But don’t let us distract you as you lay out and relax, Mr. West. Maybe that’s the way it should be also. There’s a lot of precedent for it. Like the people who, 50 years ago, sat in a cafe on the Wilhelmstrasse, drinking warm beer, remarking, “What, the Nazis? Ah, you needn’t worry about them. In a few years, they’ll be gone, and no one would have noticed. No need to get upset.” And they went on smiling benignly as books were burned, newspapers were monitored, jackboots fell at the front door and, somewhere, the choicest hellflame was readied for transport to places with names like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Dachau.
And the benign smilers were in attendance 20 years later, when Joe McCarthy’s refurbished brand of Nazis held sway in the halls of government and commerce. “Blacklist? What blacklist? Oh, it doesn’t matter. So they’ll go and write books instead, or act on the stage; either way, it doesn’t matter. No need to get upset.” Meanwhile, careers were destroyed, lives shattered, and marriages went out the same ten-story window as an occasional, but not really important artist.
So go on smiling benignly, Mr. West. Lie out in the sun, relax, shine it on, m’man. You’ve found your niche in life, and it’s a rare man who can say that what he was meant to do, he does well. Meanwhile, the rest of us will go on doing our job. Just remember: when the hammer falls, it always hits the unwary first.
Just thought you might like to know.
Have a nice one, Mr. West.
—J. Michael Straczynski,
Contributing Editor
Writer’s Digest Magazine
Interim memo
As fitting aural accompaniment to the reading of this—and part of the next—column, be advised that Anatar Records (PO Box 27579; San Francisco, California 94127) has released a swell album of songs written and sung by the subject of columns 36 and 37, Susan Rabin. Ten tracks, as punchy and sweet as you might desire. $8.00 a shot includes postage and handling. Those who jammed the club to hear her work will be anxious to add this album to their collections; for those of you who haven’t heard Susie sing, just put your head very close to the page and listen. In the event you don’t hear the music, you have no doubt, unfortunately, purchased a warped or otherwise defective copy of this book, and I urge you to write the publisher for a replacement. And not to be upset when the attendants from the Home for the Terminally Weird come to your address to invite you to take up residence at the Chipmunk Factory. (Incidentally, in April of 1984, Susan Rabin graduated from law school and began studying for the California bar.)
INSTALLMENT 36: 23 JULY 82
This week, if you’ll give me a hand, I can keep a promise I made twenty-two years ago.
Lemme tell you a story.
Once upon a time in Chicago there was this cabbie named Louie Rabin, who moonlighted parking cars at the Chez Paree. He married Eva, who was the hatcheck girl at Fritzel’s when the stage shows were posh at State & Lake. They lived in the Jane Addams housing projects, not too terrific, exchequer-wise, but they had three daughters, anyhow. In them days folks didn’t have tv, they had kids. The middle one was Susie. She used to put on teeny playlets in the neighborhood; and she rollerskated a lot. At least till she was three, when she got polio.
Susie recovered, but to this day she thinks she’s got lousy legs. Too skinny, she says. She’s wrong, but what the hell.
Little Susie Rabin went to Northwestern and got a degree in theater in 1962. She also got married. He wanted to be an eye surgeon, the big bucks in ophthalmology, so Susie taught high school English and drama, and supported him for the next four years. By the time he had become Dr. Eckleberg Eyeball, there were two daughters and Susie had gotten an MA in broadcasting. But she wasn’t doing much in professional singing.
Did I mention she sang? Yeah, she sang. She also wrote plays. She also hung out the wash and used Dutch Cleanser in the sink. But after a while there wasn’t too much time for singing. And later, Dr. Eyeball wanted her around the house, so the offers to gig were refused.
Photo: Loni Spector
Don’t anticipate where I’m going with this. A storyteller’s supposed to keep you waiting.
Flip them calendar pages. We’re talking twenty years of wedded bliss. Bringing us to eight months ago, October 24, when Dr. Eyeball said to his little wife, words to the effect of, “I don’t think it’s going to work with us, kid.”
That was in Mill Valley, up north where they tell me San Francisco still stands waiting for the apocalypse.
Pause a moment. Go back to 1960. I was working in Chicago. That part isn’t important. I used to hang out at a joint called The Hut in Evanston. Northwestern students used to eat there all the time. Heard my first Ray Charles sides in The Hut. That part isn’t important, either. The connection is that I met Susan Rabin in The Hut. She didn’t know from ophthalmology at that point.
I heard her sing, and jeezus she sang like an angel. Said I, to her, in one of the few unselfish moments of my life, “You sing like an angel. I’m gonna make you a star, toots.”
So I got her some dynamite Chicago jazzmen, including Eddie Higgins, and she cut a tape. Nothing happened with it. I cut out for New York, to get away from a shit scene, a marriage memory that left rat tracks on my shadow, and never heard of Susan Rabin again.
Two months ago I got a tape in the mail. And a letter. From Susan Rabin. She was coming to L.A. between her first and second years of law school, to try to push music, try to learn how to write screenplays, try to learn entertainment law. I didn’t even remember the name Susan Rabin.
But I put on the tape.
I’m listening to it now, as I write this.
Jeezus, she sings like an angel.
Tell me something, gentle readers, what’re you doing this Sunday night, August 1? The last time I suggested you take the evening air, to take a stroll with me, two thousand of you turned up outside CBS. And that wasn’t to get your esthetic stroked, merely to balm your souls.
This time I’d like to invite you to come hear an angel sing.
Susan Rabin is in Los Angeles, and if I have a hand from you, why don’t we make her a star. And I can pay off on a promise I made over two decades ago.
To be fair about it, the eye doctor wasn’t a villain. He paid for the demo tapes through the years, but he hated the idea of show biz. “Who makes it in the music business?” he said, with ineluctable logic. No villain, for sure. Nothing wrong with a hard-working husband wanting his wife to be spared the heartbreak, even though she sang to hot reviews at Caesar’s Palace and The Troubador and The Ice House and Sweetwater. Nothing wrong with that.
(I’m loading the gun. Not fair. He did more than just pay for a few demo tapes. When she went to Vegas to sing, he took care of the kids. He wouldn’t have been anything less than pleased if she’d decided to become a lawyer, or to try for a career in broadcasting, during those twenty years. Truth of the matter is that she kept herself from making it, all those years. She bought the okeydoke: home, husband, 2.6 kids and happily ever after. Like so many of you. But sand runs down through the hourglass and castles built in there just fall apart. And October 24 comes to a lot of us who deserve better.)
Now Susie Rabin is on her own. Like a lot of you. And she’s going to be singing the songs she wrote like “Sweet Conductor Man” and “Listen to Your Dreams” and “Happy Ever After” and “Chicago Women” at a Santa Monica restaurant called At My Place this Sunday night at 8:00 PM. One show.
Who do you know in the music biz, gentle readers? Why don’t you buy them dinner this Sunday night?
Every week in this column we talk about saving the universe. We want to stop Watt from paving us over, we want to put a cap on the bomb, we want them to stop burning books, and each time I give a wail of anguish you say, yeah, ain’t it the truth, but what the hell can I do, I’m just one person. Well, maybe it comes down to one person helping one other person.
Here’s a dream twenty years old waiting to get fulfilled. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. This woman is sensational. A voice somewhere i
n the neighborhood of Chris Connors and Blossom Dearie and Melissa Manchester.
No cover, a sorta kinda one-drink sitting fee, a custom-designed sound system, a good food menu from quiche (which real men can’t even spell, much less eat) to steaks, with terrific homemade desserts. Go have dinner At My Place Sunday night. The address is 1026 Wilshire in Santa Monica. Call for a reservation at 451–8597 and ask for the owner, Matt Kramer. Tell him specifically you’re coming in to eat because you want to hear Susan Rabin.
There’s even an open jazz jam after Susan Rabin and her band knock your socks off.
What the hell, you weren’t doing anything that wonderful Sunday night, were you? Come on, be a pal. Like the last time we got together, I’ll be there grinning and listening. Say hello. But mostly, let this songwriting, playwriting, lawyering, ex-housewife mommy-of-two have a shot at the Diamond As Big As The Ritz. I wouldn’t steer you wrong.
This kid sings like an angel.
Louie will thank you. Eva will thank you. Dr. Eyeball will thank you. Matt Kramer will sure as hell thank you if you tell him Susan Rabin brought you in.
And I’ll thank you.
Sometimes in this life you need to call on your friends to help you keep your promises. I’ve waited twenty-two years to be a mensch. Kindly do not make me look like a schmuck, you know what I mean?
INSTALLMENT 37: 2 AUGUST 82
Letters reprinted with permission from the L.A. Weekly
Once again, dear friends, into Darkest Mailbag with gun and camera. For most of the world it’s a case of live and let live; in terms of answering my mail, it’s live and let loose.
First: over two hundred of you turned up out in Santa Monica to hear Susie Rabin sing last Sunday. She did a new song about unrequited love for Al Pacino, played her ukulele, took a bunch of encores, blew out the sound system and blew away the audience. If sidebar thanks to your faithful columnist is any gauge of how good she was, be advised I sat there and bathed in the undeserved approbation as many of you came up and said what a keen evening you’d had. For those of you who ordered dinner, I apologize. At My Place is not Ma Maison. It ain’t even Dr. Hogly Wogly’s Tyler Texas Pit BBQ (on Sepulveda near Roscoe…highly recommended, particularly the Texas hot links). But the good news is that Susan Rabin returns to At My Place on September 12th. And if they have any sense the owners will (a) pay her for performing next time and (b) have her do more than one set.
Portrait of the columnist as “old fogey.”
Photo: Mark Shepard
Second: Sondra Ormsby of Toluca Lake wrote recently saying she’d heard I had a new book coming out, and where could she get it. The new collection of stories is called STALKING THE NIGHTMARE, and publication date, synchronistically, is today, Thursday, the 5th. The book is published by Phantasia Press and can be obtained—for sure—at A Change of Hobbit in Santa Monica on the L.A. side of the hill, and at Dangerous Visions in Sherman Oaks on the Valley side. I will be doing an autograph party at DV on Saturday the 21st, from 2–5:00, and I’ll remind you of that as the date nears. This has been a solicited announcement, for those of you who are curious as to what I write for a living. (You didn’t think I was buying that Packard with my paycheck from this column, did you?) Which brings me to:
Third: a reader to whom I am eternally grateful but, shamefully, whose name I’ve misplaced, turned me on to a swell guy out in Los Alamitos named Greg Busenkell, who sold me a 1950 Packard to replace my poor dead Camaro. The behemoth is, at present, in the shop at John Wilkes Automotive out in Reseda, and I’m assured by John (who is simply put, the most honest, best mechanic in the entire fucking city) that refurbishment will be completed in another three months. You’re gonna love it, folks. I’ll run some photos of the restoration process in a while. It is heaven! Four door touring sedan, inside running boards, deco dash panel, a back seat on which four people can stretch their legs as if they were languishing on a living room sofa. In a few months, when you see this automotive dream in cream and ocher with the HE license plates, moving in a stately fashion through the streets of this magical Baghdad (since the accident I’ve sworn off driving as if I’m trying to make up laps at Sebring) (actually, since the accident, I’ve been that rarest of creatures, barefoot in L.A., without wheels for two months) (actually, I rented a teeny vehicle from Budget Rent-A-Car and they stiffed me something way over $750 for two weeks, which leads me to urge you to avoid dealing with these people), honk if you think Merv Griffin is a yotz. It’ll be me flaunting it, baby, flaunting it!
Fourth: I was truly amazed at the number of you who took me seriously when I blatantly demanded a $300 Radice (pronounced rah-dee-chee) pipe for my birthday. One guy called and said if I’d write him two limericks and provide him with a replacement dust wrapper for the first edition hardcover of DANGEROUS VISIONS he’d bought, he’d make me a gift of just such a pipe. Well, I’ve never written a line of poetry in my life—for which W.S. Merwin, Robert Creeley, Galway Kinnell and the ghost of Randall Jarrell give daily thanks—but I’m nothing if not flexuous, one might even say anfractuous. Not to mention avaricious. And so, for the first time ever since Atlantis sank beneath the waves, O Prince, I present herewith two limericks for that guy who was deranged enough to make the offer (but who hasn’t called back, probably because the keepers with the white wraparound jacket located him before he could hurt himself). I make no apologies.
Limerick the First
A fan of “An Edge In My Voice”
Called the writer to say, “Hey, rejoice!
“Radice is thine
“If you’ll just incline
“To cobble me some poems with some poise.”
Y’like the way I Ogden Nashed rejoice with poise? Yeah, well, the same to you y’goddam pedant. Go please purists.
Limerick the Second
Of scansion I know not one whit,
My poetry’s strictly from shit.
Obtaining this pipe
Needs lines of a stripe,
From a verser who’s more than a twit.
The signed originals of these two sterling efforts await claim from the rara avis whose insane offer defies belief. I will keep you advised. New horrors! New horrors!
Fifth: Kenneth Echeveral of Westwood got testy with me about that piece on the nobility of being an intellectual. He stood with arms akimbo, stamping his little foot, in the letter, and demanded I give him my definition of an intellectual. I can conceive none better than this cutie from Camus: “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched.”
Sixth: I wrote my column on Israel versus Lebanon-based PLO with considerable trepidation. Didn’t want to get into that. Said I didn’t know enough. Was openly asked about it, so I did a long ramble on the subject, mostly uninformed bullshit. Many people then wrote asking, “If you said you weren’t going to say anything about it, why did you then go on and have a lot to say about it?” Well, folks, the medium was the message. It was a column about “everybody is entitled to his / her opinion” even if they don’t know from sour owl poop. It was supposed to be a demonstration of how long an idiot can go on about something with no real information. The point was apparently lost on some of you. Lost to the extent that Mayer Brenner sent me a startling piece from the current issue of the New Republic, (Martin Peretz in the 2 August issue) which I commend to your attention, intended to inform my opinion. I’m glad I knew I was babbling, even if you didn’t catch it, because that article is an eye opener which contains a great deal of solid data about those much bruited 10,000 civilian casualty figures.
Seventh: the same reverse-logic was used when I wrote the column about women sans men. Dozens of women wrote, surprised at what they termed my naiveté. “Of course that’s the way it is with us,” they wrote. “How could you be so innocent of the situation?” Honestly, folks, I am sometimes startled at your lack of faith in me. Of course I know that’s the way it is…that women continue to identify themselves as being
worthy in terms of whether or not they’ve got a man. I wrote in a calculatedly disingenuous fashion, to make the point, to raise the issue, to get the juices started. Well, gloryosky kids, I received so much troubled mail from you-all that I’ll be doing a follow-up column soon, and will even initiate another Public Service aspect of this column: I’m at present assembling a list of six or seven “decent men” to offer to you needy female persons. These men will all be what you term “possibles.” I’ll run dossiers, personal observations, photos, and then we’ll start trying to farm them out to you. This is not a dating service, Great Expectations does a perfectly fine job of that. This will be an experiment to prove that there are still a few good male entities around, and you shouldn’t lose hope. Watch for this outstandingly tacky undertaking in the near future.
Eighth: Senator John Schmitz will not be on the list.
Ninth: About two of my personal “heroes,” listed in the 1 April column. Gloria Allred, the feminist attorney, and John Simon, the critic. I heard from a number of grousers that neither of these estimable paragons deserved to be admired. I was planning to do a long piece on Gloria, but there’s just such an article in the current (August) issue of Los Angeles magazine, by Michael Leahy. I’d suggest you read it, in lieu of my intended profile on this remarkable legal Zorro, but unfortunately Leahy’s takeout is one of those smarmy juice jobs that doesn’t openly axe the subject, yet uses loaded, slanted and colored verbs and adjectives (such as constantly referring to Ms. Allred’s perfectly ordinary and well-formed mouth as “tight and small”) to reinforce a warped, negative portrait. It reads to me like the sort of wolf-in-sheep’s-haberdashery effort that results when a journalist comes on friendly with the subject to get close, to elicit the subject’s cooperation, and then turns out to be singing the song of the Quisling. It’s a stinko piece of work, and Leahy ought to be ashamed of himself; so I’ll be getting to my own Allred portrait sooner than I’d thought.
An Edge in My Voice Page 31