Tough Talkers

Hit this to Talk Tough Yourself or hit this for Johnny's Lounge, Part Nine or hit this if you want to take a wave from Dita Von Teese or hit this for the previous Tough Talk (8-5) or this for Part Eight or this for Part Seven or this for Part One or this for Part Two. Maybe you want to look at The Jukebox or look down on the street or listen to some Table Talk or do some Table Talking Yourself, but do not look here because this is Taboo.


Jukebox by Year

Johnny at Myspace


Voodoo


FATAL INT : : : TALKDOWN : : : 090308 : : : Paris : : : Istanbul : : : Roma : : : Spoleto : : : Tangier : : : Kinshasa : : : FTL INT : : : DRCT--->TTT UPDT : : :



Tough Talk Technician - 03/13/09 00:59:19

Comments:
He hits the link to talk tough, and when he gets some in return he complains about it. What a wanker.



David Noble - 09/03/08 23:56:17

Comments:
You call this tough talk? This is a bunch of armchair commentators holding forth on inane subjects. War stories, squirrel lore, bad Chinese poetry, cryptic Godfather references, quotes from racist children's books, unsolicited statements about pop music, and TV viewing tips. All of Johnny's has gone to hell. It went to hell years ago. Now, if you tap the link to Talk Tough Yourself, the unnamed technician tells you to go fuck yourself. There was once a better class of people appearing here.



Short Shorts - 09/03/08 15:42:18

Comments:
Who wears short shorts? We wear short shorts.



Deborah Treisman - 09/02/08 09:53:29

Comments:
I just finished reading Film Noir Johnny's #2 through #9 and it appears to me that the primary purpose of this narrative, from the beginnning, is to display women's asses. There are secondary purposes, such as Johnny's many strutting proclamations about his cat-burglar physical prowess, his driving skills, his ability to handle trouble deftly and his general sex appeal, but the female ass is top-totem.



Hot TV Pick - 09/02/08 03:59:39

Comments:
Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew is excellent right now, as long as Gary Busey, Tawny Kitaen, and Amber Smith stay in rehab.



Member, 10th Mountain Division, WWII, Italy, 1945 - 09/02/08 00:43:16

Comments:
We were formed during WWII. Skiers and rock climbers were recruited for this new division and there were many volunteers: gentlemen, sports of all sorts, rich, middle class, all talented athletes in one way or another, many well-educated. We had European expatriates with mountain skills refined in Finland and Sweden or in the Alps and who wanted to fight against Hitler (These members taught basic and advanced to their superior officers). We trained together in Colorado at 8000 feet, for three years, and we had sky-high esprit de corps, we had it to burn. We got to know each other's strengths and flaws before we were finally sent into action in Italy. Our job was in the North, and thousands of us had to climb heavily defended vertical cliffs in the dark and fight all across the high forests to drive the Germans out of the Apennines and north across the Po Valley into retreat. That's what we did, fast, beginning on Riva Ridge and Mt. Belvedere. War tunes you up physically and mentally. You learn things, life and death things, that you would never have known or realized without it. I remember earthshaking artillery shells exploding in the trees above us and the crazy flying rain of lethal red shrapnel pouring down on us from above and tearing up the bodies of mountain troops all around me, killing them instantly. We were the first Americans into the Po Valley and the Italians crowded along the village streets as we walked by. They cheered us and shouted and gave us glasses of red wine. The women threw themselves at us. Everywhere, German soldiers were surrendering to us in the hundreds, in the thousands, and on May 2, 1945 they surrendered in Italy. It was over and we were in Italy! We were broken up the following November and that was it. The current 10th Mountain Division is something very different from us. As old men, we are now bringing in Germans who fought against us and welcoming them to our group of surviving fighters.



Squirrel Aesthete - 09/01/08 19:13:46

Comments:
The squirrel is a muscular animal. It presses itself almost flat against the wide trunk and flashes straight up the tree faster than any other animal on Earth. Birds could do it faster, but birds don't fly straight up from the ground like that and sustain the climb at a 90-degree angle.



Epaminondas - 09/01/08 12:12:45

Comments:
Epaminondas, you ain't got the sense you was born with!



Dion DiMucci - 09/01/08 19:32:15

Comments:
I hug 'em and I squeeze 'em they don't even know my name. They call me the Wanderer.



South Carolina Teen - 09/01/08 09:19:58

Comments:
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because sahma people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. it should help South Africa, should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our . . .



Tsiang-Tang Lu Write Haishang Joy Poem in English - 09/01/08 00:44:12

Comments:
City neighborhood / crooked yellow-brick house built long ago / Tsiang-Tang in rocker facing west on porch with no railing, like deck / small square front yard I have gardened / managed Darwinism is garden Zen / winding brick path under Zumi crab toward side of house and back yard / two birches I plant here in center / one black river birch one white birch / natural leaf mulch around birches on damp ground misted by garden hose / sundown breeze ruffle birch leaves like aspen / black mulch misted by garden hose along all borders of wet shining sidewalk / massive sycamore wider and far taller than my house big above birches, at curb / between birches and bright sundown sun / from west sundown light beam straight to Tsiang-Tang face / but dappled through all these trees and fluttering leaves / no need to shade eye



Elvis Expert - 08/29/08 12:52:36

Comments:
The 20 greatest Elvis songs in reverse order: 20. Love Letters (Straight From Your Heart) 19. That's All Right Mama (Tupelo Elvis, Sun) 18. American Trilogy (Full Vegas Elvis) 17. Burnin' Love 16. Return to Sender 15. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (Vegas Elvis) 14. Mean Woman Blues (Sometimes I Think She's Almost Mean As Me) 13. Little Sister 12. Polk Salad Annie 11. It's Now or Never (Operatic Border-Town Elvis) 10. Too Much (Rockabilly Elvis) 9. Treat Me Nice 8. The Wonder of You (Full Vegas Elvis) 7. Moody Blue (Vegas Elvis) 6. Suspicious Minds (Full Vegas Elvis) 5. Mystery Train (Tupelo Elvis, Sun) 4. Jailhouse Rock (50's Elvis) 3. One Night (Rockabilly Elvis) 2. Heartbreak Hotel (50's Elvis) 1. All Shook Up (50's Elvis)



Don Fanucci - 08/28/08 23:59:59

Comments:
Sollozzo, Clemenza, Willi Cicci, Pentangeli, Luca Brasi. Michael transformed at the hospital, before he and Enzo stand guard outside on the steps. Moe Green working his tie. Santino, Fredo, Tessio, Johnny Fontane. Can't do it, Sally. I didn't know until this day that it was Barzini all along. Don Ciccio, Bonasera, Vincenzo, Joey Zasa. Whoever comes to you with this Barzini meeting, he's the traitor. Do you think I'd make my sister a widow?



Johnny Himself - 08/28/08 01:15:03

Comments:
Since Mullah Hozni Tabool put the fatwa on me, the women have been flocking around me in even greater numbers, their eyes shining as they flirt shamelessly, each one smart, complex, beautiful, and well-dressed.



MistaHiFunk21 - 08/26/08 22:54:17

Comments:
An under-appreciated classic which showcases Little Richard through his full range of deliveries is "Send Me Some Lovin." It's mid-tempo R&B, almost a slow-dance song until halfway through when he can't help himself and must bust loose. In addition, it features more stylized soulful lisping than any other Little Richard song. I mitchu so much. Jenny Jenny I buy you diamond rings and pearls. Jenny Jenny. Lucille. I woke up this morning, Lucille was not in sight, I asked my friends about her but all their lips were tight. Lucille you won't do your sister's will. I'm beggin' to you baby. Great saxophone and Little Richard's pounding piano.



Locked Up - 08/25/08 10:02:06

Comments:
I was on the wild lam but now I'm in jail because my oil pan has a hairline fracture and they brought out the Arabian Oil Hounds to track me down. I didn't know about this fracture.



Sun Qi (Sedona) - 08/21/08 14:32:48

Commens;
Here at Sun Qi Sedona we feature seventeen forms of healing: fingertip magnetism, rapid energy-field alteration(REFA), handless touch therapy, half-hair acupuncture, holistic acutronics w/ vibrating earth fork, suction cup toxin removal, Sahrashara scalp-breathing, essential candle-cup fluid churning, intense spinal rocking, Sichuan aroma-paper hair singe, palpation of the interior, pinking of the high colon, quantum alignment therapy (QAT), ginseng phallus wrap, crystal osteo-balancing, deep pulse regulation, and full-seven double-seven ruling-leader chakra emergence, known in Tibet as the Full Chakra Khan.



2008 Pulitzer for Fiction - 08/18/08 03:19:04

Comments:
After the atomic bomb and during the era of invasions by creatures from Mars, teenagers had a joke where you look at something or someone and say, "Kill it before it multiplies." Before It Multiplies is the title of David Noble's novel which won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner, and the Pulitzer and has become an international bestseller here in high summer, 2008. Demand for his readings is strong from Shanghai to Galway, from Mongolia to Peru, from Baffin Bay to the Argentine.



Divorced Woman - 08/15/08 17:08:23

Comments:
It's been many years since my divorce and I've had a chance to reflect on things. Married women of all ethnicities, if you get a divorce be sure to get one from a rich white man or a middle-class white man, one with a job he's had for many years, one with a real address and a phone number that stays the same. When he gets a subpoena, the white middle-class ex-husband will always appear in court, he won't disappear, he doesn't want to go to jail, he signs for every registered letter from your lawyer, and they can always find him.



Sugar and Main - 08/12/08 12:33:56

Comments:
You remember the Mazda with the big powertrain / that was t-t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / t-t-t t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / Well I was fully insured and nobody would sue / but to replace it costs a thousand and m-m-m maybe two / to replace it costs a thousand and m-m-m maybe two / So I slid on my sunglasses, got my stainless brrr-koo / went down to pull a stick-up at the Bank of Wazoo / w-w went down to pull a stickup at the Bank of Wazoo / because I had to get a thousand and m-m-m maybe two / So now I'm coolin' my heels in a cell full of fools / because I had to get a thousand and m-m-m maybe two / because I had to get a thousand and m-m-m maybe two / Pull a stick-up at the Bank of Wazoo . . . get your shades and get your stainless brrr-koo . . . p-p-p pull a stick-up at the Bank of Wazoo.



Dewtulio Hootus - 08/09/08 15:11:47

Comments:
Ilsa was a smart woman and she knew when to say, "Rick, you'll have to do the thinking for both of us." Many contemporary women don't recognize those hours, days and weeks when their mysterious hormonal blendings have them spinning like cyclones containing pianos and refrigerators and touching down on this parking lot or that barn. My women regularly say, "Dewtulio, you'll have to do the thinking for both of us," and each one is smart and independent.



Jeanne Moreau - 08/08/08 05:07:08

Comments:
I'm 90 now, I'm still energetic, and every afternoon I can be found at one of the tables on the mezzanine overlooking the lobby of the Paramount. My apartment is upstairs and the people here bring whatever I want. Sometimes it's a drink, or a salad, or one of le tartufo et prosciutto sandwiches I love.



Johnny Himself - 08/05/08 01:02:36

Comments:
You should fly here, take a suite with a view at the Gansevoort, bring those pillowcases with you, and use your imagination for the rest of your life. Call me as soon as you get here and I'll show you around town.



On the Horns - 08/04/08 23:28:49

Comments:
Johnny, I have a problem and I'd like your advice. You seem like someone who knows what to do. I have only a few years left. Most of my friends and most of my family are dead now. My ex-wife and I had two sons, both stay in touch, but they are far away and basically gone. Twenty years ago in August, we had a huge power outage all over the city and it lasted most of the night. Just before dark, looting broke out downtown and also across several suburban strip malls. As soon as I heard the news that looting had begun, I got a big hammer, my mag-lite, my Colt .38, two pillowcases, and drove my beater into the city, three miles from my comfortable house and safe street. I had the impulse to join in, but I wanted to act fast and alone and I wanted to do the job before police gained control. I passed fires, crowds running in and out of department stores and electronics stores, leaping, shoving, zig-zagging. Nearly all of the looters were black people, many of them had shopping carts, and their faces had the festival look. I drove toward a high-end jewelry store in another part of town and was surprised and delighted to see that the nearest looters were more than a block away. I shattered the display window with two heavy hammer blows and heard no alarm. I jumped in with my handgun in my back pocket and my mag-lite focused wide, agile and quick. Now, at 72, I have these two king-sized pillowcases stuffed with platinum jewelry, sapphires, rubies, handfuls of Colombian emeralds, one the size of an egg, heavy black velvet bags of Kimberley diamonds, diamond rings featuring huge rocks in all sorts of cuts, Rolex chronometers, Cartier watches, long strings of Kojima natural pearls, you name it. Should I tell my sons about this treasure hoard? I won't even try to fence it, so don't suggest that.



Greatest Song - 08/03/08 09:09:34

Comments:
In my high-quality opinion it's a tossup between "Be My Baby," "Long Tall Sally," "Speedo," "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," "Roll Over Beethoven," and "Stay," by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. Nothing by Michael Jackson or Madonna or anyone else in the last 40 years is at the top of the greatest list.



Twanda Carlisle - 08/01/08 19:02:50

Comments:
Squirrel Time must be a shut-in. Film Noir Johnny's is now about chipmunks, celebrity gossip, and "the green of the periwinkle."



04/20/08:intercept:::shanghai:::paris:::XXXX:::delete20:::rome:::istanbul:::tangier:::cairo:::kinshasa:08/01/08



Squirrel Time - 04/19/08 13:15/06

Comments:
There is much activity in the back yard this afternoon. Five fat doves walking around pecking, four or five squirrels in a never-ending series of squirrel poses, a pair of Big Boss Blue Jays, robins cocking their heads to pinpoint the worm's location, then striking, one scarlet cardinal flying in with its wild color against the green of the periwinkle, the drab winter leftovers, and last year's mulch. Two chipmunks darting. Flocks of a dozen small birds in and out of the leafless wisteria. I've always thought Dr. Phil was obnoxious and smug and preachy, and I'm happy to read in the paper that his wife filed for divorce. Can you imagine being married to Dr. Phil and listening to those horrible pronouncements all the time?



Fred Haustettler - 04/18/08 12:14:16

Comments:
The young man was only 34 but he had committed horrible crimes. One afternoon in the sunshine he was stopped by a sheriff's deputy on a two-lane blacktop road, five or six miles from the community of Cass. There was no other traffic and there wasn't a house in sight or even a power line. The deputy was 64 and he'd also been a lay preacher at the Deer Creek Baptist Church since he was 20. He recognized the fugitive immediately, but he just asked him for his license and stayed cool. He even made a joke and they both laughed. Then, quickly, the deputy put his gun on him and told him to get out of the car. They walked over to the tree line and sat down together, the deputy about five feet away with his gun in his hand. He told the young man he could take as long as he wanted to confess his sins and make his peace with the Lord. Then he'd take him in. "Take as long as you want to," he said. "I'm in no hurry and I know you're not." Still, not one car had passed by. After about fifteen minutes of what might have been silent prayer, the young man stood up smiling, and still smiling made an almost playful lunge at the deputy, who shot him dead.



Color Pictures Alarm - 04/14/08 10:14:30

Comments
Compared to black and white, color pictures don't hold up to time. They fade into yellows and purples. More than sixty years of color pictures are in danger.



Rock 'n' Roll Expert - 04/01/08 17:32:51

Comments
I disagree with Funkman 29 (below). "Do You Love Me" is the greatest rock 'n' roll song of all time. It has everything: How the lead singer, Billy Gordon, comes in pumped up and already dancing at the beginning, "Watch me now! I can mashed potato, I can do the twist, now tell me, baby, do you like it like this?" The fake ending and the return, the uptempo doo-wop bass man doing the mythic bmmm-bmmm-bmmm during the fadeout. It stands alone and doesn't need Johnny and Baby.



Joey Zasa - 03/31/08 18:43:17

Comments:
I make a bella figura. That is my nature. I cut a bella figura all over the City.



Hey - 03/29/08 01:57:55

Comments:
Hey, fuck all these commentators and reviewers. Fuck this.



Sugar and Main - 03/10/08 05:03:17

Comments:
I had a new Mazda mobile with a big powertrain / but I was t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / t-t-t-t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / I could have been a star, I could have gone on to fame / but I was t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / I was making a comeback, I was on Lover's Lane / but I was t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / I had a wadda cash and I had spendin' on my brain / but I was t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / t-t-t-t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / It was like a ticker-tape parade and they were goin' insane / but I was t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / t-t-t-t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main / I was livin' the high life (t-t-t-t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main) . . . I was cuttin' a figure (t-t-t-t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main) . . . the women blowin' kisses (t-t-t-t-boned at the corner of Sugar and Main) . . .



Music Critic - 02/12/08 12:12:12

Comments:
How long since America has had big nationwide hits at the level of "Be My Baby," "Kiss," "Great Balls of Fire," "She Loves You," "Dancing Queen," "Funky Broadway," "Hungry Like The Wolf," "Tell Me Something Good," "Tutti Frutti," "Do You Love Me," "The House of the Rising Sun," "Addicted to Love," "When Will I See You Again," "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)," "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," "Stop In The Name of Love," "Billie Jean"?



TV Critic - 02/08/08 20:42:02

Comments:
It's Friday night and I'm at home watching America's Most Shocking Police Shootouts, narrated by the dashing sheriff John Bunnell, where the police kill various people on camera. Some of the dead were both armed and dangerous, some one or the other, and some neither. According to the narration, each killing is appropriate and fully justified. Often it's death by sniper. Rarely is it an up-close struggle. Most often it's a group of policemen opening up from a safe distance, firing together as soon as the desperado makes his fatal provocation. It appears to me that 50% of the time the police open up way too soon, behaving more like scared pack animals than brave men. Sometimes the men are very drunk, sometimes they're deranged by mental illness or drugs or both, sometimes they're holding hostages, sometimes they're trying to avoid going back to prison. I would say that only 50% of the killings are justified and necessary, but I've never heard of a police officer ever admitting to doing anything wrong or ever being convicted of anything.



High-Fidelity - 01/25/08 18:33:01

Comments:
Top two Killer Songs: Various versions of "These Foolish Things," esp. Billie Holiday's (1936), Etta James for the big-hall orchestral version with French horns, and Dorothy Moore singing "Misty Blue."



TV Critic - 01/19/08 10:00:48

Comments:
America's Next Top Model is a good show, but far above it is Snoop Dogg's Father Hood, featuring three generations of males: Uncle Junebug, who brought the family to California, Snoop Dogg Himself, and young Corde. Preach.



Film Critic - 01/11/08 01:17:33

Comments:
Finally saw 3:10 to Yuma. It had the potential to be an enduring move, maybe even a modern classic of sorts. It's always entertaining, always engaging, but it comes fully apart in the final moments. We're supposed to believe that Ben Wade kills his own gang of bad men, all of them (a wonderful idea, something I've never seen in a Western), on the street in Contention because he's grown to respect the good guy, Christian Bale. Wade's craziest gang member has just shot Bale down in front of his own son. But we're not really prepared (I'm sure we were in the original) for such a gesture from the ruthless Ben Wade we've come to enjoy. The Ben Wade of this movie wouldn't have shot his own gang of "animals," as he calls them. This fatal flaw doesn't come until the very end, so its effect is softened somewhat. So it's a flawed good movie, worth seeing, and interesting to talk about. I'm sure that the original with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin is a simpler story with simpler characters and doesn't contain the ambiguities (e.g. Bale is sort of squirrely good guy) and cynicism which this remake creates and then gallops away from at the end.



Kate Windscheimer - 01/05/08 18:41:24

Comments:
Johnny's Tough Talk is gay men named Michael and reality-show bitches talking about Tyra.



Michael C. - 01/04/08 09:03:45

Comments:
I beg your pardon! Rebecca who didn't even win and who fainted is far more attractive than Jaslene. Rebecca has the classic Grace Kelly sort of beauty, the gold standard, while Jaslene is just another caliente pepper girl. Call me racist if you will, but everyone with an eye for women's beauty will agree with me. Also, Nicole has far more cover-girl beauty than Jaslene.



Bringin' It - 01/02/08 12:11:17

Comments:
Tyra has crowned many girls "America's Next Top Model," but the one who outshines them all is Jaslene Gonzalez, the Puerto Rican beauty who is in a category of her own and should be in pictures. She's a young Julia Roberts with some bright Latina sass.



Shiba Inu - 12/07/07 19:42:41

Comments:
I have a Shiba Inu and everyone says he looks like a fox, but no. It's a Japanese breed and they are either red or gray. One woman in the park asked me if it was a Schipperke and her girlfriend wanted to know if it was a South African Wildehond or a Finnish Spitz.



Effete Man - 11/18/07 00:57:16

Comments:
A woman once called me "a sitting aesthete."



Common Expressions - 11/12/07 12:36:40

Comments:
Four of the best common expressions are "You have to give the Devil his due," "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission," "A camel is a horse designed by a committee," and "Most of the great discoveries are made because of accidents."



Edgy - 10/28/07 10:12:41

Comments:
The term "baby boomer" doesn't really do it for my generation. It's the Edge Generation, pulled in two directions -- toward the fading world of their parents but also into the new world taking shape. The WWII/Korean War generation was followed by the Edge Generation. Al Pacino is the actor of this generation, followed by Jack Nicholson, #2.



For the Fires - 10/26/07 12:47:38

Comments:
I'm against the people of San Diego County and for the Santa Ana winds and the wildfires in California and also for the massive mudslides when they occur. Those people overbuild all through those canyons and all along the coast and after being burned out one time, they build another big house. They're like the people who keep rebuilding in floodplains. There's something wrong with them. They destroy the areas they live in and then are surprised and amazed when natural forces overcome them.



Twanda Carlisle - 10/21/07 01:14:53

Comments:
Ding is the right word for "Squirrel Time."



Squirrel Time - 10/19/07 15:58:07

Comments:
I am a shut-in and happy to have found Johnny's. It's squirrel time! In my overstuffed chair by the window I look into my back yard, which is more like a woods. The squirrels, six or eight of them, are active during these bright afternoons, rustling the leaves on the ground, leaping, climbing, standing on the ground to quickchew acorns and stuff their cheeks, shaking their fluffy tails, shooting wildly across the leaves, zipping across fence tops, flying through the air, posturing and squawking for dominance in the clear October light, spinning, walking upside down on the underside of a tree branch. Falling acorns ding as they hit the clay pots. It's squirrel time!



Student of the Neanderthal - 10/12/07 12:26:15

Comments:
Neanderthals should have been able to hold their own in post-Ice-Age Europe after the arrival of Cro-Magnons/Homo Sapiens. Neanderthals were built for power, endurance, and for survival in cold climates, with heavy, short lower limbs, wide expansive chests, and large nasal openings. Their brains were just as large as Homo Sapiens, maybe larger.

Scientists now conclude that abrupt and erratic climate changes caused them to go extinct by reducing the size of forests and creating much more open land. You can see by looking at Neanderthal skeletons, especially at their primitive pelvic bones, that there wasn't much jumping and running in their behavior. Homo Sapiens has a much more intricately developed pelvic bone. Neanderthals evolved for life in a forest environment where they could make strong kills up close. Homo Sapiens, with their speed and agility, had the advantage in open country.

Most scientists, after studying the hyoid bone in the throat of Neanderthals, believe they had a language and spoke to each other. The shape of this hyoid bone indicates that their voices were very high-pitched, similar to the sound made by the Chipmunks on the Xmas song.



Johnny Himself - 10/09/07 00:02:17

Comments:
All you women who are flocking around me, you should know that Mullah Omar Rafsanjani put a fatwa on me. Maybe you should keep your distance.



Kate Windscheimer - 09/29/07 17:11:38

Comments:
Where are the peerless women? There are only two on the list, one just a face and the other an egghead.



Peerless - 09/24/07 09:23:00

Comments:
I'm compiling a list of Americans who were peerless at some point in their lives, one of a kind, some of whom seem destined to become eternally peerless, and so far the list is not very long. Cassius Clay / Muhammad Ali, Humphrey Bogart, John Dillinger, Robert E. Lee, James Brown, Secretariat, Edgar Allan Poe, Elvis, OJ Simpson, John Kennedy, Cole Porter, Stephen Foster, Ike and Tina Turner, Michael Jordan, Mean Joe Green, Marilyn Monroe, Lynn Swann, Broadway Joe Namath, Thomas Jefferson, Evil Knievel, Muddy Waters, JEB Stuart, young Little Richard, Willie Mays, Grace Kelly, young Jerry Lee Lewis, Pauline Kael, Richard Pryor.



William Reiguel- 09/22/07 01:53:31

Comments:
Cate Blanchett is the most attractive screen presence of our era, up there with Charlotte Rampling, Lauren Bacall, Grace Kelly, Marlene Deitrich, Julia Ormond, Catherine Deneuve, Garbo. Cate Blanchett.



Twanda Carlisle - 09/20/07 10:02:35

Comments:
Shut the fuck up. What a honkey!



Professor Man - 09/20/07 00:49:16

Comments:
You could argue that the story is far more important than the reality, because the story lives on, not the moment that just happened.



Twanda Carlisle - 09/19/07 10:03:09

Comments:
What a sorry bunch of pontificators come to this Tough Talk website! And they pontificate about the vernaculah! The pic of Tony Montana doesn't belong at the top of this page.



The Idiom - 09/09/07 02:27:52

Comments:
The vernacular around Santa Fe and Taos has almost become a dialect of American English, featuring hotstone aromatherapy, body harmony, cosmological vitamin and mineral management (CVMM) , Kimokan toxin-removal systems, holistic bristles in the toothbrush, robust cellular glowing (RCG), cosmic renewal, ghost-ranch divination, Jin Shin Do, exploration of the inner realm, rebirthing, vegan natural fiber clothing, naturopathic medicine, and the pervasive galactical post-Xian New Age spirituality. It lives on out there in the deserts of the Southwest and within many well-educated urban and suburban white women all over America. The only urban and suburban males using the idiom are the skinny guru types, with that guru brightness in their eyes, who are in it for the snatch. You see them in health stores and standing around carrot stands everywhere.



Funkman 12 - 08/23/07 02:11:29

Comments:
The greatest all-time hot for teacher song is "Mr. Lee" by the Bobettes, followed by David Lee Roth.



Funkman 29 - 08/11/07 01:23:17

Comments:
"Funky Broadway" by Wilson Pickett with the Memphis Horns is the #1 soul song of all time. It's one of a kind and up there all by itself.



XXXXX - 07/06/07 11:23:57

Comments:
Are we better off in nations with presidents, legislatures, kings, and lofty ideas, or are we better off as tribal savages, fashioning weapons out of wood and living close to the natural world?



Bain de Soleil - 06/20/07 07:42:17

Comments:
Bain de Soleil for the St. Tropez tan. The tube of orange gelee creme solaire spf 4. Up early every morning here on Hatteras Island, oceanfront near the village of Buxton. The house is old, built in the elevated 20's style with huge screen porches, porches with high ceilings and black ceiling fans. Surrounding the house are three acres of thicket reaching heights of eleven or twelve feet in several places. There are only two winding sand pathways through the thicket, each leading in a different direction from the house to the dunes and the ocean. It's always shadowy and cool in the thicket as you walk. Exotic shore birds, large and small, come and go from this healthy, thriving thicket. An ex-marine runs along the surf each morning and evening with his dachsund, clapping encouragement to this dog with little legs, shouting "Hut!" and "Come on!" The suntans are taking their individual casts. If dark complexion, a blackish hue or olive, a bronze, and then copper, copper/red, deep brown with chocolate hues, and golden. At night I walk down to the jetty with the surgeon's wife and we smoke and feel the breezes, we watch the dark surf and talk intimately.



In Cleveland - 06/02/07 19:39:07

Comments:
It's Saturday, June 2nd, very humid and partly sunny. A massing of parents and students has filled the parking lot of the Muslim School across the street. First the chanting and preaching in Arabic, the mysterious high-pitched exhortations from another world and the long ritual responses from the crowd. Then the students, with all the girls in chadors and hair-hiding hajibs, the boys in white shirts and black ties, begin marching in a circle singing "We are the Bobcats, mighty mighty Bobcats, everywhere we go, people want to know, who we are, so we tell them . . . "



Tribesman Of Another Tribe - 05/26/07 19:00:03

Comments:
I cannot sympathize with either Johnny Himself or the two women below. Yes he's a lost cause (Too many people routinely use the word "gender" now for us to ever return to "sex." It's a linguistic fait accompli.) and he's contemptuous and dismissive as well, but they're even more obnoxious in their preachy righteousness. More obnoxious than Johnny.



Women on Granola - [trans int ... asp?X2=^!=ent mls 2991 ... asp?X3]

Comments:
CROATOAN CRO



Not Surprised - 05/25/07 02:46:20

Comments:
Another outburst of misogyny in this lounge of dinosaurs. It's so clear that Johnny is insecure and feels threatened by strong, independent women.



Johnny Himself - 05/22/07 12:51:37

Comments:
Who is this thinking person who says "gender" instead of "sex"? Anyone who uses "gender" is a parrot for hardcore feministas, who are dedicated to their cause like Puritans. "Gender" is a woman's word, like "cute," and any man who'd use it is a tool for the zealots, all of them ugly women, all of them stringy-haired white women on granola with that rabid true-believer look in their eyes.



I'm Through With This - 05/19/07 00:14:08

Comments:
I've had it with this insipid "tough talk" and I've had it with the narrative of Johnny Tartufo, which exists only to display women's asses. This is offensive to thinking people of both genders.



Mossy Oak - 05/13/06 15:21:20

Comments:
Today I'm stretched out in the chaise longue in the garden swooning over the Lilies of the Valley I have stuffed into a small glass filled with clear water. The fragrance sends me off into the strato regions. They are white coral bells upon a slender stalk.



Seven Cities - 05/06/07 10:11:58

Comments:
They call me Seven Cities. Seven Cities is my name. In the 1500's the Spanish believed they could find the Seven Cities of Cibola by riding northeast from Mexico (New Spain) or by landing in California (also New Spain)and marching straight east for many weeks, maybe months, through a wide desert and then into uncharted territory, a huge blank spot on the maps. The temples of Cibola were smothered in emeralds; ruby spires and diamond turrets pushed skyward over the domes of solid gold and the gleaming silver rooftops. Nearby were the "mines," where you brought a horse-drawn cart and filled it to overflowing with precious jewels and minerals. A pickaxe wasn't necessary. A rake might help, but you could just use your hands.



Women Gone Wild - 04/29/07 00:42:15

Comments:
Will a gang of thugs please step in here with blazing Khalashnikovs and put Johnny's Tough Talk out of its misery?



Amanda Lucci - 04/10/07 10:13:58

Comments:
"You and me against the world. Sometimes it seems like you and me against the world." This song can bring tears to my eyes.



Women Teachers of America - 04/06/07 01:31:49

Comments:
Pam Smart, Mary Kaye Letourneau, Debra La Fave, and now these two white trash women teachers in Clinton, South Carolina having sex with six of their underage male students, all black. These teachers should lose their jobs because they were unprofessional, we can't have this going on in our schools, but they shouldn't be convicted of a crime or sent to prison. Men are different than women. Boys are different than girls. You can't really say any damage was done to these boys, unless one of them is a real weenie, in the way that a girl might truly be physically harmed and/or psychologically damaged.



Maundy Thursday - 04/05/07 11:14:48

Comments:
Maundy Thursday commemorates the Eucharist and is the oldest of the observances peculiar to Holy Week. It is a day of liturgical reunion, since in the cycle of moveable feasts, it brings around the anniversary of the Liturgy. It is a day of joyful ceremonies: the baptism of neophytes, the reconciliation of penitents, the consecration of the holy oils, the washing of feet, and the commemoration of the blessed Eucharist.



Felix Summerhouse - 04/01/07 00:00:01

Comments:
And the wind begins to moan. Midnight, not a sound from the pavement. Memory, all alone in the moonlight, I can smile at the old days, let the memory live again. Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise, I must think of a new life.



Who's Zoomin' Who - 03/26/07 13:58:17

Comments:
Johnny, you walked in on the sly, scopin' for love. In the crowd I caught your eye, you can't hide your stuff.



Barefootin' - 03/23/07 13:36:29

Comments:
We barefootin'. Little Joe Henry he said to Sue, "If I barefoot would you barefoot too?"



Amy Arnell - 03/21/07 12:54:53

Comments:
She's no tween. She writes for The Farmer's Almanac.



Reader - 03/18/07 18:12:02

Comments:
Really. Some tween whitebread girl named Sarah Smith is talking about her favorite month and her "teekie-weekies." This is the tough talk we now find in Johnny's Lounge.



Sarah Smith - 03/17/07 08:12:54

Comments:
I love March!!! It's like cold and snowing one day, sunny and chilly the next, cold and rainy, chilly and bright, cold and snowy, almost balmy and bright, or any combination. It rockets off in all directions, it's nothing like August . . . . . . . which is always smooth, slow, hot, and consistent. In March you actually know that the snows WON'T stay long on the ground, that the freeze will like soon melt. The jaws of winter have no teeth . . . it's all bluster, the cold and snowy days are like boxers on queer street staggering around the ring, semi-conscious but still swinging. The winds that make my heart a dancer!!!! The sunny days, after three or four gray ones, feel so ENERGIZING and new and fresh to me. The smell of the wet leaves . . . . . and the damp dirt underneath them. BUDS on the lilacs and crabapples!!!!! I LOVE the way flannel shirts feel against my skin in March and flannel pajama pants around my legs with wool sox!! March nights are GREAT for sleeping. I actually pile on the blankets and I wear my teekie-weekies to keep my feet warm!



Caped Spectacle Elvis - 03/16/07 10:12:00

Comments:
Karate Elvis is my favorite.



Katherine J. - 03/14/07 18:39:41

Comments:
I am now at my performance pinnacle.



Vegas Elvis - 03/11/07 17:27:54

Comments:
It's clear that Elvis reached his performance pinnacle in Las Vegas, and he stayed there for many years. The rockabilly Early Elvis, the "Blue Moon of Kentucky" Elvis, "Mystery Train" Elvis, and "Hound Dog" Elvis was just the beginning. Caped Elvis and Karate Elvis on the big stage in Vegas backed up by the Elvis Orchestra is what he was born to do.



Li Yung-Li, MD, PhD - 03/03/07 11:16:07

Comments:
I specialize in the psychology of women and the way we are wired. The most effective way to break a bad habit is to summon hate, disgust, and shame and use all three to resist, to snip the connecting wire, and not to imagine. To most men this is an alien concept.



Kat - 03/01/07 11:48:32

Comments:
Zoot brutha in a Coupe DeVille wit jazz jive blunt and rings, he a hep kat.



Hep Cat - 02/23/07 13:59:17

Comments:
You have to be white to be a hep cat.



Ou Sont Les Neiges D'Antan? - 02/17/07 00:12:06

Comments:
Random phrases from the songs of long ago. This is an undignified end to Film Noir Johnny's, a place which once crackled with wit and rogue energies, now a sorry enervated parody of itself. I do sooooo agree with "Reader" below.



? and the Mysterians - 02/12/07 01:35:48

Comments:
And then I'm gonna put you way down here. We'll be together for just a little while. You'll be right down there looking up. I don't see you waving now. You're gonna cry 96 tears.



Lit Up - 01/28/07 21:07:42

Comments:
When we sat down for dinner she seemed lit up naturally, and through dinner she became more and more lit up. She had the liquid light of love-endorphins in her eyes. I began to feel lit up too, and it ended in hours and hours of sex in the hotel room we took. Both of us slept deeply and when we awoke in the morning we started all over again.



Don Fanucci - 01/24/07 09:14:30

Comments:
Sollozzo barzini pomodoro clemenza. Tessio willie cicci vincenzo corleone luca brasi. Pentangeli santino fredo mo-green tattaglia don ciccio.



The Girl Can't Help It - 01/19/07 19:19:19

Comments:
The girl can't help it, she was born to please.



Pothead - 01/15/07 12:23:05

Comments:
A fat reefer brings you into the moment and puts some of those other plans you had on hold.



Harold Stackmeyer - 01/11/07 17:30:23

Comments:
I'm working on my computer's CPR so I can get my tax return mailed out early. This way I won't have to attach the WD-40s.



Victoria Spivey - 01/01/07 12:39:16

Comments:
Johnny, any kinda man will be better than you. If he got one leg that'll be all right, just so he bring that one leg home to Mama every night. Well I tried bein' good, I meant to live like I should, that didn't matter to you. Now my good days are done, man I'm havin' lotta fun, don't care what I do. I'm really glad I found you out in time, I mean to get me a good man while I'm in my prime, 'cause any kinda man will be better than you.



Blessed Among Those - 12/28/06 13:26:17

Comments:
I have been blessed, because throughout my life beautiful women have always thought and said this about me: "What a man, what a man, what a mighty fine man." Just like in the song. Some would say this reveals a big ego, but they would be wrong. I am lucky to have been blessed like this. It's better than riches or fame.



Johnny Otis - 12/05/06 17:31:44

Comments:
You may remember the Johnny Otis Show. "Willie and Millie got married last fall. They had a little Willie Junior and that ain't all." Johnny Otis .



Reader - 12/03/06 09:33:05

Comments:
The once-vibrant tough talk in Johnny's Lounge has become the recitation of fond memories, snippets of songs from several decades, weather reports, and wild animal reports.



Ruth Anne Carr - 12/01/06 10:12:09

Comments:
This unusual string of balmy days at the end of November here in the East. I spent all of yesterday in the garden where it reached 68 degrees. Today I'm feeling the light sunburn on my face and arms. But suddenly it's 70 mph winds which took shingles off my roof and heavy rain and headed for 19 above on Saturday night.



Reader - 11/30/06 02:07:34

Comments:
I don't doubt Ruth's sincerity, but she needs a few writing lessons.



Ruth Carr - 11/28/06 00:39:41

Comments:
The Russian winter I remember as peaceful and dreamlike, the roaring fires in the huge stone fireplace. No television, no CD player, only a multi-band radio which got one faraway Moscow station and after dark one crackly opera station from St. Petersburg. You could also tune in the mysterious international short-wave transmissions. Always the winds off the Steppes, the howling snow, the shoulder-high drifts, the whiteouts, the wide shovels heavy as iron bars, the weighty wool blankets piled on the bed and on the couches and chairs. The spruce green flannel sheets. Thick candles and wax on the rough table. Sometimes I would sleep for ten or twelve hours a night. The two huge Belgian horses, the barn and all its hay bales, the barn owls, turnips and beets, soup in black pots on the iron stove and bread from the iron oven, butter chilled in the ice box, the blocks of ice cut from the frozen lake by Rodolphe. My ankle-length fox coat, steam coming off the Arctic wool sweaters, the wet and jangling galoshes, the badgers who are built to burrow. It was Dr. Zhivago. The smell of Rodolphe's cigar, the smell of his calfskin and sable trooper hat, I will have with me forever. These were the love days of a lifetime that you can have only once, or no more than three times.



Kid on a Big Wheel - 11/26/06 12:25:15

Comments:
There's nothing in here. I'm riding on down the street.



Zegunter, Capetown - 11/23/06 02:12:37

Comments:
Two years ago I was visiting friends at their farm in Tanzania, and one afternoon I walked out to the barn where I encountered a large male baboon gripping the doorframe and watching me closely. This baboon was at least 5 feet tall and in his physical prime. His teeth were very white and perfect, his chest wide and strong, his tail like a carriage whip. In his orange eyes I saw intelligence and memory. I paused for thirty seconds or more to admire this animal, but something had to give re: the disputed territory before us. My first impulse was to throw line-drive rocks at him or get an axe handle, but behavior like this could spark a counter attack which I didn't want. I watch Animal Planet and The Discovery Channel, so I extended my arms to demonstrate their length, made no sounds except an occasional soft growl, and approached him indirectly in an ever-decreasing semicircle, never looking into his eyes. When I got within nine feet he sprang and became a red ass flying zig-zag into the bush.



Jonah F. - 11/22/06 18:43:51

Comments
I find the comments from "Had It" inspiring and true (scroll down to 10/11/05).



Singing Saundra Fitzpatrick - 11/18/06 15:24:09

Comments:
Dinner in a diner, nothing could be finer. Track 29. You can give me a shine. Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople.



Terri Gibbs - 11/17/06 00:15:59

Comments:
Somebody's knocking, should I let him in? Lord it's the devil, would you look at him! He must have tapped my telephone line.



Last Word - 10/15/06 00:38:28

Comments:
When country boys begin showing up on little American-made motorscooters, we know Johnny's Lounge is at an end. There's no one at the wheel of this place any longer. It's been abandoned.



Boogie-Woogie - 11/12/06 10:14:14

Comments:
There's a gal at the local beanery; she's a pretty hunk of scenery. Give me a crippled beef on a load of hay. Comin' through with a slab of moo. Side of greens on the franks and beans. 86 on the cherry pies.



Kate Windsheimer - 11/13/06 00:15:56

Comments:
Is there one paragraph in the entire Johnny narrative which does not link us to yet another woman's ass?



Rick - 10/10/06 06:16:37

Comments:
You want my advice? Go back to Bulgaria.



Cushman Eagle - 10/23/06 12:45:13

Comments:
I live in the country and ride around with my little brother on a Cushman Eagle.



Greatest American - 10/23/06 09:58:07

Comments:
Little Richard nee Richard Wayne Penniman is the greatest American so far produced. Like Jerry Lee Lewis (The Killer), he had a great reservoir of wild energies and the pump of a dynamo. Lucille, you won't do your sister's wig. I'm beggin' to you, Baby. Lucille please come back wheh-chu belong. When you're rockin' an' a-rollin' I can't hear your mama call. I caught Miss Molly rockin' at the house of blue lights. Slippin' and a-slidin', peepin' and a-hidin', gonna be yo fool no mo. Pick her up in my 88, shag on down by the Union Hall. Fool about my money don't try to save. All the flat-top cats and the dungaree dolls are headed for the gym to the sock hop ball, the joint is really jumpin' the cats are goin' wild. Gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John . . . I saw Uncle John with Bald-Headed Sally, he saw Aunt Mary comin' and he jump back in the alley. Keep a knockin' but you can't come in. You said you love me and you cain't come in. Come back tomorrow night and try it again. Honey Honey Honey get up offa that money.



Last Word - 09/22/06 02:33:52

Comments:
Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis, pumped a lot of pain down in New Orleans.



What Do Tank Know? - 09/20/06 23:58:07

Comments:
Tank need to tune his ear. It's ". . . pumped a lotta 'tane (octane) down in New Orleans."



Pumped A Lotta Tank Down In New Orleans - 09/17/06 17:12:46

Comments:
I had a few jobs at gas stations in my twenties, but for me now it's roses. You look into these roses and see the sweetest thing on earth.



Marlon Perkins - 09/14/06 13:31:11

Comments:
I'm old now and have become a misanthrope. When I was younger, I was featured on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I've always believed that we're all just animals, and that all of our behavior can be explained in animal terms. What's unique about an elephant is that it can push over a large tree with its forehead. What's unique about Homo Sapiens is that we use our enlarged cerebral cortex to saw more lumber.



Katy J. Vega - 09/11/06 10:14:42

Comments:
It turns out that Willie Nelson is an asshole. Last month's explosive article in Spin says that he skimmed cash from the top of Farm-Aid concerts, that he spit on an Indian in Albuquerque, and that he was laughing backstage about anyone who could believe in God, this after singing "Amazing Grace" with deep feeling. Before that it was the Amber alert when he abducted the 14-yr-old girl.



Road Man - 08/29/06 09:04:05

Comments:
I live paycheck to paycheck and have a dilemma about my current car, the one I've driven and worked hard for the last four years, all over North America and Mexico. It's a Porsche 944 with a 2.7L four-cylinder engine and a 5-speed. Around town it's like any other car, but on the highway and opened up, 60-120, it shows its strength. It takes its tight grip on the road and becomes very agile and responsive. Black. Huge removeable moonroof. It was built by Germans to carry two very comfortably at high speeds over a long distance and is a true Gran Turismo. I love this car but it's showdown time on the repairs. Do I get it back to excellent and sell it, or do I keep it? I'm on the horns of this dilemma. My instinct is to keep it, to continue putting more and more money into it and throw good money after bad.



::::::::Transmissions:::29:::Down::::::Transmissions:::29::::::::Transmissions:::29:::::::::::::Transmissions:::



Bea Foote Sings It - 02/17/06 16:43:47

Comments:
Dreams come from my weed, all day long. All vipers love their mezzroll, love it good and strong. I'm the Queen of All Vipers and I loves my weed.



Finished Moving - 02/10/06 01:14:21

Comments:
My new address is 212 Jaybird Street.



Sandra Cisneros - 01/29/06 19:00:03

Comments:
Mr. Earl sound like he's light on his feet.



Mr. Earl, January 29th - 01/29/06 14:39:37

Comments:
This is a good Sunday afternoon. Classic American music. Black and white movie on TV, muted. 54 degrees, breezy and sunny. Saw that the fragrant Witch Hazel just bloomed and clipped a few branches for a vase. And they're gonna call me Speedo till they call off makin' pretty girls.



Katherine J. - 01/27/06 10:14:05

Comments:
Also Karl, it's always the same story -- someone threatens Johnny's Lounge, Johnny triumphs in the ensuing struggle, and it's off to the next woman and all these women are the same.



Elephants - 01/15/06 00:23:47

Comments:
In West Bengal, elephants have begun fighting back and are killing humans. They understand who their enemies are. Other than a human, the most dangerous mammal on earth is a bull elephant is musth, especially when you see him whipping his trunk around like an out-of-control firehose, backed up by five tons of hitting force.



Maureen Dowd - 01/10/06 18:12:58

Comments:
The Hopewell mounds of Ohio contain jaguar gorgets.



Karl Rommel, Munchen: Fatal Flaw of Johnny's As Art - 01/07/06 21:26:52

Comments:
The trouble with this site as a piece of writing is that Johnny cannot tell a story very well. Most of the time, it's too much detail and too little action. Then when we want more detail, it's not there. We read in anticipation of a showdown (the Russians, Floyd Z, Big Bobby Blue, the Darktown Strutters, Hassan Habib Salah, Johnny Nocturne, Cousin Doc, the Tonton Macoutes), but when we finally get there it's simply summarized in a sentence or two. This is the fatal flaw of Johnny's as art.



Jaguar Gorget - 01/05/06 23:53:11

Comments:
Maybe you'd be interested in this.



Yuletide Location - 12/21/05 00:38:02

Comments:
I'm spending Xmas with Bedouins and some fugitives from Hamas in the ancient Edomite section of Petra.



Wife, Mother, and Professional Woman - 12/18/05 16:53:51

Comments:
Sunday afternoon and I've been reading on the couch and watching an Eddie Murphy movie, "Metro." What I noticed again was Michael Wincott, the bad guy. I can't take my eyes off him. He was also in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and Strange Days, but this one is the creme.



Chilam Balam, Jaguar Priest - 11/19/05 09:24:59

Comment:
This is what we do and our calling is sacred.



Laura C. - 10/31/05 00:56:35

Comment:
Maybe not a bird, but in the lower 48 the saxophone is as physically and spiritually connected to the alley cat as the quena is to the condor.



XXXXX - 10/30/05 19:29:12

Comments:
Wild for the quena.



Katy Jurado Vega - 10/28/05 09:46:33

Comments:
Yes! Never has an instrument been so physically and spiritually connected to a place and to a bird as the quena is to the Andes and the condor! It is transcendent music.



Big Quenas Condor - 10/15/05 18:10:29

Comments:
I've been enjoying the comic book adventures of Johnny for the past two hours, and I've decided to pause here and tell the story of how I got rich. One Saturday morning in November, eight years ago, I was at Union Square walking around and shopping at the Greenmarket. Flute music from the Andes, faint and then louder, began to catch my ear, so I stopped to locate it. The band was on the corner of 14th and Park and I was drawn over there by the music and I stayed. I sat down at the edge of a doorway for almost two hours.

Their name is Big Quenas Condor, and they have four flutes up front, backed by a sampona, a charango, and a bombo-leguero. The flutes, which define and produce the haunting music, are called quenas and are made of mahogany, clay, bamboo, or bone. Those with the most resonance are made from the wing bones of the condor.

During a break I talked to them and found out that they're Aymara Indians from deep and high in the mountains of eastern Peru and that they had no agent. They'd been here only a week and were playing streetcorners.

That was it. I'd been a downtown landscaper, but one thing led to another and Big Quenas Condor has been packing the house at Carnegie Hall and at all the major concert halls of Europe and Asia, for years. Everywhere they go, globally. Iceland. I don't really have to do anything anymore except keep the band healthy and happy. I'm down in the Islands in the sunshine or in France or Italy in the sunshine. The money just rolls in daily. Often it steamrolls.



Surprised by Had It - 10/12/05 15:18:04

Comments:
I've never seen such an outburst of misogyny. He's insecure and threatened by strong women.



Had It - 10/11/05 10:21:27

Comments:
I've had it with American women, all of them. Bitches. They're all such drama queens, they always have the game going on, they're always playing the angles. They sulk, scold, lie, exaggerate, strut around, contradict themselves, give instruction, wheedle - anything. Whatever it takes. And I've also had it with the ones who appear mousey on the surface but who dominate their moron husbands in private and I've had it with all the wives who are bored by the Oprahfied husbands they've created. I've had it with all of them.

American women deliver the all-purpose responses by rote -- You're insecure, You hate women, You're threatened by strong women. Jabber jabber babble babble bitch bitch. What bullshit!

Men don't behave like this or talk like this. It's beneath them. But it's not beneath these bitches. They're ruthless and committed! I think it all comes from one thing -- men are physically stronger and this is how women compensate. Over the eons it's become part of their hard-wiring.



Ti'jean Hautefort - 10/03/05 12:30:28

Comments:
I have arrived, Air France nonstop to the USA, and my name is a harbinger for Johnny. His days are numbered, for his fort is low. Ti'jean from Montmartre is here.



Johnny Himself - 09/30/05 09:12:45

Comments:
The graphics woman does the visuals, Enough of This. My job is to tell the story.



Enough Of This - 09/19/05 23:57:04

Comments:
I join those who find Johnny's endless displays of women's asses irritating and tiresome. There's nowhere you can turn without encountering yet another woman's ass. New ones appear overnight. They've been embedded within the Film Noir Johnny narrative from the beginning, but it's spiraled out of control in Chapter 9. Johnny's is become all ass.



Feeling Pain - 09/12/05 15:06:39

Comments:
I caught the rollin' arthritis sittin' down at a Rhythm Revue.



American Cultural Historian - 09/05/05 21:41

Comments:
Chuck Berry was the inspired balladeer, prophet, and cheerleader for the emerging teen life of the 50's in such great classics as "Roll Over Beethoven" ("My temperature rise and the jukebox blowin' a fuse . . . "), "Sweet Little Sixteen" (". . . they're really rockin' in Boston and Pittsburgh PA, deep in the heart of Texas, and 'round the Frisco Bay . . . 'cause they'll be rockin' on Bandstand, Philadelphia PA . . ."), and "School Days." Maybe his lyrical visions even helped to shape the era and all that followed. Keith Richards' career has been homage to Chuck Berry's guitar playing.

From his ballad about a cheating woman and hot rod car-life, "Maybelline" (". . . the Cadillac doin' about 95 and we was bumper to bumper rollin' side by side . . . the Cadillac lookin' like it's sitting still, I caught Maybelline at the top of the hill . . . "),

From his mythic guitar-playing sensation, "Johnny B. Goode" (". . . many people comin' from miles around to hear you play your music when the sun go down . . ." ) to "Carol" ("Climb into my machine so we can cruise on out, I know a swingin' little joint where we can jump and shout, it's not too far back off the highway not so long a ride, you park your car out in the open you can walk inside . . . "),

To his ballad of goodwill toward a young married couple, featuring New-Orleans'-style piano and sax, "You Never Can Tell" ("It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well, you could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle . . . the coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale . . . They bought a souped-up Chevy, was a cherry-red '53, and drove it down to Orleans to celebrate their anniversary . . ."), he was a defining force during a major turning point in the history of our country.

He was in his early thirties during his golden years, and some of his lyrics bother some people who sense a leering quality regarding the teen girls he describes, e.g. "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Little Queenie" (". . . she's too cute to be a minute over seventeen . . ."), but it's honest and who's perfect?

"Back in the USA," Duck-Walkin' Chuck Berry's Whitmanesque celebration of American life has never been matched in pop music, never been matched in patriotism, energy, and vividness of imagery even by a country singer ( ". . . where hamburgers sizzle on the open grill night and day, and the juke joint's jumpin' with records back in the USA")



Darktown Strutter - 08/21/05 23:12:44

Comments:
I have arrived to proclaim that " The Boogie Woogie Washerwoman" by Charlie Barnet and his Orchestra, is up there with the great classics of the era, including Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust," "Moonlight Serenade," Glenn Miller, "Why Don't You Do Right (Like Some Other Men Do)," Benny Goodman featuring Peggy Lee, "I Can't Get Started (With You)," Bunny Berrigan, "Minnie the Moocher," Cab Calloway, "Nightmare," Artie Shaw.



Katy Jurado Vega - 06/23/05 17:28:37

Comments:
Wasn't Johnny supposed to fight the Russians? Johnny is a boca grande.



Washingtonian - 06/16/05 11:12:46:18

Comments:
This is the first administration in history to fully operate at the level of a TV commercial. Although this is not a first, the Bush administration also views the constitution as something to get around instead of something to uphold. If Karl Rove is Bush's brain, then shame on Karl Rove, who is also his Lee Atwater.



A.E. Housman, Shropshire - 06/08/05 23:23:18

Comments:

It's worth a ride of ninety miles
To see the roses bloom in June
The cabbages, the Gallicas,
the musks that leave too soon,
The five-starred jasmine
In the red clay pot.



Teiko Tee, Japan - 05/27/05 22:27:43

Comments:
Hun fearsome and terrorize all of Europe. Only Visigoth and Vandal destroy them routinely and strike fear into wild Mongol hearts and fire imagination of bad Germanic girls who follow Hun love across all of Eastern Europe.



Cassie T. - 05/13/05 01:56:12

Comments:
I agree with those who say Film Noir Johnny's is a parade of women's asses. This site seems to have no other purpose.



Robert E. Sherwood - 05/02/05 10:23:10

Comments:
This "tough talk" sounds like a bunch of pussies to me.



Boxing Buff - 04/11/05 21:14:29

Comments:
There is no question that Cassius Clay Muhammad Ali was the greatest fighter in history. He gave many great performances, but my favorite is the first Sonny Liston fight. Liston the thug was a perfect foil for him, as Joe Frazier was later. Both inspired him to the heights of his formidable rhetorical skills and to demonstrations of unprecedented sprezzatura in the ring. All would agree that Joe Louis is second. Both Sugar Rays rank high.



Fighter Pilot - 04/09/05 00:17:56

Comments:
During WWII when I was young, I flew the P-51 Mustang over Germany. We were free-roaming bomber escorts, so we could break loose at will to go after any Luftwaffe. I had 15 kills, and the two I remember most vividly are my first one and the 12th.

During my first kill I was so excited that I barely took my thumb off the cannon button and was firing holes in the sky, but in a millisecond I collected myself and maneuvered into the perfect position and hit him across both wings and the cockpit. He began to send smoke and then it went into slow motion for me as he dove down, hitting his shadow at the very end and bursting into smoke and flames.

The 12th kill ended with the German pilot ejecting, floating past me in his blue suit and black boots, and then saluting me just before he jerked the cord and rose. I was overcome with emotion and what I thought was, "That's so beautiful."



Kate Windsheimer - 03/28/05 12:53:30

Comments:
Who are these boors who make statements about tugboats, the Corleones, Mya's ass, and Chartreuse Green?



Rem Koolhaas - 03/23/05 09:38:47

Comments:
Several of us here at OMA have been seated at a table before this thin flatscreen monitor reading the story of Johnny. Only one of us has been impressed or amused and we wonder about its raison d'etre.



Mary Ann Morris - 03/20/05 18:26:05

Comments:
In three months it will be summer and every night the deep purple will fall over sleepy garden walls.



Quote from A Culturalist - 03/13/05 03:50:39

Comments:
"The first two Godfather movies captured a way of life that has become mythic in the American imagination, and their scenes are imbedded, just as those of Ulysses and the Cyclops or Ulysses and the Sirens. Michael shooting Sollozzo and Sterling Hayden in the spaghetti joint. Hothead Sonny driving in a rage to the toll booth where he gets his. Michael testifying at the Senate hearing. They vibrate as metaphor in the still-emerging American mythos, blending, as they do, with the only other mythic American construct: the Western."



Rocker - 03/09/05 01:01:39

Comments:
The apex of all that is beautiful about white rock 'n' roll was reached with "Fortunate Son."



Supreme Allah - 02/25/05 17:55:42

Comments:
Speaking of names, I am Supreme Allah, and no white man will ever get over on me. I am a Five Percenter, which means that I have been chosen by the hand of God to lead other men.



Amanda Lucci - 02/20/05 09:30:17

Comments:
"I love to say your name three times," says Carlo. I review American films for Il Giorno, La Repubblica, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel. I have just spent three hours at this website reading the adventures of Johnny, and I propose that he call me. On another matter, it seems to me that Americans are slow to realize that Ashley Judd is the new and sexier Audrey Hepburn.



Got Regrets - 02/14/05 22:27:14

Comments:
I'll never be one to say almost convincingly "I have no regrets." First, I should have gone to Hollywood when I was 23. I would have been in the Christopher Walken range of performances, or more likely Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, George C. Scott, or James Woods. Who knows what it would have turned into.



Mya - 02/05/05 02:13:03

Comments:
Ainchu kissin' it? So whatchu think of it?



Zoot Money - 02/02/05 00:43:17

Comments:
The best version of "Blue Moon" ever recorded is Connie Boswell (1935).



Lewtrice Johnson - 01/29/05 22:10:11

Comments:
I trusted my soul to a backwoods southern lawyer.



Got The Ear - 01/15/05 18:38:44

Comments:
Tugboat Captain sounds like he's light on his feet, with his fresh coats of paint and his handsome bulkhead lights and his nights in the cabin.



Johnny Himself - 12/24/04 00:46:51

Comments:
During the holidays I like to stock up on Ports and festive liqueurs. The best liqueurs are, in order: Glowing Chartreuse Green, Benedictine DOM, Chartreuse Yellow, Drambuie, Chambord, Cointreau, and Grand-Marnier. In general, you want the ones with the medieval recipes made by monks in the mountains.



Saundra Blythe, Film Critic, Kansas City Star - 12/15/04 18:23:44

Comments:
"Tarzan and His Mate" is among the greatest movies ever made, there with "Double Indemnity," "The Godfather I and II" "Chinatown," "Spartacus," "Hud," "Casablanca," "The Big Sleep," "Gone With The Wind," Fellini's "Amarcord," "Breathless," "Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia," "Citizen Kane," and the best of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Bergman, Kurosawa, Bertolucci, Truffaut, Fritz Lang, Erich Von Stroheim, Jean Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese, and Jim Jarmusch. Tarzan fights the lion, the rhino, and the crocodile. Jane leaps into his arms from high in the tree. The long underwater swim ending with a kiss. The elephant graveyard. The expedition climbing over the escarpment. Jane dressing in the backlit tent. The elephant herd showdown. It surpasses the original, "Tarzan The Ape Man" (1932), a distinction shared by only one other film in history -- "Bride of Frankenstein." "Godfather I" and "Godfather II" are equals. This is my pronouncement.



Secret Addiction - 12/12/04 01:18:07

Comments:
So Johnny is back, but he should have stayed on the chain gang. He was supposed to be history. Johnny three years later is a lecturer in American History. It's a mistake to come back.



Tugboat Captain - 12/03/04 20:30:29

Comments;
Tugboats have been in my family for three generations, and the one I pilot is named Black Stack. I ply the Three Rivers region all around Pittsburgh. From here I also diesel out on two-week jobs pushing a line of barges up and down the mighty Ohio River, which begins here in the Burgh at the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela, where Fort Pitt, and earlier, Fort Duquesne, once stood. This was the true gateway to the West since it was down the Ohio from here to Wheeling, and from there you could head overland on National Road or stay on the river all the way to the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. My tugboat has many green lights and handsome bulkhead lights around both decks and the cabin. I have fresh coats of deck enamel and marine enamel on everything. The quarters below have an always-changing river view out the cabin windows. I take my time going to bed after I turn the wheel and the spotlights over to the first mate, a woman named Yolanda. Down in the cabin I go online to monkey around for awhile, or watch a movie, or read by lamplight, and then every night I sleep deeply.



Motel Room Fetish - 11/29/04 22:18:36

Comments:
I agree with Kate W. that Film Noir Johnny's is an ass show. It's been that way from the beginning. All nine chapters are just opportunities for Johnny to display women's asses.



Donna Maximo, Jersey City - 11/20/04 10:05:04

Comments:
I am here to congratulate Johnny for the long and detailed review he received in last month's Harper's. Such comments as "There is nothing like Film Noir Johnny's . . . a new form of distinctively American art . . . a narrative voice of nuance and verve . . . like a bright white beacon in the night sky above all the modern Gothams and Metropolises of the world." And my favorite, " . . . scenes which linger on the details, reminding one of a Vermeer or a Bruegel . . . Film Noir Johnny's contains prose that will leave you breathless."



Not Impressed With Johnny - 11/09/04 24:17:56

Comments:
Johnny has what some call "The Big Dick Personality."



Kate Windsheimer - 10/29/04 23:46:19

Comments:
Does anyone agree with me that mainly Film Noir Johnny's is an ass show? Everywhere you look, women's derrieres.



Sarah K., Portland - 09/30/04 01:10:05

Comments:
The world needs more orangutans, more gibbons, and fewer humans. This planet has gone to hell because of homo sapiens. You must be blind if you don't see it.



Keisha Wilson - 09/21/04 12:34:48

Comments:
Fuck Johnny.



Less Safety, More Balls - 09/18/04 23:59:31

Comments:
Yes, I'd say that.



True American - 09/11/04 19:16:26

Comments:
The American Traveler and More Balls are soreheads. If you don't have anything to hide, what difference does it make if the police have more power than they used to? To suggest that we should allow another 9/11 by lowering alert levels and watering down the Patriot Act is irresponsible and dangerous. What if we're attacked again, on an even greater scale, what would you say then? Would you say that we'll just have to take some hits in order to preserve our Constitutional liberties and the Bill of Rights? Would you say that those pre-9/11 ideas are more important than thousands of American lives?



Eye for Haute Cinema - 08/23/04 01:34:42

Comments:
I just saw "The Trouble With Charlie" with Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton, and I enjoyed it more than the Audrey Hepburn - Cary Grant classic, Charade. The critics apparently prefer Charade, one even calling this movie "Charade Lite." I couldn't disagree more. "The Trouble With Charlie" is edgier, grittier, just as much fun, and sexier than Charade. I love it and give it the 5-Star. Another underseen 5-Star is "Wild Side" (1995) with C. Walken, Joan Chen, and Anne Heche.



Less Safety, More Balls - 08/08/04 12:54:37

Comments:
I agree with American Traveler. It's 1984 everywhere you look, the war with no end in the background, and a fearful American public who will give away their American liberties in the name of wimp safety. The Patriot Act is more dangerous to America than Saddam ever was.



Johnny Truffles - 07/25/04 01:09:31

Comments:
My brother made the papers today. MAN RESISTS PIT BULL ATTACK WITH HATCHET. Vincenzo Truffles of 10th St., Hoboken, was trimming a backyard tree Sunday afternoon when he was attacked by a neighbor's pit bull. The dog lunged at Mr. Truffles repeatedly and began tearing at his left arm, but the man killed the animal by repeatedly striking it with his hatchet. The life and death struggle took more than four minues to end. "I would have lost without the hatchet," Mr. Truffles said.



Road Man - 07/17/04 08:34:17

Comments:
Long day of driving ahead. Tune-up, front end alignment, new Michelins all around, full tank of gas, oil change. Stealth car. My mirrors are arranged perfectly and I have quick, 360-degree vision so nothing about highway activity is ever lost on me. I am a cheetah at the wheel.



American Traveler - 07/03/04 23:19:47

Comments:
I'm against safety. Recently I flew round trip to Chicago, and both JFK and O'Hare are police-state, lockdown, show-your-papers, camera-surveillance, stand-up-straight, get-frisked, get-rubbed-by-the-wand, take-off-your-jacket, no-smiling, take-off-your-shoes, send-it-through-the-x-ray machine, stay-in-line, no-sharp-edged-instruments, take-orders, no-joking, amnesty-box nightmares of paranoia and overkill. Most Americans are good sheep who go along in the interest of safety, and many are even comforted by the atmospherics of 50's Russia and WWII Germany. We allow the un-American Patriot Act to pass into law. We're a nation of quivering and fearful people who run for duct-tape each time the alert level goes to orange for vague reasons, or the humorless ugly face of John Ashcroft appears on the TV screen to read the threat du jour and terrify the huddled masses once more. A handful of jihadists have revealed the softness and general timidity of contemporary Americans. We want our underclass mercenaries fighting the open-ended war on terror while we walk around fretting about gas prices and blathering the inanities of our daily lives into cellphones.



Ha - 06/23/04 18:36:03

Comments:
Johnny has Adirondack chairs in his roof garden and they are painted "lime neon green."



Johnny Cinema - 06/11/04 22:52:49

Comments:
I finally saw that Mexican movie from ten years ago, "Yamama's Tambien." It's fun, but it's full of contrivance and it falls apart in the last fifteen minutes.



Mary Ann Morris - 06/08/04 02:11:04

Comments:
Johnny has a monologue going in here.




Hit this to Talk Tough Yourself or this for Johnny's, Part Nine or this for Part Eight or hit this for the previous Tough Talk (8-5)