Who is this man?

[Christiern]

Yes, who is this man????

...and what is he looking at????

[AllenLowe]

Murray Chotiner - mob-connected early associate of Richard Nixon, who continued to assist Nixon aftrer he was elected president; Chotiner is considered to be the inventor, I kid you not, of dirty tricks - he helped Nixon win his first (and very dirty) campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas for congress and hooked Nixon up with mobsters and lots of cash. When I was working for Allard Lowenstein in his unsuccessful run for congressional re-election (circa 1970), Lowenstein lost in a very dirty campaign, and rumors had it that Chotiner had assisted in his opponent Norman Lent's campaign. Years later a Lowenstein bio confirmed that Chotiner had been a mastermind of that campaign. Chotiner died somewhat mysteriously after a seemingly minor car accident -

Edited February 18, 2008 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

and he is looking at YOU -

and all the rest of you liberals out there -

[AllenLowe]

Berigan he likes -

[Ron S]

A more pertinent question is: who is this man?

And, who sat on his lap to take this photo?

[Christiern]

Thank you, Allen, for satisfying my inquiring mind in such detail.

So who was seated on your lap, Ron?

[Ron S]

Alas, those rugged good looks are not mine.

[Man with the Golden Arm]

And, who sat on his lap to take this photo?

my guess is Ellen Foley.

Edited February 18, 2008 by Man with the Golden Arm

[AllenLowe]

actually it really is me, and I took it myself with a digital camera as I sat at a red light in South Portland, Maine - than used it on my new CD cover -

Edited February 18, 2008 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Yes, who is this man????

Never mind all this other bullshit - that's Tom Poston in disguise.

[Ron S]

actually it really is me, and I took it myself with a digital camera as I sat at a red light in South Portland, Maine - than used it on my new CD cover -

The truth is now out--I only joined organissimo because I'm a member of Allen's street team, "hired" to promote his new CD (sort of the jazz bulletin board equivalent of a sleeper cell).

[AllenLowe]

good - now go out and liquidate all CDs by my jazz competitors -

[Randy Twizzle]

A 1983 photo from the NY Times.

[Brownian Motion]

A 1983 photo from the NY Times.

John Edwards on bass.

[JSngry]

Seems most logical that a catcher would turn bassist. The impulse (and ability) to effectively control runs deep.

[Randy Twizzle]

Seems most logical that a catcher would turn bassist. The impulse (and ability) to effectively control runs deep.

He was a career 242 hitter. How did he ever make the All-Stars?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

and he is looking at YOU -

and all the rest of you liberals out there -

He seems to be looking in two directions at once. I suppose it goes with the dirty tricks, though.

I always thought it was YOU.

MG

[Alexander Hawkins]

While we're on John Edwards bassists (seriously) - a magnificent one! (Out of date bio, however...)

[JSngry]

Seems most logical that a catcher would turn bassist. The impulse (and ability) to effectively control runs deep.

He was a career 242 hitter. How did he ever make the All-Stars?

Superb defensive/game-calling skills.

[AllenLowe]

Twizzzle - where the hell did you get that picture? It's in a file of mine somewhere - and that's SEAN SMITH on bass - great player, still out there somewhere -

[Christiern]

So, there we have it....the shady trickster is looking at a white trio. Probably wondering if he can use it to throw an election.

[Randy Twizzle]

Twizzzle - where the hell did you get that picture? It's in a file of mine somewhere - and that's SEAN SMITH on bass - great player, still out there somewhere -

I found it by doing a search of the Times database at proquest.com. I access proquest via my county library membership.

Edited February 19, 2008 by Randy Twizzle

[Dave Garrett]

[BERIGAN]

actually it really is me, and I took it myself with a digital camera as I sat at a red light in South Portland, Maine - than used it on my new CD cover -

You look like a fire hazard!

[Brownian Motion]

Speaking of Dirty Tricks--

The New York Times

February 19, 2008

Dorothy Podber, 75, Artist and Trickster, Is Dead

By RANDY KENNEDY

Dorothy Podber, a wild child of the New York art scene in the 1950s and ’60s who is probably best known for brandishing a pistol and putting a bullet through the forehead of Marilyn Monroe’s likenesses on a stack of Andy Warhol’s paintings, died at her apartment in the East Village on Feb. 9. She was 75.

The artist Herndon Ely, her friend and caretaker for many years, said she died of natural causes.

Ms. Podber was an artist in her own right and in the late ’50s and early ’60s helped to run the Nonagon Gallery in Manhattan, which showed the work of a young Yoko Ono and was known for jazz concerts by performers like Charles Mingus. But she became famous, or infamous, in the art world mostly as a muse and a co-conspirator of more prominent artists like Ray Johnson, with whom she staged impromptu happenings on Manhattan streets.

In one, she and Mr. Johnson persuaded people they had just met to allow them into their apartments, where they would then play records used by speech therapists that contained samples of stuttering.

“She said people were pretty nonplused, as you’d expect,” Ms. Ely said “She and Ray would also do another bit where they’d re-enact the shower scene from ‘Psycho.’ ”

In a 2006 interview with the writer Joy Bergmann, Ms. Podber said: “I’ve been bad all my life. Playing dirty tricks on people is my specialty.”

Certainly the most outrageous was her unsolicited contribution to a few of Warhol’s “Marilyn” silk-screen paintings. In the fall of 1964 Ms. Podber, a friend of the photographer and Warhol regular Billy Name, visited Warhol’s Factory on East 47th Street in Manhattan with her Great Dane (named Carmen Miranda or Yvonne De Carlo, depending on the account). Ms. Podber asked Warhol if she could shoot a stack of the “Marilyn” paintings; he apparently thought that she wanted to take pictures of them and consented.

But she produced a pistol and fired at them, penetrating three or four. One of them, “Shot Red Marilyn,” with a repaired bullet hole over the left eyebrow, sold for $4 million in 1989, at the time setting a record at auction for a Warhol work.

“After she left,” Mr. Name told Ms. Bergmann, “Andy came over to me and said: ‘Please make sure Dorothy doesn’t come over here anymore. She’s too scary.’ ”

Ms. Podber grew up in the Bronx, where her father, a onetime bouncer and speak-easy employee who had lost his sight, ran a successful newsstand.

Many accounts of her life chronicle heavy drinking and drug use. Ms. Ely said that Ms. Podber spoke of being in trouble with the law a few times, once for running an illegal abortion referral service from her apartment.

She was thought to have been married three times, most recently to Lester Schwartz, who died in 1986. She had no children.

Ms. Podber told Ms. Bergmann that when money was low, as it often was, she generally found unorthodox ways to make it. She once ran a service that dispatched maids to doctors’ offices, primarily as a way to get the keys to the doctors’ drug cabinets. “I never worked much,” she said.