California
Jungle
Listening
to punk rock
on the backyard
patio
she
soaks up the shine
in a polka dot bikini
while drinking
a beer from Chico
45 Grave
soundtracks the sun
as I read
Tarzan and the Golden Lion
(our Bengal kitten
stalks the veldt
of our lawn …)
just
as Burroughs
cries forth with epic
cruel world passion:
“… he placed one foot
upon the carcass of his kill
and raised his voice in
the terrifying victory cry
of the apes of Kerchak.”
the kill
in this case,
a lion
as
the jungle cat’s claws
chased
a crazy sexy hot
jungle princess
an
evil wicked beast
deserving of
the spear of destiny
if only
every
kill
could be so
clean
never destroy
that which doesn’t
need destruction
simple, right?
like,
totally, deep
thoughts …
from
the brown bottle
bottom
and
on this warm California
summer day,
north of Tarzana
you’re welcome.
-- Don Marquez
-- Joe Jusko
Edgar Rice Burroughs introduced Tarzan, an English aristocrat who was raised by great apes led by Kerchak, in "The All-Story" in 1912, the 1st pulp magazine. Two years later the story was published as a novel, "Tarzan of the Apes," and followed it with 25 sequels, including the 9th, "Tarzan and the Golden Lion," in 1933/1934. By 1918 Elmo Lincoln was playing the character in films ("Tarzan of the Apes" became the 1st movie to earn $1 million), and in 1921 Ronald Adair starred in a Broadway production. In 1923 Burroughs became one of the 1st authors to incorporate himself. Though when he died in 1950, the royalties from 27 Tarzan movies had made him the highest-earning writer in that medium (over $2 million), though he had only been directly involved in making one of them, the 12-chapter serial "The New Adventures of Tarzan" (1935) starring Herman Brix (who changed his name to Bruce Bennett in an effort to avoid being typecast in the Tarzan role). The movie was produced by Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises, which the author formed with silent film actor Ashton Dearholt. During the filming Dearholt married the actress who starred in the film, and Burroughs divorced his 1st wife to marry Dearholt's ex-wife. The 4th actor to portray Tarzan in the movies was James Pierce, who starred in the silent 1927 version of "Tarzan and the Golden Lion;" the following year he married Burroughs' daughter, and they voiced the characters of Tarzan and his wife Jane on the 1932-1936 radio series. (Their tombstones in Shelbyville, Indiana, are actually inscribed Tarzan and Jane.) In 1937, at 23, Burroughs' son John Coleman Burroughs began illustrating his father's books and continued to do so until the author's death, producing over 125 illusttions; he also did a Sunday newspaper comic strip based on his father's "John Carter of Mars" character from 1941 to 1943 and a comic book version of his dad's "David Innes Pellucidar" series in "Hi-Spot" in 1940. In 1919 the Burroughs family moved from Oak Park, Illinois (where Ernest Hemingway had grown up, having left only 2 years before) to California and bought 550 acres of ranch land in the San Fernando valley from Harrison Gray Otis, the "Los Angeles Times" founder. Burroughs established the Tarzana Ranch there, then in 1922 began subdividing it for residential development. In 1928 the residents of the new community voted to name it Tarzana.
ReplyDeleteGuitarist Paul B. Cutler, who had formed Phoenix, Arizona's 1st punk band in 1979 before moving to Los Angeles, where he discovered a button in a thrift shop declaring "WE DIG 45 GRAVE." So he named his new band 45 Grave, a pioneer deathrock group. At 1st the band played covers and material from Cutler's earlier group but then performed new music designed to fit the singing style of his wife Dinah Cancer (formerly known as Mary bat-Thing; later, aftrer the break-up of her band and marriage, she would organize Penis Flytrap). The original group broke up in 1985 but reformed to tour in 1988. Dinah Cancer, the only remaining member, revived the group in 2004 to commemorate its silver anniversary.The new band recorded its 1st album in 2009, with new songs, unrecorded old songs froms its 1st incarnation, and new songs.
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