcomed the opportunity to expand my cultural horizons. Even if only by a couple of inches.
That Wednesday I grabbed a Greyhound north, scribbled a few lines enroute and a short time later found myself along with two elderly blacks, a guy who looked as if he had to borrow the money for the fare and a young couple who didn’t look much older than the new born they were carting around, crossed the state line into the great land of Ray Charles and peaches.
Show me the peaches!
The driver called out the stops as we cruised our way across the scenic, rolling country side.
“Aiken!”
“Augusta!”
“Anderson!”
“Alpharetta!”
“Atlanta!”
“Auburn!”
I was beginning to notice a pattern.
Finally he yelled out “Athens, last stop!” and, as I was the last one on the bus, I figured it was my stop.
I grabbed my bag, stepped off the coach out onto the rural, three-way intersection and into the smell of diesel fuel exhaust punctuated by the sound of a pneumatic wrench screaming away in bay number one of the two bay garage at Bo’s Gas Station and General Post Office right behind me.
Gravel crunched as the Greyhound, along with my only lifeline to civilization, made its getaway and vanished down the two lane blacktop.
I briefly toyed with the idea of poking my head into the garage but instead took a seat on the wooden slat bench out next to the road.
Bo apparently finished removing the tractor tire he wrestling with as silence once again prevailed in the garage leaving the gently blowing breeze to tickle the tree tops which danced over the rolling hills in the distance.
Overwhelmed by the beauty of the changing foliage blanketing the long, rolling hills, despite the chill of the mountain air and with the urban chaos of Jacksonville behind me, a warm familiar feeling crept over me. The impact of serenity on my creative consciousness was refreshed and I started to relax.
Right on time my friend, Terry alias Ridgerunner, a fifth generation Georgian, pulled up in his, you guessed it, fire engine red, Ford pick-em-up truck complete with gun rack.
Some stereotypes never die.
A minute later we were tooling down the road.
“This here’s the Old Hull Road!” He proudly declared while lighting a hefty spliff, as if he had a hand in building the two lane hard top himself. I was further informed it ran right next to the ‘soon-to-be-built’ New Hull Road. An assortment of rusted and abandoned, vintage road machinery scattered along the roadside attested to his idea of ‘soon’.
We drove on for a bit before we pulled off onto a single lane macadam road which ran for a couple of miles more before turning into a dirt road which gave way to the woods where there was a dirt trail.
“We still got a ways to go but we got’sta walk from here.” He cheerfully explained. I grabbed my pack and we took to the trail.
I took comfort in knowing that if the Russkies picked that day to nuke the country, we’d have months before the fallout reached us. If ever.
I looked around at the isolation sequestered in the middle of the solitude and knew we were truly alone in this sector of God’s little acre.
As we walked down the ever narrowing game trail old military habits kicked in as I scanned for trip wires. I began to orient myself by memorizing available landmarks.
To the left, trees. Straight ahead, forest. Behind and to the right, woods. Great! Got it.
As dusk began to set in and we pushed up the trail to the foot of a mountain my mind wondered.
Here comes the part where three guys jump me, tie me up and say, ‘Squeal like a piggy, boy!’
Hopefully Burt Reynolds was in the neighborhood.
Finally we came upon a trailer in search of a park. Or one big god-damned park with only one trailer in it.
I often wondered if there’s not a couple of hermit crabs on a beach near a trailer park somewhere who peek their heads out of their shells every once in a while.
“See Herb, I told you we’re not the only ones that carried our homes around!”
“Thanks Doris!”
Inside the surprisingly not so spacious mobile home that never went anywhere, (no wheels; chasse was up on blocks), I found the velvet paintings were a nice touch. Dogs playing poker? Now that’s just stupid! Dogs can’t read cards much less say ‘fullhouse!’
But the six Elvis statues in various theatrical poses scattered around the room didn’t clash as much as I thought they would.
As it was a special occasion I was informed the Mrs. was putting out the Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash dinner plates. However, the poster of Dolly Parton overlooking the table about to bust out of the frame was a bit imposing. One man’s opinion.
The overtly pregnant Mrs. Ridgerunner had cordially fixed supper, a local favorite, chitlins, fried chicken and grits. Remembering that chitlins were some kind of pig’s innards, the chitlins and I quickly made friends with the pony-sized hound dog curled up under the table.
It was then after dinner, sitting at the table, that I learned a lot about this area of the country, sometimes derogatorily called ‘The Deep South’.
The more we talked, the more I realized the rest of America had this part of the country all wrong.
Southerners didn’t want to stay drunk on moonshine, start fights, shoot everybody and hate blacks because they were prejudice. And they weren’t bitter about losing what they themselves refer to as ‘the War of Northern Aggression resulting in the longest cease fire in history’ or whether it was fought over the right to cessation or slavery.
They only fired on Fort Sumter that April back in 1861 because they were pissed off at the food they had to eat.
Any food that is indistinguishable from when it goes in to when it comes out is not on my ‘To Do’ list.
I made a mental note to recommend a friend up in Manhattan to maybe come down there and open a couple of Italian restaurants to help these folks learn about cuisine.
Hmm . . . chitlins pizza? Maybe not.
A long two hours later I was warmly tucked in under a pair of battleship grey, U.S. Naval hospital blankets on an Army cot stretched out in the back room. Apparently I was lucky it wasn’t hunting season. That was the room they normally used to dry the deer carcasses.
And here I thought the dark red floor boards were just a decorative choice.
§ § § §
It was just past zero dark thirty Thursday morning when I heard the unmistakable drawl of Ridgerunner in my left ear as I felt him shaking me awake.
This was back in my early whiskey days and I was just getting used to clawing my way out of unconsciousness, so coming around in strange and foreign environs wasn’t exactly a new experience but the sound of pigs rutting, a cow mooing along with chickens clucking was.
“Time to go huntin’!” He gleefully informed, thrusting a rifle at me.
“Hunting?! Hunting for what, V.C.?! The war’s over!”
“Squirrel! How else my wife gonna fix dinner?!”
“Squirrel! For what!?”
“For Thanksgivin’ dinner! What else?! We’s having squirrel stew! Ya’ll’s lucky, she only makes it couple’a times a year!”
“So she does love you!” I mumbled.
What was I thinking? It’s Thanksgiving. We’re in Georgia, why would we have turkey or ham for the most celebrated feast day in the United States?
Hunting squirrel was to me a bit like going out into the alley, putting down a bowl of milk and when the first stray alley cat that came along you’d shoot him and yell, “I got one!”
Seriously, squirrel hunting?! I had to say something.
“As far as I know the American tradition is turkey! You guys need a few bucks I’ll pitch in! Come on boy! Let’s get us on down to the general store and buy us a turkey!” I foolishly suggested.
“Turkey?! That’s Yankee food! We don’t eat nunn’a that down here! Down these parts we only eats what’s we kills!” Plurals are popular in the south.
After climbing out of my cot, cleaning up and grabbing my rifle, I resigned myself to the fact that we were going squirrel hunting. How could I have left that off my bucket list all these years? Another first in my recently accumulating, long line of events assuring me a win the next time I played the drinking game, Have You Never Ever?
We set out in our cleverly camouflaged jackets and trousers. Apparently people were smarter in those days. Either that or not enough hunters had killed each other yet, but orange hadn’t come into fashion when setting out to blow away little innocent, woodland creatures.
Ridgerunner knew the woods well and so knew exactly where to go to track our prey. So we headed out and walked for the better part of an hour before he declared we were in enemy territory.
As the daylight crept over the horizon and we pushed forward through the brush I looked around to stay oriented.
Trees to the left. Straight ahead, forest. Behind and to the right of us woods. Aha! Familiar territory!
I must admit I learned some valuable lessons about hunting the fearsome and wily American Grey Squirrel, known to naturalists and zoologists alike as Squirrelius Greyus Americanus.
Lessons like paying close attention to your surroundings and making a special effort when you’re in a known squirrel area where there’s a good supply of squirrel food such as berry bushes. I also learned what to do if found face-to-face with one of the deadly creatures.
Here’s some helpful hints I found to ensure your survival of what could be a potentially fatal encounter;
Identify yourself by talking calmly so the squirrel knows you are a human and not a prey animal.
Stand still and slowly flap your arms to make yourself appear bigger than you are. This will help intimidate the squirrel.
Make no sudden movements. This is critical as they are known to leap literally dozens of inches and a foot or more into the air on the slightest provocation.
Also, be especially cautious if you come across a female with cubs and never get between the mother and her offspring. She will attack!
Additionally, if an attack is imminent, drop your pack, lie down and play dead. DO NOT attempt to fight the squirrel they have sharp teeth, claws and can pee a steady stream for up to a foot and a half. Also avoid eye contact as they consider it a challenge and may charge blindly.
If approached by an angry male in the wild avert your eyes, lower your head, turn and offer your hind side as a sign of non-aggressive intent.
DO NOT RUN! If the squirrel charges you, hold your ground. Squirrels can run as fast as a race horse. DO NOT climb a tree! Squirrels can climb trees!
I once heard of a guy who while on a stroll through Central Park one balmy evening was subjected to a wild squirrel attack. Even after a year and a half of psychotherapy he was never the same. To this day he can’t eat nuts or even look at the color grey without experiencing violent flashbacks. He once s a squirrel hair paintbrush and fainted.
Squirrel attacks are rare, most of them are just curious or want to protect their food, lairs or cubs.
That morning the hunting gods were with us for we suffered no such violent attacks.
By the time we headed on back to the cave the next Disney picture would be minus a half a dozen of them thar little grey varmints which were stuffed in our trusty wicker, squirrel storage basket, both of which had the suspicious smell of fish.
That afternoon as she waddled around the cramped galley styled kitchen, more accurately waddled one step to the right then one step to the left, the incredibly pregnant Mrs. Ridgerunner seemed as happy as most people in their lives would never be. At least most people I’ve run across. Her happiness seemed to infect Ridgerunner who in turn beamed with overt contentment. All criticism aside, there’s no arguing with results!
First thing I did a week later when I got home to New York was head for Katz’s Deli and order a double decker turkey sandwich with extra relish. Hold the squirrel. As I was laying into the three inch thick sambo I overheard the couple in the next booth.
“I’d really like to try something different next year for Thanksgiving.” She said to the guy with her.
Should I tell her?
§ § § §
THE END
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August 8, 2019
MEET PADDY KELLY!
Born of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother Paddy Kelly, (68 years old), is the eldest of nine. He left Ireland at the age of sixteen and emigrated to New York City working odd jobs such as pushing a hot dog cart and as an assembly line worker in a Pepsi Cola factory and worked full time while finishing secondary school. In his last year he was offered an athletic scholarship for gymnastics and after finishing secondary school attended the City University of New York in Queens where he entered the pre-med programme. It was here that he was first introduced to and became interested in theatre.
Due to the war in Viet Nam and the resultant military draft, the City University team was disbanded thus cancelling his scholarship and Kelly enlisted in the U.S. Navy.
In 1972 while stationed in Kevlavik, Iceland, after meeting with and gaining special permission from president Kristján Eldjárn Kelly was employed to coach the Icelandic National Olympic gymnastics team, a post held for two years.
In the winter of that same year while in Iceland he volunteered for and helped in the rescue efforts of the Vestmannaeyiar Island residents following the eruption of the Heimaey volcano. It was during this disaster, while trapped in a damaged building on the island, that Kelly and a Marine buddy concocted a parody in the form of a fake letter to Anne Landers advice column questioning whether their decision to join the Navy was the right one. After escaping the building and returning to base, weeks later they mailed the letter prompting Landers to answer with a single word, ‘No!’ thus nudging Kelly towards writing black comedy.
A year later he became a Hospital Corpsman in the U.S. Navy and, in April of 1975, assisted in the evacuation of Saigon and the resettlement of tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees to Westminster, Orange County, CA where he was first exposed to the world of film making, and later worked as a set carpenter and painter.
Following the end of the war, using the G.I. Bill, Mr. Kelly returned to university earning a bachelor’s in Biology with a concentration in zoology. While at university he supplemented his income working as a set carpenter and sign writer for films.
After graduation he further developed his interest in writing when he found employment as a script editor. It was during this period that Mr. Kelly wrote his first novel, Politically Erect, a black comedy-political satire of the last days of the war in Viet Nam and the fall of Saigon.
With an economic downturn in America Paddy re-enlisted in the forces this time in the U.S. Army where he gravitated towards Special Operations and intelligence work. After passing the eighteen month selection phase Sergeant Kelly served twelve years as a Special Operations Medical Sergeant and worked his way through graduate school earning his M.Ed. from Worcester State College in Boston.
On graduation he moved to Dublin and began writing plays and directing full time, focusing on farce, satirical and political comedy.
Mr. Kelly has to date directed two dozen professional and amateur theatrical productions, a TV pilot, penned a half dozen feature film scripts and is a former contributor to various film industry publications.
Today Paddy Kelly is a prominent Irish novelist and playwright based in Dublin, Ireland and London, England, who writes in a Roman à clef style focusing primarily on politics and history sometimes with a dark, comic twist. He has been a professional writer for twelve years who has penned eight novels, a collection of novellae, several short stories and half a dozen plays as well as a cook book.
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July 25, 2019
F4A Publishing presents . . .
Born of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother Paddy Kelly is the eldest of nine. He left Ireland at the age of sixteen and emigrated to New York City working odd jobs such as pushing a hot dog cart and as an assembly line worker in a Pepsi Cola factory. He worked full time while finishing secondary school. In his last year he was offered an athletic scholarship for gymnastics and after finishing secondary school attended the City University of New York in Queens. It was here that he was first introduced to theatre and became interested in writing.
Due to the war in Viet Nam and the resultant military draft, the City University team was disbanded thus cancelling his scholarship and Kelly signed up in the U.S. Navy.
In 1972 while stationed in Kevlavik, Iceland, it was with special permission from the president Kristján Eldjárn that Kelly was employed to coach the Icelandic National Olympic gymnastics team, a post held for two years.
While in Iceland he volunteered for and helped in the rescue efforts of the Vestmannaeyiar Island residents following the eruption of the Heimaey volcano.
A year later he became a Hospital Corpsman in the U.S. Navy and, in April of 1975, assisted in the evacuation of Saigon and the resettlement of tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees to Westminster, Orange County, CA where he was first exposed to the world of film making, and later worked as a set carpenter and painter.
Following the end of the war, using the G.I. Bill, Mr. Kelly returned to university earning a bachelor’s in Biology with a concentration in zoology. While at university he supplemented his income working as a set carpenter and sign writer for films.
After graduation he further developed his interest in writing when he found employment as a script editor. It was during this period that Mr. Kelly wrote his first novel, Politically Erect, a black comedy-political satire of the last days of the war in Viet Nam and the fall of Saigon.
With an economic downturn in America Paddy re-enlisted in the forces this time in the U.S. Army where he gravitated towards Special Operations and intel work. After passing the eighteen month selection phase Sergeant Kelly served twelve years as a Special Operations Medical Sergeant and worked his way through graduate school earning his M.Ed. from Worcester State College in Boston.
On graduation he moved to Dublin and began writing plays and moved into writing and directing full time, focusing on farce, satirical and political comedy.
Mr. Kelly has to date directed two dozen professional and amateur theatrical productions, a TV pilot, penned a half dozen feature film scripts and is a former contributor to various film industry publications.
Today Paddy Kelly is a prominent Irish novelist and playwright based in Dublin, Ireland and London, England, who writes in a Roman à clef style focusing primarily on politics and history sometimes with a dark, comic twist. He has been a professional writer for twelve years, with eight novels, a collection of novellae, short stories and half a dozen plays as well as a cook book.
Fiction4All Publishing
presents . . .
TODAY IN HISTORY!
Second in the “Op Underworld” trilogy864: The Edict of Pistres of Charles the Bald orders defensive measures against the Vikings.
1862: President Abraham Lincoln presents Cabinet a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.
1934:Bank robber John Dillinger is shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater.
1991: Police in Milwaukee arrest Jeffrey Dahmer, who would later confess to murdering 17 men and boys.
1992: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes from his luxury prison near Medellin.
1943 : Benito Mussolini dismissed as Italian Premier and arrested.
1944: World War II: Operation Spring, one of Canada’s bloodiest days, 18,444 casualties and 5,021 killed.
1997: Scientists announce the first human stem cells to be cultured in a laboratory using tissue taken from aborted human embryos.
Now for some good news!
2019: “The Wolves of Calabria” released by Fiction4All Publishing
http://www.paddykellywriter.com/2018/03/11/the-wolves-of-calabria/
Watch the video! – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDNQKu6F5Xk
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July 15, 2019
My Gratitude List
Space Between the Neurons (Installation # 0.73)
Once a month I like to have a short drink, (my days of long drinks are long over), and pick an argument with some left wing liberals. It’s not hard to do, you don’t even have to speak. Just form your lips in the right shape as if you’re going to say the name ‘Trump’ and bingo, regardless of your political leanings, they’re on you screaming ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ and ‘patriarchy’ like graft on a Clinton. Just when I thought political correctness was the worst of our problems EPD pops up. Extreme Political Devisivness, an apparent side effect of TDS which has now appeared to spread to other countries.
Such is the state of the American empire.
Like it or not America is the current ruling empire. Before them were the Brits who came after the Romans and before them the Greeks and going back before even Bernie Sanders was born were the Babylonians. In between were a bunch of little empirettes like the Goth Empire, the Franconian Empire and the unforgettable Boardwalk Empire.
Each successive empire has advanced civilization by giving us something and with the exception of politics and religion things seem to be progressing quite swimmingly for Mankind in general.
If you disagree and you’re a doom & gloomer thinking that it’s all one big pile of shit, the ice caps are melting, the oceans are rising, pollution is out of control and we’re all doomed to a horrible fiery end, then sit down, have a drink and a joint and lighten up.
Or just get it over with, kill yourself and spare the rest of us. Just please don’t make a mess.
Contrary to the doom & gloomers, Mankind is making progress.
Any and all social progress is rooted in custom and tradition which give stability to any society and the Americans, for example, have a very nice tradition. Once a year on the last Thursday of November they celebrate their Thanksgiving Day. It is a time when they give thanks for all the fortunate events in their lives. Gratitude for their health, gratitude for their families, their fortunes and gratitude for the little things like not having to suffer another Simon Cowell induced boy band.
The reality of life on earth is that Western society is at its most advanced stage in the 2+ million years since the first hominids and certainly in the 12-15,000 years since there has been any semblance of civilization.
I don’t consider myself one of those people who bitches about life in general, it’s counterproductive. I’m especially not the kind of guy who bitches about being born in the wrong time. I was born at exactly the right time. The exact right time I was supposed to be born in – smack in the middle of the Twentieth Century. Right when things were really starting to rock.
Think what you had to do a mere 100 years ago just to get a drink of water or use a toilet and what you have to do today. You’ve probably got a plastic bottle of water in arms reach right now.
The discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel and the internal combustion engine are important mile stones but few match the achievement of the period between the first successful powered flight in 1903 to putting a man in space in 1961, a mere half century later. And now the first moon colony is underway in conjunction with a planned Mars landing in 2024. And people of my generation are still around! We’re like a bad habit- hard to get rid of.
I don’t believe in miracles but if anything was going to change my mind, developing the ability in that short span of time to get to leave the ground and reach space . . . that’s impressive!
That and every time I see Gal Gadot in that Wonder Woman costume!
After interviewing dozens of survivors who lived through some historically significant shindigs, to gather material for my novels, I’m glad I missed all of those quaint little get-togethers: World Wars, world-wide recessions and famines. I often think about what wasn’t happening in my life time such as a world war, a plague or an unexpected Spanish Inquisition.
Then again, no one ever expects a Spanish Inquisition.
In short there’s been nothing to compete with the transition from the late Industrial Age to the early Space Age, and for being around for this I am eternally grateful.
Additionally, by the time I buy the farm and check out, we will have returned to the moon, taken the next steps to colonizing Mars making us a multi-planet species and likely found a cure for out-of-control liberalism.
I mean guys really? Men competing in women’s sports? Men having babies? Really? What’s next? The earth is flat, NASA’s moon landing was a hoax and there’s a big hairy thing running around the forests of North Am . . . oh wait. Never mind.
Of course we are still no closer to a cure for cancer though. But then again, it is such a profitable research opportunity.
In the arts I’ve witnessed the transition of Jazz into the birth of Rock N’ Roll, Motown, Punk, New Wave and whatever it is they are passing off as Pop these days.
D.J.’s getting Grammys?
Through my parents I’ve learned about and enjoy Big Band music like Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey and have been to a concert by the Glenn Miller Band, seen Gene Kruper and saw the Andrew Sisters perform on Broadway, Steppenwolf at Carnegie Hall and the Police in Pittsburgh.
I saw music lose its way in the Nineties then find its way back with innovations like Blue Man Group, Patti Smith and still follow the ongoing 60 year marathon of The Rolling Stones.
Pardon me while I bow my head in a moment of silent reverence.
“We pray to you oh Saint Mick that the gods of Rock keep and protect you and yours for . . .” Oh, apologies. I live in a hotel and Sympathy for the Devil just came on over the P.A.
I had the good fortune to see Kraftwerk do Autobahn in Frankfurt in ’74 and spawn the birth of techno. I was living in New York City when the Marxist Revival in the arts hit earlier in the Seventies, enjoyed the renovation of Techno in the Eighties, the Punk movement and the New Wave movement out in L.A. later in the decade. Then the evolution of Metal, which now has about 27 sub genre.
p.s.-Dear young ones; Led Zeppelin is not Metal!
In the 60’s Catch-22 and all of Vonnegut’s early works, which were directly responsible for revolutionizing campus lit courses across the western world were assigned us as freshman Lit students.
Through shear dumb luck I’ve gotten to attend premiers and first runs of The Exorcist in New York, The Big Chill in L.A. and The Shopaholic in Dublin, where nearly the entire female audience, save for me and one producer, (the only two males in the audience), all left at the break despite the free wine and cheese.
Sorry Isla. Love you but the film sucked.
The tech developments in cinema of 3D, Steadicams and digital recording were all big news if you followed film. Not all of the tech gadgets worked out though. Brainstorms like Smell-O-Vision which made some theatre goers sick and Sensesurround which was a thrilling experience in films like Midawy, but was most effective when Charlton Heston starred in Earthquake. When that film was shown in L.A. and when the first quake scene hit the screen pieces of plaster started falling off the walls and locales ran out of the cinema screaming.
As is the custom in America some tried to sue.
Through stars in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey I was able to later write for film magazines.
Unless I pen a twenty-seven volume series of 1,000 page books there’s no way to list all the scientific achievements I’ve been privileged to witness in my life time. But here are some off-the-top-of-my-head, chart toppers my sober, partially recovered brain highlights.
From Sputnik being launched into what seemed the outer reaches of space and the moon landing which followed a decade later to the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960 diving to the depths of the Marianas Trench and the crazy life forms found there which ‘scientists’ laughed at when Beebe & Barton first reported their existence.
From the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson & Crick in 1953 to Dr. Christiaan Barnard’s first successful heart transplant in 1967 and to the development of the NMR machine ten years later which has saved countless thousands of lives.
From the first photograph of a hydrogen atom to the building of the Cern Collider and the discovery and proof of gravitational waves, the last piece of Einstein’s astrophysical puzzle proving the universe we live in is a matrix.
To the deepest reaches of the known universe billions of years in the past as seen after the launching of the Hubble Space Telescope & observatory. The HST out in space, not the spaced out HST in Colorado, although him and his creation of Gonzo journalism and gifts to literature are also invaluable.
All of this accomplished in my life time when a mere decade and a half before my birth the entire world thought the Milky Way was the only galaxy in the universe!
I remember living these events through radio and TV and by reading the newspaper headlines as they happened back in a time before profit motivated, corporate TV news stations climbed out of the slime and back when news outlets were staffed by actual ‘reporters’. Reporters – those are people relaying the facts of world-wide events devoid of self-promoting, political agendas.
Concerning the other thing we’re not supposed to talk about besides politics: Religion; A glimmer of hope which gives me faith in mankind is when I observe the inevitable evaporation of organized religion. Religion still is and will remain for some time to come necessary to modern civilization, however, it will not ‘always be’, that is, it will not endure forever.
Naturally, having said all this, it hasn’t all been cute little birdies, butterflies and baby fawns romping through a lush forest on a sunny Spring day.
I clearly remember the air raid sirens every day at noon to signal the ‘Duck and Cover’ drills back in grammar school when we were certain the nuclear attack would happen any day now and the only way to survive the raging fires of the inevitable nuclear inferno was to hide under your wooden desk. Because we all know that a one inch thick, oak desk will protect against a nuclear fire ball.
Living through the Kennedy Assassination followed by the MLK and RFK encores showed me no one is safe from crazed, political or religiously motivated lunatics.
I had the misfortune to be in Munich at the 1972 Olympic Games when a gang of crazed terrorists attacked and butchered the only people deranged jihadists still attack today – unarmed, non-combatant civilians. Real brave guys those jihadists. I’d like to be a fly on the wall when they get to their paradise and discover that their 72 virgins are all men. Or better yet, gay.
It was at the start of that trip from Keflavik to Munich that perhaps the gods of travel were trying to tell me something. The hatch of the C-130 we were flying in fell off shortly after take-off. You know, as C-130 hatches tend to do. We returned to the airfield without incident.
A few months later back in Iceland at the airbase where I was stationed I was caught up in the eruption of the Heimaey volcano. Which wasn’t as bad as the earthquakes we thrilled to in that country on a fairly regular basis.
Incidentally, there’s a couple of experiences you should opt out of if you get the chance, earthquakes and volcanoes.
I was stationed in Jacksonville, Florida when Hurricane Eloise hit in 1975. A Cat 3 with winds at 125 mph, (202 kph), which was out matched in my experience only by the ice storm of ’73 in Keflavik Iceland where winds hit 175 mph, (283 kph), and cars and Dempsey Dumpsters left trails of rubbish as they strolled down the streets.
I was with a date in the museum of Modern Art when in March of ’74 a crazed Iranian attacked Picasso’s painting Guérinica and defaced it with spray paint. Fortunately, thanks to the professional competency of the museum staff, the work was almost immediately restored.
When I worked as a graphic artist I got to meet George Segal the sculptor when I was attending the Kent State University Annex in Ohio when he was commissioned to do the memorial for the Kent State Massacre.
He sculpted a life-sized bronze of the biblical Abraham about to sacrifice his son for his god. When finished the statue was rejected by the Kent State University board as being “inappropriate” because it was “too violent”. I guess the school board didn’t think soldiers shooting unarmed students with high powered weapons going to class was very violent.
Segal’s statue now stands on the campus of Princeton University.
In ’72 Michelangelo’s la Pieta was attacked with hammer by another brainless religious fanatic and was saved. To my knowledge it is now still on display but is glassed in.
I recall the world-wide hub bub when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, repaired and, following much international controversy, protests and political wrangling allowed to be viewed and disseminated/toured around the world.
I clearly recall “Black Monday” in September of 1977 when the entire Steel Valley industry of Ohio and Pennsylvania, starting in Youngstown, Ohio, collapsed. With the immediate loss of 5,000 jobs almost instantly followed by another 40,000. Driving across Ohio and Pennsylvania to New York to visit my brother I witnessed thousands of formerly prosperous, hard working men lined up with their families around the block to apply for unemployment, welfare and handouts.
(see: http://www.paddykellywriter.com/projects/self-indulgence-denial-in-pittsburgh/)
Years later in 1986 I was two blocks away in Stockholm, Sweden when yet another crazed madman shot and killed Prime Minister Olof Palme.
I witnessed the development of and consequent abandonment of the STS aircraft. Commonly known as the Concorde. It was so fast, (2,124 kph or 1,334 mph), it allowed passengers to take off from New York City and land in Paris, France fifteen minutes before they left New York.
Wrap your head around that my little druggies!
I could never afford to ride the Concorde but a NYC business friend flew on it to Paris after dropping some purple micro dot. Took him a week before he was able to correctly read a clock again.
Most parents, certainly my parents and all parents I have ever encountered, ask the question, “Did I do a good job raising my kids?” Before I ever dreamt of asking that question my kids answered it for me. And they answered it the best way you could have answered any question, not with words but by deeds.
My kids get the likes of Patti Smith and the Stones. They speak languages and play music. They giggle at left wing liberals, are both scientifically literate and are unencumbered by any vestiges of any of the Iron Age war gods or demons I was raised with.
To grow up with the threat of eternal damnation as a consequence of a sin you were told you were born with is some scary shit.
“Why God be fuckin’ wit me, man?!” – Anonymous.
If you have to ask how any of this applies, you better recheck your relationship with your kids.
Hiking through the Arctic, jumping out of airplanes or diving the depths of the Pacific and orbiting the earth may be a great thrill, but not as great as my kids, teaching me shit like how to make Thai food, American styled pancakes or chocolate layer cake or turning me on to new shit like the things that ‘The Kids’ are into now days, a term which if you use it answers once and for all the question as to whether or not you’re old!
My parents were salt of the earth, old school honest and worked like mules to support all eleven of us. But by their mid-fifties they withdrew from society. I called it ‘getting off the train’. I will never get off the train. With the ridiculously endless multitude of shit out there to see, discover and experience, why would you ever want to get off the train?!
An old Moroccan guy once told me: “Travel and you will know why things are as they are.” That old guy was dead balls on.
Get out of your own back yard for its only when you travel and engage that you can have these experiences and thus really fulfil your life.
There’s a good thousand or so more things I’d like to write about but tempus fugit, (which roughly translate to: time be flyin’ n’ shit), so . . .
So Paddy, what’s your point?
My point is that, other than when we’re on our death bed trying to remember if we did more good shit than bad shit right before we settle the eternal argument; is there a god or not, we all need to occasionally be reminded of the bigger picture.
So next time you’ve finished all your work for the day, or if you’ve decided to say the hell with all your work for the day and have a boint, (that’s a beer topped off with a joint), set some time aside and decide what you’re grateful for.
The answer might fill in some blanks for you.
p.s. if you’re in between jobs or have more time on your hands than you’d care to admit, please like, Follow and Subscribe on: http://www.paddykellywriter.com/
The post My Gratitude List appeared first on Paddy Kelly Writer.
April 4, 2019
“Leaving Your Mark”
“Leaving Your Mark”
The Legend of Dock Ellis
Doc in Cannery Row said a man’s got to leave his mark, even if it’s only a scribble. Talking with a mechanical engineering friend last week he argued that everybody leaves their mark. I don’t agree but I at least concede that people who make exceptional contributions usually rise to some level of fame and glory. Some slowly, others ‘skyrocket’. Some eventually become known and still others go completely unnoticed.
I’ve lived in several countries including the U.S. and in my time there I developed a passing interest in baseball, which for those that argue Americans have no culture baseball, bad fast food and rap provide a counter argument. Oh yeah, also blue jeans.
Baseball caught my interest because it’s all based on the mathematics of threes. Three bases, three strikes is an out, each team gets three outs per inning and there are nine innings. The bases are 90 feet apart as is the distance from the pitcher’s mound to the plate.
One of the guys sharing a house with me, was an Australian, (but he was okay anyway), who at the time smoked regular, healthy dosages of weed. My drug of choice is Irish whiskey. We’ll see who dies first. My money’s on the whiskey, my father always said if you’re gonna do something do it right.
It was during one of our marijuana/alcohol fueled arguments at around half past three in the morning we corralled ourselves into a debate about what was the comparative speed of a cricket ball versus a baseball. Let’s face it, the state of the planet would be a much better place if we knew the answer to such penetrating mysteries.
He argued the cricket ball was faster. I knew better. We bet.
Now my knowledge of cricket is the rough equivalent of what The Clinton News Network’s Don Lemon, voted ‘Worst Journalist of the Year according to Columbia Journalism Review, knows about reporting. However, I knew that aspiring pro ball players have to throw at around the 90 miles per hour mark just to be considered to play in ‘the Circus’, which is slang for the Majors.
Big league pitchers have thrown the ball 105 mph+, (168 kph), and Carl Rays hit Ray Chapman in the head during a Yankees game one time and Chapman died 12 hours later. That’s fast.
To my knowledge cricket occasionally yields skinned knees and tendinitis.
It was a couple of days later that I didn’t give him an ounce of San Sumaian Red but he did give me a bottle of Jameson’s seven year old.
Back to leaving your mark.
Dock Phillip Ellis, a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates was born in L.A. and by his early teens was into weed and booze. Along with his natural athletic ability these recreational proclivities paved his way to be attracted to being a pro ball player as weed and booze were commonplace staples of the players at the time.
When, as a young man, he was arrested for stealing a car the Pirates management saw their chance to not only get a good pitcher but save a bunch of cash on the signing bonus.
So Ellis was given probation, a reduced signing bonus and a lifetime job in professional sports.
He would eventually go on to be a big league pitcher for several major league teams but in June of 1970 he was still with the Pirates, still into drugs and alcohol and still living life on the edge.
The team flew into San Diego that Thursday for an evening game on Friday against the San Diego Padres.
As they had nothing really to do until Friday Dock asked the manager for the afternoon off. As he explained it, he had a friend up in L.A. he wanted to drop in on and it was only an hour’s flight north. He would easily be back in time for the Friday evening game.
The manager said okay.
His buddy’s girlfriend had a place in the city where they could chill, chat and most importantly drop. Acid that is.
If you’ve read my book Politically Erect you’ve probably learned more about LSD then you need to know, but one of the things I talk about is the extreme time distortion experience. In fact concerning time, under the influence of acid, there ain’t none.
Being familiar with the lag time from the time of ‘dropping’ until what we commonly referred to as ‘blast-off’, Ellis dropped a tab as the plane touched down in L.A. that morning and by the time he arrived at his friend’s house he was passing through the Stratosphere, buzzing through the Mesosphere and well on his way into approaching this ultimate goal, the Exosphere.
Later in the bedroom, tucked warmly into a cocoon of psychodelicia, he enjoyed his trip. Eventually, as he started to come down he woke up.
As you do when your mind has been transported to Tralfamador and seeing it was light outside, he figured it was still Thursday. So what do you do when you’ve got that much time on your hands? You take acid. Dock dropped another hit.
He remembers his friend’s girl waking him at around two in the afternoon to tell him he needed to head back to the airport for the game. He was angry at having his trip disrupted and argued that he didn’t have to be in San Diego until late Friday afternoon.
Rather than escalate the argument and knowing it was pointless to debate with someone in an altered state of consciousness she wisely disappeared out of the room and shuffled back in a minute later with the L.A. paper and brandished the sports page at him pointing out the date and the line-up for that night’s game between the Padres and the Pirates with their starting pitcher, himself.
It was Friday.
He raced back to the airport, caught the three o’clock south and made it to the ball park at around half past four, about ninety minutes before start time.
Start time for the game was scheduled for five after six and by five thirty as he was peaking from his second hit. Unable to focus, he was barely able to keep faking his way through warm-ups.
California being California and the Seventies being the Seventies, availability of pharmaceuticals was never a problem. To this day. A girl in the stands who was a close friend, (apparently a very close friend), of pro baseball players, was located and was able to give Ellis some more Dr. Feelgoods. What the hell? If you can’t come down might as well go higher!
For some reason speed back in the Seventies had the most creative names: Black Beauties, Red Bennies, White Crosses and everybody’s favorite, Myocardial Infarcts. Take one on Tuesday and you were good to go until Saturday afternoon. Of course you might be dead by Sunday. I’d never seen anyone ever take more than one dose.
Ellis ducked back into the locker room to pop the Green Bennies he’d scored, a form of Benzedrine and sit covered in sweat to wait until the last minute to go back out onto the field.
A couple of hours later he finally heard the national anthem play, which seemed to go on for another day, he heard the Head Umpire yell “PLAY BALL!” and Dock floated out to the field.
It was with some difficulty but primarily through sense memory, he found the pitcher’s mound and tried to focus on the catcher and the batter at home plate.
The catcher, who along with most of the rest of the team, knew Dock was high but not what he was high on, had taped some fluorescent tape to his fingers so Ellis could better see his pitching signals.
The first few innings were rough as the ball, sometimes the size of a marble and other times as big as a soccer ball, had a mind of its own and started to find everything but the batter’s box.
It found its way to the batter, the backstop, the crowd on a few occasions and the dugout which seemed to be some of the ball’s favorite destinations. Once when the ball was chipped back to the pitcher’s mound and slowly rolled past, Ellis dove out of the way thinking it was a speeding line drive.
By the fourth inning, back in the dugout, he was informed that not one batter on the Padres team had yet scored a hit. It didn’t register.
The Pirates dugout, the media announcers and even some of the crowd began to buzz.
As he continued to pitch by focusing on the batters’ stances, he remembers pitching a fast ball to Jimi Hendrix who was swinging with his guitar.
Ellis struck him out.
By this point the fear of losing had completely subjugated the paranoia you get when you do acid around other people, much less on national T.V. and Ellis’ lucky streak continued as the Padres took their last turn at bat. Assisted by some brilliant Pirates’ fielding, unparalleled concentration and the entire population of Ireland’s luck, not one Padre had yet scored a hit.
It was the bottom of the ninth inning.
A ‘no hitter’ is a game in which the opposing team is not able to score a single hit and according to Major Baseball League’s official stats there have only been 256 ‘no hitters’ since 1901 or about two per year since 1900.
It was two balls and two strikes and the entire Pirates dugout was on its feet.
The last pitch was a strike.
The entire place erupted with even the Padres fans cheering as the team rushed the mound to carry a half conscious Ellis from the field.
Dock Ellis had held off the San Diego Padres with a no hitter on their own turf in front of their home crowd while being broadcast nationally. While tripping on LSD.
Americans do have culture!
The post “Leaving Your Mark” appeared first on Paddy Kelly Writer.
February 15, 2019
Space Between the Neurons (Installation # 0.67)
“Leaving Your Mark”The Legend of Dock Ellis
Doc in Cannery Row said a man’s got to leave his mark, even if it’s only a scribble. Talking with a mechanical engineering friend last week he argued that everybody leaves their mark. I don’t agree but I at least concede that people who make exceptional contributions usually rise to some level of fame and glory. Some slowly, others ‘skyrocket’. Some eventually become known and still others go completely unnoticed.
I’ve lived in several countries including the U.S. and in my time there I developed a passing interest in baseball, which for those that argue Americans have no culture baseball, bad fast food and rap provide a counter argument. Oh yeah, also blue jeans.
Baseball caught my interest because it’s all based on the mathematics of threes. Three bases, three strikes is an out, each team gets three outs per inning and there are nine innings. The bases are 90 feet apart as is the distance from the pitcher’s mound to the plate.
One of the guys sharing a house with me, was an Australian, (but he was okay anyway), who at the time smoked regular, healthy dosages of weed. My drug of choice is Irish whiskey. We’ll see who dies first. My money’s on the whiskey, my father always said if you’re gonna do something do it right.
It was during one of our marijuana/alcohol fueled arguments at around half past three in the morning we corralled ourselves into a debate about what was the comparative speed of a cricket ball versus a baseball. Let’s face it, the state of the planet would be a much better place if we knew the answer to such penetrating mysteries.
He argued the cricket ball was faster. I knew better. We bet.
Now my knowledge of cricket is the rough equivalent of what The Clinton News Network’s Don Lemon, voted ‘Worst Journalist of the Year according to Columbia Journalism Review, knows about reporting. However, I knew that aspiring pro ball players have to throw at around the 90 miles per hour mark just to be considered to play in ‘the Circus’, which is slang for the Majors.
Big league pitchers have thrown the ball 105 mph+, (168 kph), and Carl Rays hit Ray Chapman in the head during a Yankees game one time and Chapman died 12 hours later. That’s fast.
To my knowledge cricket occasionally yields skinned knees and tendinitis.
It was a couple of days later that I didn’t give him an ounce of San Sumaian Red but he did give me a bottle of Jameson’s seven year old.
Back to leaving your mark.
Dock Phillip Ellis, a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates was born in L.A. and by his early teens was into weed and booze. Along with his natural athletic ability these recreational proclivities paved his way to be attracted to being a pro ball player as weed and booze were commonplace staples of the players at the time.
When, as a young man, he was arrested for stealing a car the Pirates management saw their chance to not only get a good pitcher but save a bunch of cash on the signing bonus.
So Ellis was given probation, a reduced signing bonus and a lifetime job in professional sports.
He would eventually go on to be a big league pitcher for several major league teams but in June of 1970 he was still with the Pirates, still into drugs and alcohol and still living life on the edge.
The team flew into San Diego that Thursday for an evening game on Friday against the San Diego Padres.
As they had nothing really to do until Friday Dock asked the manager for the afternoon off. As he explained it, he had a friend up in L.A. he wanted to drop in on and it was only an hour’s flight north. He would easily be back in time for the Friday evening game.
The manager said okay.
His buddy’s girlfriend had a place in the city where they could chill, chat and most importantly drop. Acid that is.
If you’ve read my book Politically Erect you’ve probably learned more about LSD then you need to know, but one of the things I talk about is the extreme time distortion experience. In fact concerning time, under the influence of acid, there ain’t none.
Being familiar with the lag time from the time of ‘dropping’ until what we commonly referred to as ‘blast-off’, Ellis dropped a tab as the plane touched down in L.A. that morning and by the time he arrived at his friend’s house he was passing through the Stratosphere, buzzing through the Mesosphere and well on his way into approaching this ultimate goal, the Exosphere.
Later in the bedroom, tucked warmly into a cocoon of psychodelicia, he enjoyed his trip. Eventually, as he started to come down he woke up.
As you do when your mind has been transported to Tralfamador and seeing it was light outside, he figured it was still Thursday. So what do you do when you’ve got that much time on your hands? You take acid. Dock dropped another hit.
He remembers his friend’s girl waking him at around two in the afternoon to tell him he needed to head back to the airport for the game. He was angry at having his trip disrupted and argued that he didn’t have to be in San Diego until late Friday afternoon.
Rather than escalate the argument and knowing it was pointless to debate with someone in an altered state of consciousness she wisely disappeared out of the room and shuffled back in a minute later with the L.A. paper and brandished the sports page at him pointing out the date and the line-up for that night’s game between the Padres and the Pirates with their starting pitcher, himself.
It was Friday.
He raced back to the airport, caught the three o’clock south and made it to the ball park at around half past four, about ninety minutes before start time.
Start time for the game was scheduled for five after six and by five thirty as he was peaking from his second hit. Unable to focus, he was barely able to keep faking his way through warm-ups.
California being California and the Seventies being the Seventies, availability of pharmaceuticals was never a problem. To this day. A girl in the stands who was a close friend, (apparently a very close friend), of pro baseball players, was located and was able to give Ellis some more Dr. Feelgoods. What the hell? If you can’t come down might as well go higher!
For some reason speed back in the Seventies had the most creative names: Black Beauties, Red Bennies, White Crosses and everybody’s favorite, Myocardial Infarcts. Take one on Tuesday and you were good to go until Saturday afternoon. Of course you might be dead by Sunday. I’d never seen anyone ever take more than one dose.
Ellis ducked back into the locker room to pop the Green Bennies he’d scored, a form of Benzedrine and sit covered in sweat to wait until the last minute to go back out onto the field.
A couple of hours later he finally heard the national anthem play, which seemed to go on for another day, he heard the Head Umpire yell “PLAY BALL!” and Dock floated out to the field.
It was with some difficulty but primarily through sense memory, he found the pitcher’s mound and tried to focus on the catcher and the batter at home plate.
The catcher, who along with most of the rest of the team, knew Dock was high but not what he was high on, had taped some fluorescent tape to his fingers so Ellis could better see his pitching signals.
The first few innings were rough as the ball, sometimes the size of a marble and other times as big as a soccer ball, had a mind of its own and started to find everything but the batter’s box.
It found its way to the batter, the backstop, the crowd on a few occasions and the dugout which seemed to be some of the ball’s favorite destinations. Once when the ball was chipped back to the pitcher’s mound and slowly rolled past, Ellis dove out of the way thinking it was a speeding line drive.
By the fourth inning, back in the dugout, he was informed that not one batter on the Padres team had yet scored a hit. It didn’t register.
The Pirates dugout, the media announcers and even some of the crowd began to buzz.
As he continued to pitch by focusing on the batters’ stances, he remembers pitching a fast ball to Jimi Hendrix who was swinging with his guitar.
Ellis struck him out.
By this point the fear of losing had completely subjugated the paranoia you get when you do acid around other people, much less on national T.V. and Ellis’ lucky streak continued as the Padres took their last turn at bat. Assisted by some brilliant Pirates’ fielding, unparalleled concentration and the entire population of Ireland’s luck, not one Padre had yet scored a hit.
It was the bottom of the ninth inning.
A ‘no hitter’ is a game in which the opposing team is not able to score a single hit and according to Major Baseball League’s official stats there have only been 256 ‘no hitters’ since 1901 or about two per year since 1900.
It was two balls and two strikes and the entire Pirates dugout was on its feet.
The last pitch was a strike.
The entire place erupted with even the Padres fans cheering as the team rushed the mound to carry a half conscious Ellis from the field.
Dock Ellis had held off the San Diego Padres with a no hitter on their own turf in front of their home crowd while being broadcast nationally. While tripping on LSD.
Americans do have culture!
18:14, 15th of February, 2019: Day after St. Valentine’s Day. The saint associated with love. He was a martyr, beheaded for helping couples wed wasn’t he?
One of life’s lessons: don’t lose your head over love.
I’m in a large corner convenience store, it’s crowded, noisy and chaotic with the din of people buying shit they really don’t need at obscene prices they’d balk at anywhere else but after a hard day at work reminding themselves this job is only until something better comes along and knowing there’s something better around the corner, even though there’s probably not, and not wanting to remind themselves that this is not how they ever thought it would turn out, they probably need that Coke Lite, pack of cigarettes or Snickers bar.
Red Bull gives you wings!
Outside the traffic is bumper-to-bumper, the sidewalks are packed with shoppers, pedestrian commuters and the sporadic beggar all punctuated with the occasional siren. Not the proper British sirens but those irritating American screaming, screechy kind that snap you out of your comfort zone and remind you some poor bastard’s about to have a much worse day than you did.
Yeah, one hundred and twenty-seven, no twenty-eight. That’s how many people passing by I’ve counted in the last fifteen minutes with their faces buried in their mobile phones. ‘Cells’ if you’re American. Cells like in a prison.
Outside a pair of tourists wrestling with a map pass the big picture window for the third time going in the opposite direction.
A Caucasian Rastafarian stumbles into the place, ducks past security and nicks a croissant from the display rack. I recognise him from the time I looked up ‘wasted’ in the dictionary. There was a picture of him there. Any more drugged up he’d be unconscious. He suddenly decides he has a beef with his pastry and starts pounding hell out of it beating it into the table and loudly cursing it. The four foot tall, Nigerian security guy in the bad suit approaches and tells the six foot plus human train wreck to cool it. They stare each other down. My money’s on the little Nigerian. Suddenly it happens: Rasta man’s girlfriend flouses through the door, bear hugs him, starts crying and apologies to him. They kiss. Cue music, FADE SCENE: ROLL CREDITS.
Scenes like this remind me why people believe in gods and goddesses. For most this existence is so non-productive, so mundane, so meaningless otherwise, without the illusion of something after this they’d do a Hemingway and blow their brains out. But, no criticism. Whatever gets you through the day, or the night.
After 37 years of travel, living in a half a dozen countries with a dozen cultures, I finally realise I’m here.
Then it occurs to me, this is as close as I’ll ever come to New York City again. 3,000 miles away. But being here, 4,860 kilometres away from there, the place I’d always considered ‘home’ for nearly the first half of my life, has shown me when you finally kiss mom and dad good-bye for the final time, you’re never really ever ‘home’ again. You’re just working to find a better place to live.
Something else occurred to me as I sit here banging away on my ninth novel: I got what I asked for. I got exactly what I asked for. I bought the ticket and am taking the ride. Regardless of all the negative shit I and others have put me through, I am exactly where I want to be at this moment in time and in the immortal words of that Queen of homemaking and Mistress of tax evasion, Martha Stewart; “That’s a good thing!”
p.s. – Rasta man was finally escorted out by the cops.
The post Space Between the Neurons (Installation # 0.67) appeared first on Paddy Kelly Writer.
January 28, 2019
Rave Reviews
American Rhetoric
http://www.paddykellywriter.com/2018/03/11/american-rhetoric/
https://fiction4all.com/authorpages/a815.htm
Hi Paddy,
Wow – I just finished American Rhetoric and I loved it. Thank you for gifting me a copy. Below is the review I’ve posted to Amazon, B&N, Kobo and Goodreads. Please feel free to use my review in your marketing endeavors, and keep writing!!!
Sincerely, Linda Thompson, Host of www.TheAuthorsShow.com
American Rhetoric 5.0 out of 5 stars Democracy defined!
July 31, 2018
Once you begin reading Paddy Kelly’s book, it’s hard to put down. But keep in mind that while the book is listed as satirical humor, it’s also possible (if not also probable) that this is the story of the future of the United States. I kept reminding myself of Kelly’s definition of the word ‘politics’: from the Greek ‘poly’ meaning many and ‘tics’ meaning a parasitic, blood sucking leech who lives off others. And nothing could be more true of those currently in power. Whether you’re political or not, you’ll experience laughter, sadness and downright rage at what this grand experiment (the American two-party system) is all about. American Rhetoric is a really good example of just how far people are willing to go to further their own self-interests, no matter the intentions of the founding fathers. I’m recommending Kelly’s book to all my politically-minded friends.
– Linda Thompson
This is a satirical commentary on the “Democratic Process” in the USA, that is both hilarious and a little bit scary. Cuttingly humorous and refreshing in its political incorrectness. A thought provoking narrative begs many questions of the reader, who/why/when was democracy de-railed in the US. How much responsibility must the individual voter shoulder alongside the political machines of the two parties, for this state of affairs. A wickedly funny novel with some marvellous characters and a fast moving plot line. A hugely enjoyable read.
– Michael D., Dublin, Ireland
This is one of the funniest satirical novels I have ever had the pleasure to read. Paddy Kelly hits the nail on the head with his take on the politics of the future, our current climates hopes that this is exactly where we are headed if we aren’t careful. I don’t want to ruin the book by giving anything away, but some of the names and acronyms had me spluttering coffee all over the room with laughter. This is a damn good read, I highly recommend it!
Denis Dowling
Paddy Kelly’s American Rhetoric, an hysterically funny future historical fiction, is a great read. Now that the world of Orwell’s 1984 arrived and settled upon us to become our new reality a new book needed to take us to the next unimaginable and ridiculous it-could-never-happen-but-it-did future. Paddy Kelly has written that book. Kelly takes threads from current events to wittily construct and explain the future.
Family political dynasties. Check. Meet Helen Cliton. Reversion to the mean? The new normal is best to be not exceptionally normal or exceptional in any way – so check. Economic globalization and debt? Meet the new American map and new American productivity. The wall? Check. But not the way you might be thinking!
And thinking about thinking- Kelly takes us there, to a world of info-tainment fuelled by conspiracy theories and people who have genetically lost the ability to think.
His analogies are funny – and they stick with you. I will forever see certain couples and think of the fifth moon of Jupiter. His acronyms make you laugh. (Find one.)
The whole of it made me laugh out loud a LOT – and I needed a good laugh. As we do at a funeral. The day is saved by Paddy’s irreverent wit and astute observations of the/our new human condition. He is the funny priest at your family’s wake. I look forward to more.
– Linda Talman, Washington, U.S.A.
Just bought a copy of America Rhetoric which was recommended to me before Christmas. All I can say is: Finally! The long overdue political parody we’ve been waiting for! No one, regardless of your political orientation can deny the circus U.S. politics has become. Paddy Kelly has found the cue for the frustrations we all feel when Washington D.C. inevitably creeps into the conversation. With a totally unbiased look at what the next fifty or so years could hold for us, via a wry, sarcastic eye, this guy hits the nail on the head. If you don’t laugh while reading this book you are a stone-faced god. Highly recommend it.
– Tomislav Petric
Politically Erect
http://www.paddykellywriter.com/2018/03/11/politically-erect/
https://fiction4all.com/authorpages/a815.htm
Very grateful to know there are people out there that are still producing great stories! Many thanks!
-Chanda Mercury
Lots of great information and episodes in this book! Comedy is def the best way deal with the present political situation! Many Thanks!
With many thanks for the laughs!
-Rolanda Ekstrum
I have been checking out many of your stories and I can state pretty firmly that you know of what you speak! Great writing!
Akiko Ursino
I’m too young to have served in Vietnam what I really liked was you don’t have to have any kind of military expertise to understand the jokes. The characters are completely believable and the dialogue is right out of the Seventies. I really felt like I was there with Doc, Ridgerunner and the others.
Tomislav Petric
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From Wikipedia: Paddy Kelly is a prominent Irish novelist and playwright based in Dublin, Ireland and London, England, who writes in a Roman à clef style focusing primarily on politics and history and sometimes with a dark, comic twist. He holds B.A. and M.Ed. degrees and has served in the United States Navy and the United States Army. He has been a professional writer for 10 years, with 8 novels, a collection of novellae, short stories and half a dozen plays as well as a cook book.
He immigrated to New York City in 1966 where he worked a number of jobs, finished secondary school and in 1971 attended the City University of New York on an athletic scholarship for gymnastics. It was here that he was first introduced to theatre and first became interested in writing.
In 1972 Kelly was employed to coach the Icelandic National Olympic gymnastics team, a post held for two years. While in Reykjavik, Iceland he helped in the rescue efforts of Vestmannaeyiar Island following the eruption of the Heimaey volcano.
In 1973 he became a Hospital Corpsman in the U. S. Navy and, in 1975, assisted in the evacuation of Saigon and the resettlement of tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees to Westminster, Orange County, CA where he was first exposed to the world of film making, and later worked as a set carpenter and painter.
Following naval service in 1976 Mr. Kelly returned to City University New York earning a B.A. While at C.U.N.Y. he became involved in drama and subsequently acted in over a dozen plays in and around the New York area, again gaining work as a set carpenter and sign writer on films.
Returning to California in 1982 Paddy further developed his interest in writing when he found employment as a script editor. It was during this period that Mr. Kelly wrote his first novel, “Politically Erect”, a black comedy-political satire of the last days of the war in Viet Nam and the fall of Saigon. While serving 12 years as a Special Operations Medical Sergeant Mr. Kelly returned to the East coast and worked his way through graduate school earning his M.Ed. at Worcester State College in Boston.
Following military service Kelly began writing plays and moved into writing and directing full time, focusing on farce, satirical and political comedy. Mr. Kelly has to date directed two dozen professional theatrical productions, a TV pilot, is a former contributor to various film industry publications, written a half dozen feature film scripts and has published eight novels.
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America Rhetoric
Just bought a copy of America Rhetoric which was recommended me before Christmas. All I can say is: Finally! The long overdue political parody we’ve been waiting for! No one, regardless of your political orientation can deny the circus U.S. politics has become. Paddy Kelly has found the cue for the frustrations we all feel when Washington D.C. inevitably creeps into the conversation. With a totally unbiased look at what the next fifty or so years could hold for us, via a wry, sarcastic eye, this guy hits the nail on the head. If you don’t laugh while reading this book you are a stone-faced god. Highly recommend it.
Politically Erect
I’m too young to have served in Vietnam but what I really liked was you don’t have to have any kind of military expertise to understand the jokes. The characters are completely believable and the dialogue is right out of the Seventies. I really felt like I was there with Doc, Ridgerunner and the others. In looking forward to your next work.
5.0 out of 5 stars Operation Underworld – Book Review
February 10, 2010 Format: Paperback
Operation Underworld, a historical novel by Irish author Paddy Kelly, is an extraordinarily well researched and documented book about the involvement of the US Govt with the Italian mob during the early days of WWII. The govt worked with the mob to infiltrate the New York City waterfront in an effort to identify and apprehend possible Nazi spies. The book, and the govt/underworld connection, began with the burning of the luxury liner Normandie at the pier in NYC, where she was being converted to a troopship. This sparked (pun intended) concerns about possible Nazi spies and saboteurs on the waterfront, a critical area for the US war effort. The book uses a fictitious, but extremely likable, private detective to follow the true story of the govt and the mob, from the beginning of the operation to its conclusion. While some dialogue obviously had to be invented, everything possible has been done to use factual data throughout, even to the extent of using the actual transcripts (from the FBI’s records) of wire-tap recordings of mobsters talking about working with “The Commander” an actual US Navy Commander, mistakenly believed by the FBI to be the title of a mob leader. It’s a truly fascinating read, and I highly recommend it.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Operation Underworld – Historical Thriller
November 24, 2015 Format: Paperback
Excellent story by Paddy Kelly. Based in real historical events, the suspense and intrigue of the story carries you along. Well drawn out characters and good evocative locations. Builds towards a gripping ending. Definitely worth reading.
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