Solving The Darkest Mysteries
“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”― John Steinbeck
The kids had a week off last week, thus the absence of the newsletter, and Barb and I found ourselves with some long drives (the family went to the snow and traveled around a bit after) and tried on some podcasts to kill the highway time. We nailed two cold case true crime ‘casts that not only blew our minds with the story’s they told, but answered questions that at least for me had been swirling around in my brain for decades…since I was a teenager.
We were very late to the party for the first one we indulged in, The Root of Evil1. This 2019 true crimer is based around one of the most infamous murder cold cases in California in the 20th century: The Black Dahlia. The narrators are the great-granddaughters of George Hodel, a suspect in the case that, and this is not giving anything away since it is discussed from the onset, the whole family is pretty sure committed the grotesque murder (with George Hodel’s own son Steve, a retired detective, digging up the most damning evidence).
George Hodel was a prominent physician in Los Angeles in the 1940s, a deep enthusiast and patron of the surrealist art movement, befriending Man Ray whose portrait the photographer took, and who held lavish parties as his home in the historic Franklin House (better known as the John Sowden house). It is at these Caligulain parties where he brought together both the Hollywood elite and its b-players, parties that became infamous for their dark, almost tribalistic sexual degenerations. The Root of Evil is not his story as much as it is his daughter, Tamar’s story, who put her dad on trial for incest when she was 15 (he got away with it) and whose own actions, sparked by generational trauma, fuels a great part of the crazy, dark plot points of the story.
Tamar’s full-on-nutso story line almost eclipses the horror of the Black Dahlia.
Additive key plot-points include the ties the Hodels have to colorful Hollywood players, including John Houston, childhood friend to George (who actually plays a character loosely based on him in Chinatown), Michelle Phillips, who almost adopts Tamar (whose future husband John will also be accused of incest), and the lesser known Mady Comfort, who is a pivotal witness in the Hodel incest trial, a former Duke Ellington orchestra singer who is the lounge act in the fantastic film noir, Kiss Me Deadly. But the biggest fascinating deduction is that the Black Dahlia murder might have been nothing more than a struggling (and truly evil) artist attempt at fame within the surrealist movement, inspired by the dark side of artist’s like Salvador Dalí’s and Man Ray’s objectification of the female form; the darkest strangest, Crowleyist corner of Hollywood revealed.
The second podcast was the more recent Rob Reiner production Who Killed JFK, where takes Reiner’s decade-old fascination and study of the president’s assassination and lays down the most logical well-thought out analysis to date. Reiner uses each episode to do a deep dive into various aspects of the overall world of the JFK Assassination: the players involved, the history that led up to that faithful day in Dallas, the cover-ups around the Warren Commission and the future investigations, the motives and the pawns. I had no idea of Lee Harvey Oswald’s deep connection with the CIA, whose operatives got him his job in the Texas School Book Depository building, where he supposedly shot Kennedy (which he probably did not even do, instead drinking a coke in the cafeteria during the fatal moment).
A big reminder, to me, from Who Killed JFK is that Kennedy was a president who bucked the system, and many of his supporters, by reaching towards an idea of world peace, an idea that thwarted the plans and profits of the national war machine/industry, the mafia and the power brokers of Americas big governmentally funded bureaus. He made many enemies which created, as Reiner suggests, strange bedfellows who gathered together to take the president out. Reiner’s ability to put all the facts together, bringing in the voices who have written the books and published the websites that have examined and re-examined the assassination ever since it happened, taking all of the info and translating it through the platform of great storytelling, allows him to come to a conclusion that makes sense and gives seeming finality to such a big mystery.
OK….now that two of the biggest murder mysteries have been solved (maybe?) we can continue down the normal path through this current burning world of ours….with beautiful artists and storytellers translating it and offering uplifting moments as we go….
LAURA BAKER'S PAINTING BOX: JAPAN UPDATE
Laura Baker’s painting box is always a beautiful visionary meditation through a topic of deep interest to her. This latest edition celebrates her last trip to Japan….some of the new places she has visited…with an eye on art and design that is signature to that land, including a focus on Japanese artist Shiko Munakata, alien objects from the Mori Art Museum (in the sky), the psychedelic floral arrangements of Sofu Teshigahara and so much more.
Black Country: A Love Letter and Living Archive
While I admit that Beyoncé’s music is not on my regular playlist, her new song The Texas Hold ‘Em captivates me both for its beautiful, organic convergence of country and gospel music but also its challenge to the white-ruled world (and history) of the genre. The video for the song celebrates the tradition of the black cowboy, a story that has been told more recently but not on such a popular stage. This above piece from The Oxford American reacts as a beautiful deep dive into the world that she is tapping into.
“Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, ‘Music is the universal language of mankind.’ Scientists at Harvard have just published the most comprehensive scientific study to date on music as a cultural product, which supports the American poet’s pronouncement and examines what features of song tend to be shared across societies.”
John Waters to make first film in 20 years with Aubrey Plaza set to star
“Subtitled “A Feel-Bad Romance” and described by its publishers as a ‘hilariously filthy tale of sex, crime, and family dysfunction’, Liarmouth centres on a scammer and compulsive liar called Marsha Sprinkle who splits from her partner Daryl and steals from both her daughter and her mother.”
Otherworldly Images From the Underwater Photographer of the Year Awards
Some pretty epic images….
DLARC Preserves “Ham Radio & More” Radio Show
“Ham Radio & More was a radio show about amateur radio that was broadcast from 1991 through 1997. More than 300 episodes of the program are now available online as part of the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC). Ham Radio & More was the first radio show devoted to ham radio on the commercial radio band. It began as a one-hour show on KFNN 1510 AM in Phoenix, Arizona, then expanded to a two-hour format and national syndication. The program’s host, Len Winkler, invited guests to discuss the issues of the day and educate listeners about various aspects of the radio hobby. Today the episodes, some more than 30 years old, provide an invaluable time capsule of the ham radio hobby.”
Snow-Flakes
By: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.
“All life includes loss. It's taken me many, many years to learn to deal with that, and I don't expect I'll ever be fully resigned to it. But that doesn't mean we have to turn away from the world, or stop striving for the best that we can do and be. We owe that much to ourselves, at least, and we deserve whatever measure of good may come of it.”
― Ken Grimwood
The podcast was created around the TNT mini-series based on the Hodel story called I AM THE NIGHT. We are half way through watching it, and it is pretty awful. One review of it says, watch it on mute and listen to (the) podcast.
A great interview with author James Ellroy about Black Dahlia and George Hodel: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-may-23-me-lopez23-story.html