Bob Calhoun's Open Salon Blog

Jimmy Stewart's Porn Mag

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:01:55 -0500

Notice the fine reading material on Jimmy Stewart's coffee table.

It's around 4 a.m. I can't get to sleep. Vertigo is on one of the Starz HD channels. It only takes a few minutes to draw me in.

Kim Novak is in the next room freshening up. Jimmy Stewart, looking so safe in his green V-neck sweater pulled over a starched, white shirt, leans over from his 50s couch to catch a glimpse of her. Ol' Jimmy, ever the gracious host, has a fresh pot of coffee within easy reach right in the middle of his Danish Modern coffee table. To the right of his silver coffee pot, is a matching silver creamer, but to the left of it appears to be a copy of Swank….

SWANK!?!

Good Lord! Choke! Really!?!

To men of my generation, Swank was one of the raunchiest skin mags readily available on the Quik Stop porn rack. Its slick pages were probably the first place where several of my friends and I were introduced to the concepts of girl-on-girl and anal sex.

I can't really believe that Hollywood nice guy Stewart has a copy of Swank just sitting on his coffee table, out in the open for his lady guest to see. I use my DVR's search feature to run the scene again to see if my eyes were deceiving me. They weren't. 1080 pixels on a 52-inch plasma TV reveal that Jimmy likes a little smut with his java, evidently. I wonder if Clarence the angel from It's a Wonderful Life had his wings repossessed after that one.

Of course, Swank was a different periodical back in 1958 when Vertigo came out than it was in the 1980s when its covers lines promised "young, tight twat" in oversized typeface. According to Wikipedia, comic book industry pioneer Victor Fox started the magazine in the 1940s. Comic book historian Mark Evanier described Fox as "an old-time hustler/financier who's spent years sprinting from one dubious enterprise to another." Captain America co-creator Joe Simon called Fox a "very loud, menacing, and really a scary little guy." He called himself "the King of the Comics" as he darted around his office, berating the likes of Jack Kirby and Bill Everett, the artists who'd go on to create most of the characters seen in today's blockbuster superhero movies.

Somewhere along the line, Fox sold Swank to Martin Goodman, the future publisher of Marvel Comics and Stan Lee's cousin by marriage. During this time, Swank featured stories penned by William Saroyan and Psycho author Robert Bloch, so Stewart's disgraced cop in Vertigo could more easily claim that he only read it for the articles, and not all the girly pics that were likely snapped by Stewart's photographer character from Rear Window—at least in the 50s of my imagination. The November 1957 issue featured a profile of Alfred Hitchcock just six months before the release of Vertigo. Maybe Hitch was repaying a favor when he allowed the mag to appear at the bottom of his frame in his 1958 masterpiece.

But the connection between Swank and Marvel Comics makes too much sense now that I think about it. In the 1970s, three random back issues of comics were bundled into these plastic packs and sold at places like Gemco and Ben Franklin Stores. I remember spending a lot of time trying to lift the visible top comic with my thumb to see what the middle book was, hoping against hope that it was an Avengers and not The Champions. I still ended up with nearly a complete set of The Champions anyway with most of them obtained through those three-packs.

Goodman's porn overstock was packaged in the same way with printing on the plastic wrap hiding the magazine's cover girls. I used to work at St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco some four miles away from Jimmy Stewart's Lombard Street apartment in Vertigo. The corner store where I got my coffee and bagels in the morning had a rack with those packs of porn on it over by some dusty bottles of cheap wine. One morning, the Iranian café owner from across the street held up one of the three-packs. "This is just like woman in the Middle East," he quipped, "you can only see her face." Everybody in the store broke out laughing after that one.

Martin Goodman, who had been a driving force behind both the comic book and men's mag industries, died in relative obscurity in 1992, having long-since been eclipsed by such more flamboyant figures as Stan Lee, Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt. Marvel Comics marked his passing with just a short paragraph in their throwaway hype mag, Marvel Age.

"Nobody talks about Martin Goodman," Irwin Linker, an art-director who worked for Goodman, says in Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: the Untold Story (Harper 2012). "It's like he never lived, and he's the guy who started the whole thing. It's like he never existed."

Goodman's son, Charles "Chip" Goodman, sold Swank and what was left of the family's smut empire to the Magna Publishing Group in 1993. By this time, Swank was hardly the kind of thing that men like Jimmy Stewart would just leave lying around his apartment.

Bob Calhoun is a former ring announcer, peep show barker and low-rent wrestler. His upcoming pop-culture romp, Shattering Conventions: Chaos, Conflict and Cosplay at Comic Con and Beyond, will be released by Obscuria Press in June 2013--just in time for Comic-Con. You can follow him on Twitter @bob_calhoun.

Thanks General Petraeus. Thanks Paula Broadwell.

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:11:32 -0500

Me with "Judo" Gene LeBell in 2003.

I have never had sexual relations with “Judo” Gene LeBell. Thanks to General Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, I actually have to say this.

Way back in May 2002, I began working on LeBell’s autobiography, titled “The Godfather of Grappling.” During the following months I got to know the legendary martial arts master and Hollywood stuntman better than I know my own father—better than I know anyone really. There are few details of Gene’s life from the tragic loss of his first wife to his triumph in the 1954 AAU Judo Nationals or when Steve Martin threw him in the pool during the filming of "The Jerk" that aren’t rattling around in my head somewhere. This level of trust (dare I say intimacy) between writer and subject sounds so dirty now. Thanks General Petraeus. Thanks Paula Broadwell.

My job in writing “The Godfather of Grappling” was a bit different than Broadwell’s with the unfortunately but hilariously named “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.” I was ghostwriting an autobiography to be published with LeBell himself listed as the author with me credited as a more ubiquitous “with” or “as told to.” Nobody was expecting objectivity here although I did consider it my duty to try to push this man who had taught both Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris how to break arms to reveal aspects of his life that he was hesitant to. Sometimes I won these arguments. Sometimes I didn’t, but at least I didn’t end up with any broken fingers as a result of my self-enforced diligence.

Broadwell’s work bore her own name in big, white letters above the title, presumably to present Petraeus’ story and a good chunk of raw military propaganda as coming from an objective source. Although even here, Broadwell’s gushing tome still bears the credit “with Vernon Loeb” in smaller letters underneath her name, showing layers of ghostwriting upon ghosting. And while so many seek to brand Broadwell with the adulterer’s scarlet letter, we shouldn’t overlook her publisher, Penguin Press, for not holding the finished work to a higher standard of journalism even if the author herself wasn't a journalist or a published author. Sadly, Penguin is set to make a greater windfall off of "All In" than their number crunchers could’ve ever imagined, as the book is soaring up Amazon’s charts right now.

My mind turns back to Broadwell being interviewed by Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show," and her talking about going on six-mile runs with Gen. Petraeus to win over his trust. By the end of the segment she and Stewart are on the floor doing pushups (along with Broadwell’s cuckolded husband Scott Broadwell). For me to win over “Judo” Gene’s trust, I had to go to his dojo in North Hollywood and get on the mats with him. During these sessions, Gene often leaned the full weight of his body onto me as he pushed his chest into my face and held me in a vice-like grip. I could only tap in submission as he demonstrated a series of agonizing joint locks and chokeholds on me.

Good Lord. It all sounds so dirty now.

Thanks General Petraeus.

Thanks Paula Broadwell.

Bob Calhoun is the author of the punk wrestling memoir "Beer, Blood & Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling" (2008, ECW Press). He is currently working on a book on conventions and tradeshows. You can follow him on twitter at @bob_calhoun.

Rain delays, robot rabbits and killer tarps

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 01:10:18 -0400

The ball was grounded to second with the bases loaded. It picked up water as it skidded across the damp St. Louis infield, causing Giants second baseman Marco Scutaro to double-clutch the ball as he pulled it from his glove. That small delay allowed David Freese, the Cardinals’ lead runner, to score. San Francisco was down 3-1 in the bottom of the seventh inning in game three of the National League Championship Series.

The skies above Busch Stadium in St. Louis opened up in that way that weather services had predicted they would all day. The players came off the field. The grounds crew dragged the tarp over the field, making this an official rain delay.

"Right now Noah would be impressed with what we're seeing in St. Louis,” former Giants’ pitcher Mike Krukow said, describing the torrent to me as I sat there in my cubicle listening to what was once a ballgame through a set of headphones plugged into an old boombox.

The Giants’ broadcasting team on KNBR 680 San Francisco found itself with a lot of airtime to kill. That’s when things got weird.

Using what the situation had given to him, veteran broadcaster Jon Miller regaled his radio audience with tales of the drainage system at Busch Stadium.

"It's sort of a sand-based system, but beneath all of that are these subterranean pumps,” he explained, before the discussion turned to the time that this mechanized tarp in the old St. Louis ballpark tried to eat Cards outfielder Vince Coleman before a playoff game in 1985.

Somebody in the broadcasting booth brought up this mechanical bunny that popped out of the infield in Oakland in the 1970s to deliver balls to the home plate umpire. The first base ump could also step on a switch to allow jets of air to blow the dust off of the base. The Giants broadcasting team all quickly agreed that such conveyances were just Frankenstein’s monsters waiting to harm even the best ballplayers. I think they said that Mickey Mantle was injured by some kind of labor saving device, and of course, there was Vince Coleman again.

“He was the fastest man in the league, but he couldn’t escape this tarp,” Miller added.

After lamenting the terror that Coleman must have felt as he was enveloped by that tarp, former Giants’ second-baseman-turned-sportscaster Duane Kuiper joined in with his account of rats running out from under the tarp in Cleveland and attacking the California Angels dugout. Krukow countered with tales of playing for the Amarillo Giants in the Texas League where the ballpark reeked of a nearby slaughterhouse and they sprayed the field for mosquitos twice during each game.

"I think it was Agent Orange they got cheap," Krukow said.

Kuiper said, “Reno, 1972,” and I just couldn’t process it anymore. Reno, shit, I’m still only in Reno.

This rolling discussion of robot bunnies, rats and killer tarps almost made up for all those stranded Giants baserunners—almost. I wondered why they didn’t have TiVO for radio, and wished that I had a cassette tape handy so I could record this thing the old-fashioned way. The off-brand boom box made from silver plastic could still do that much even 30 years after it was bought at Radio Shack.

It was these weird conversations that cropped up during the slow moments of baseball games that made me think I could make it in sports broadcasting. I majored in Radio and Television at San Francisco State, but never really pursued it beyond announcing for Incredibly Strange Wrestling, a San Francisco mixture of punk rock and lucha libre. That was live entertainment though, and the crowds flung food, cups, beer and even shit at me. I also had to wrestle the Poontangler and Macho Sasquatcho from time-to-time, but at least I was never attacked by rats in Cleveland.

As the rain delay dragged on, the talk inevitably turned to how much better things are now.

“The minor league ballparks of today are nicer than Wrigley Field,” Kuiper said, and he was right. We’ve made everything so comfortable and so state-of-the-art, but there is a shame in that. What will the baseball announcers of the Year 2027 have to talk about? The Wi-Fi going out?

The game resumed several hours. The Giants hung on to lose 3-1. St. Louis leads the NLCS two games to one.

Cogito ergo Sheik: Iron Sheik tweet redefines space itself

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:10:33 -0400

Former pro wrestling world champion The Iron Sheik AKA Sheikie Baby shook the foundations of astronomy and physics with his tweet earlier today.

Former WWE world champion The Iron Sheik rocked the foundations of what is knowable earlier this morning with a tweet about daredevil Felix Baumgartner’s successful skydive from the stratosphere.

"the (sic) Felix Baumgartner never sold out madison square garden,” the Iron Sheik tweeted, “ He no legend like the sheikie baby. fuck him and fuck space for putting him over."

To those familiar with the jargon common to the pro wrestling industry, the implications of this angry diatribe are enormous. In just 108 characters, this wrestling legend has accused the vastness of space itself—which meausres at a minimum of 28-billion light years in diameter that we currently know of--laid down, took a dive, or jobbed out to a 43-year-old Austrian skydiver.

Even if we limit the scope of The Iron Sheik’s definition of space to only include our own Solar System, it would mean that something taking up over 14 trillion kilometers or 100,000 astronomical units knowingly and purposefully went down 1-2-3 in the middle of the ring to a much smaller opponent.

Sheikie Baby’s bromide may have consequences for the fields of religion and philosophy as well as for astrophysics. What the Iron Sheik is saying here is that the universe we live in "does business," in that it will negotiate with often greedy and shortsighted promoters to elevate more photogenic stars. One would be tempted to summon the overly used phrase Lovecraftian to describe this, but the scope is so much more staggering than anything dreamed up by science-fiction author H. P. Lovecraft.

With this one tweet The Iron Sheik has transcended to the level of an Aristotle or 16th Century French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes—thinkers who not only defined what is knowable, but the very nature of knowledge itself. The Iron Sheik first won the WWF (now WWE) world championship on December 26, 1983 at Madison Square Garden in New York in front of a sold-out crowd.

The Cat in the Hate: the Bizarro Birther Dr. Seuss

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 03:09:15 -0400

I may have found the most twisted piece of conservative propaganda print matter out there. I know this is saying a lot with those Nancy Pelosi hunting licenses and the targets with Al Gore’s face in them that you can get at gun shows, but some Tea Party hobbits went and published this 55-page fake version of Dr. Seuss’ “Cat in the Hat,” titled "The New Democrat" and credited to "Dr. Truth." I almost have to hand it to the knuckle-draggers who put this thing out. At first glance, it does look like a Dr. Seuss book until you realize that the mischievous feline of your childhood has been replaced with a racist caricature of Obama wearing a Soviet fur cap with a sickle and hammer on it.

Left: the Obama Cat appears to be climbing in through the window to take your money. Right: Seuss' Cat in the Hat walks in through the front door.

“I know you are poor/And the outlook’s not sunny/But we can have fun/With others people’s (sic) money!”, Dehumanized-Soviet-Obama says on page seven as he looks like he's climbing through a window. (I think it's actually supposed to be a TV set from the MSNBC logo in the corner there.) Also, that thing he’s carrying is a teleprompter. I couldn’t figure out what that phonebook on the end of a T-square thing was until I noticed that he reads from it sometimes. Conservatives are really hung up on the whole teleprompter thing.

The fish from "The Cat in the Hat" gives the Glenn Beck man-fish-thing the what for.

Things even weirder when you realize that the fish in the bowl that lectures everyone on debt and death panels is supposed to be Glenn Beck, whom this little ball of birther hatred is dedicated to. Checking out the website ObamaParody.com, it looks like they’ve revised newer editions to have Mitt Romney in the fishbowl instead. “A lone fish stands in the way of this fate/Can he wake up the voters before it’s too late?”, it reads with a Mitt-fish-thing popping out of a teapot to scowl at the Obama-cat-thing.

This whole demented fever dream is the product of Loren Spivak, the self-proclaimed “Free Market Warrior.” The art direction is credited to Patrick Fields, but it doesn’t look like he did the actual drawings that make up the bulk of this book. Tucked away on the page of publishing info, underneath a “please don’t sue me” disclaimer saying that this is “a work of parody,” is an acknowledgement that reads, “Leandro Martins Moraes: Illustration.” Sure Martins Moraes’ style is akin to psychotic doodles that an overzealous prosecutor would use to convict some stoner kids of murder without any physical evidence, but shouldn’t he still get a little credit here? I guess Spivak and Fields figure that they’re the job creators, and the Latinos that they rope into drawing insipid agitprop should just self-deport already.

Don't even get me started...

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid show up as “Dem 1” and “Dem 2” and tear up the constitution. The Obama-Cat bows to Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez while Osama bin Laden beats on Hosni Mubarak, who is wearing an “Egypt <3 USA” shirt. By the end of the book, Theodor Geisel aka Dr. Seuss and Franklin Roosevelt are so fed up with Obama’s extreme leftism that they start waving around a "Don't Tread On Me" Tea Party flag. No, really, this is how the whole thing ends.

A really nice old man handed me a copy of this book at the California Republican Convention in Burlingame way back in February, but I must've blocked it out of memory all this time. This book was printed in China.