4/4/23
Newsletter #296
The Crack of Dawn
I am sitting on the eighth floor balcony of the SBGlow Hotel in Barcelona. It’s a tad chilly up here. I immediately found a pot dispensary, Smoke Signals, and scored two kinds of killer weed. Unlike the dispensaries in America, but just like in Amsterdam, once you’ve got your shit, there are tables and you can sit down and smoke it. I spoke with a German couple who sat down beside me. There are benches all over the town. Sit down, take it easy. Have a coffee. Have a cigarette. People actually smoke here. In America we don’t have benches anymore, in fear that homeless people will sleep on them. Our whole society is based on — get your shit and go home: don’t loiter, don’t hang out. Except that I like to sit on benches and hang out. I enjoy loitering.
I may have already told this story, but it hasn’t been for a while, and I just like it.
John Ford was a big fan of USC’s football team in the 1920s. He particularly liked two big players on the 1927 team: Marion Morrison (who would later become John Wayne) and Ward Bond. Ford got them both jobs in Fox Studios’ prop department. John Ford told this story with glee. He was shooting a silent film called Mother Machree (1928). Back then they shot several films at the same time on stages because the noise didn’t matter. Silent movie studios were noisy, chaotic places. Ford was directing a scene when young John Wayne, not paying attention, pushed a broom right into the middle of the scene Ford was shooting. Ford called cut, and before he could say anything else, John Wayne threw the broom, ran as fast as he could off the stage, and right off the Fox lot. As Ford put it, “That big galoot is probably still running up Western Boulevard.”
The wind stopped blowing and it’s gorgeous up here. High above the city of Barcelona.
A good day to one and all.
Let’s see if I can figure out how to post this.
Adios.