Crackpots – Page 5 – Boy Outa Brooklyn

Paging Dr. Quackenstein

Quack psychiatric device — **Prototype of a thera-hat**

Dr. Quackenstein’s most ingenious “varying modality” was a therapy he developed himself. In his “thera-room,” there was a sunken “thera-pit” very much like the “conversation-pits” found in 1970s living rooms, though to the best of my knowledge those were never called “conversa-pits.” The “thera-pit” was thickly lined with “thera-padding” and filled with “thera-pillows.” Seated on the pillows were a variety of “thera-dolls” – Daddy Doll, Mommy Doll, Anger Doll, Authority Doll and Me Doll.

The sucker… er, I mean, the patient descended into the “thera-pit” to do battle with whichever doll represented the dragon they needed to slay. Ponder, if you will, how potent and healing this metaphoric ritual was – descending into the pit of their psyche, to confront their dragon, the patient wielded not Excalibur but Dr. Quackenstein’s most brilliant invention – the “thera-bat.” (Picture my Rocky Colavito model Louisville Slugger wrapped in foam padding because that’s what it was. And, Quackenstein got it patented!) The patient held said “thera-bat” and beat the bejesus out of whichever doll was their tormentor, or all of the dolls if the patient was having an especially tough day.

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: the smiling face of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn. — Available as a paperback and eBook
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Dining with Zulus

Movie poster for Zulu starring Michael Caine

I do my best to avoid Doris and Daddy but one night he corners me while I’m eating “sausage and mash” in the kitchen. No sooner have I casually mentioned that one of my favorite war films is Zulu than Daddy’s drooping regimental mustache springs to attention and he is off, seizing the opportunity to re-fight the entire Anglo-Zulu War on my plate. I am more trapped than Michael Caine at Rorke’s Drift –

Painting of the Battle of Isandhlwana — **My sausage didn’t have a prayer!**

“Let’s say your mashed potatoes are the British encampment near Isandlwanda here… mmm… perhaps that’s a bit too much potato… there, that’s better… your sausage… here… represents the Zulu army under command of Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza… an untenable position I’m sure you will agree… now your broccoli…”

Haunted Swindon

Comic fortune tellers with crystal ball — **I see a room full of suckers.**

Ah, Swindon! Picture Newark, New Jersey with an English accent but minus the charm. That’s Swindon. Worse, when I am there in 1990, everything in Swindon is shut on Sunday – my one day off. Well, everything but the Spiritualist Church. So, I go. The Reverend in charge is a flaming fruit who goes into trance, contacts a spirit of the departed and then asks his geriatric English audience, “Can anyone claim a George?” (Or Ethel, Victoria or Alfred.) Believe it or not, every Sunday someone in this gray congregation can claim a dearly departed so-named. Then, George, Ethel, Victoria or Alfred, speaking in a sepulchral voice through Reverend Fruit, assures the claimant that all is well with them beyond-the-veil in Summerland. The Swindon faithful swallow this bilge and fill the collection plate with “Love Gifts.”

Aleister Crowley - Satanist, Black Magician, mountaineer, chess master — **Aleister Crowley the *fruitiest* of English fruitcakes**

Reverend Fruit approaches me one week curious as to what brings someone to his church who is still breathing unaided by a portable oxygen tank. I think he also suspects that I’m on to him. I mention that I had almost claimed the spirit George who had “come through” in the service because I had a dearly departed Uncle George. “Silly,” he lisps while giving me an affectionate, limp-wristed slap on the shoulder “you should have so done.” Then, while shaking hands, he tickles my palm with his middle finger. Summerland in Swindon.

What’s my motivation?

Rajneesh aka Osho — **“Please to be giving me a stack of $100 bills this high.”**

Method Acting teachers are seen as gurus and they embrace this mantle: “I am the great Father Figure, Witch-Doctor, Shrink, the Font of All Wisdom, the Repository of All Knowledge, the Giver of Pleasure and Pain.” No surprise their schools become personality cults. No surprise these cults are especially attractive to young women who have little self-esteem and big “Daddy” issues. The Guru demands that the student emotes at all times. The student is not having a successful scene if the student is not having a nervous breakdown – even if the scene is from Mary Poppins. Simply put – “If you ain’t crying, you ain’t acting.”

Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins — **Oh, daddy, take my money and then take me.**

One Guru held his entire class captive for two days because one student had not prepared a scene. Two days. No food. No phone calls. No talking. Limited toilet breaks. Very limited. Meanwhile, across town, a revered female Guru sent her students out to pick up strangers in bars and have sex with them – in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. And, people fought to get into these classes.

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: The smiling face of Steeplechase Park, Coney Island, Brooklyn — Available as a paperback and eBook
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Acting Teacher Expose

Paperback cover of Teacher's Pet by Mark Clements — **Another “method” of opening actor’s orifices**

In the 1980s, after a young actress accused her acting teacher of raping her, the dam burst. Former students from as far back as the 1950s reported similar attacks by Professor Pervowitz. He had been an acclaimed teacher and a predatory sadist for decades. He had run weekly ads in The Village Voice. Taught major stars. And, you had to hand it to Pervowitz, he had a psychologically brilliant M.O. He would tell the actor or actress in his sights that they were a genius. But, to prevent jealousy, their “genius” had to remain secret from the other students. Pervowitz was willing to give the budding genius private coaching… ssshhh… to open you up… ssshhh… you are a genius but you are emotionally blocked. I know how to unblock you… ssshhh… now take your clothes off, kneel at my feet and masturbate while repeating – I am your bitch-slut-cunt.”

And, they did it. Many geniuses did it. Male and female did it they – for decades.

Paperback cover of The Professor and the Co-Ed — The hunter and the prey.
But, which is which?

The Russians Are Coming!

An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski — **The Bible of bad acting.**

Acting has always attracted the delightful but also the dim, the desperate and the deranged. ‘Twas ever thus. My parents were delightful, stage-struck, Italian kids from Brooklyn when they met in a Manhattan acting school in the 1930s. It was a time when the New York theater was crawling with Russian émigrés all of whom claimed to have been former members of Constantine Stanislavski’s renowned Moscow Art Theater. Stanislavski invented “Method Acting” and every one of the Russo-invaders claimed to have been his mentor – “And, I told Constantine he vas wrong about the emotive mimetic.” Manhattan sheltered more of these borscht bullshitters than the number of baby-boom bullshitters who claim to have seen Jimi at Woodstock.

And, every Boris and Svetlana ran an École de Théâtre in a drafty loft on Delancey Street or a Temple of the Dramatic Arts ensconced in a dank basement on Bleecker. One teacher would dampen the wooden floor of her studio with a garden hose then turn up the heat, thereby creating a steam-room. Her students disrobed and lay down on the floor to do esoteric Siberian breathing exercises. “It is imperative to open and breathe through all the orifices of the body at once.”

Racy stuff for then and total bullshit for always.

Russian actress and method acting teacher, Maria Ouspenskaya. — **Open your bodily orifices, or else!**

Boy Out Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: The smiling face of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn — Available as a paperback and eBook amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here
https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Attack of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“Catholics also believe that the Blessed Virgin appears to mere mortals in various times, places and languages. The most famous Marian apparitions, not counting her many miraculous appearances on moldy pizza, dried toast and wet cardboard, are –

Our Lady of Lourdes (France)
Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico)
Our Lady of Fatima (Portugal)
Our Lady of Bayside (Queens)

“Like the Little Green Men who pilot flying saucers, Mary appears only to illiterate, poverty-stricken, scrofula-ridden peasants who sleep with their livestock. Hence, her appearance in Queens. There is a theory that the BVM is, in fact, the occupant of a UFO misinterpreted by Catholic shepherds in the only way that makes sense to them – ‘Hey, Esteban, look, up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s the Virgin Mary.’

Movie poster of Invasion of the Saucer Men

BVM or BEM – coincidence? You decide.

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio — Available as a paperback and eBook
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here
https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Can I get a witness?

Street preacher with "end of the world" sign. — **A Jehovah’s Witness sitting down on the job.**

It is my happy fate to live in Brooklyn and London neighborhoods where Jehovah’s Witnesses train their doorbell-ringing missionaries. They are almost always Black. Imagine the delight of a pair of young, Witness trainees when, far from slamming the door in their faces, the nice White man invites them in for a chat. A long chat. A very long chat. Imagine their chagrin to discover that the nice White man knows more about their religion than they do. Imagine the trainees running and screaming from the suddenly crazed White man when he dons a pair of red, light-up, devil horns and asks them to abandon Jehovah and become Sam Butera’s Witnesses.

Jack Chick comic book. — **A Christian message of love and forgiveness.**

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: The smiling face of Steeplechase in Coney Island, Brooklyn — Available as a paperback and eBook amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here
https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Doctor Jesus

Televangelist and Christian healer, Morris Cerrullo. — **Danny DeVito’s evil twin.**

My un-Holy Trinity of dark influences draws me to a Christian healing service in London lead by the American televangelist Morris Cerullo. He is a Danny DeVito look-a-like, only shorter. I am one of a handful of White faces inside the cavernous convention center and, by the time I arrive, the Black congregants are already in full orgiastic swing. African women in their thousands, dressed in their Easter finery, are cumming like freight trains. Lemme tell ya, when Jesus jumps on their asses, these Afro-babes can sho’ nuff shake dat thang – “Oh yes, yes. Ohhh, Sweet Jesus. YESSSS, MY LAWD, AYYEEEE!” And, Morris hasn’t even hit the stage yet. Then he hits and the roof comes off. The women are rolling around on the floor barking like dogs and scrambling after their dislodged Easter bonnets. Hilarious and horrifying.

Star of stage and screen Danny DeVito. — **Morris Cerrullo’s evil twin.**

I Escaped the Luciferian Lipstick-Lesbo of London

Maila Nurmi aka Vampira — **Vampira in full vampiric flow**

The Twisted Trifecta of sex, salvation and stoop traps me in a London basement where I narrowly escape being sacrificed in a Black Mass. And, as often happens with all things Satanic, it begins so innocently…

I’m browsing in an occult bookshop and fall into flirtatious conversation about Sex Magick with the shapely owner – “So, have I got this right, the High Priest penetrates the virgin anally from behind while intoning the Lord’s Prayer backward?” (I’m shameless sometimes.) Prunella, the proprietress, is an odd and oddly interesting broad – double-barrel name, double-D rack and a double degree from Oxford in Wolfsbane and the Early Films of George Zucco. Not a bad looking babe aside from classically bad English teeth. (This is actually not seen much anymore. The Brits now have very good teeth but very fat asses due to their uncanny ability to assimilate the worst of American culture.)

The great horror movie villain George Zucco. — **George Zucco in full mesmeric flow**