Monday, April 13, 2020

Preparing for the Post Apocalypse World

Preparing for the Post Apocalypse World

Jon Bon Jovi talks Jersey 4 Jersey benefit, ‘Do What You Can,’ and being a social-distancing memeBruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi Holding Coronavirus Fundraiser For NJ
  Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce - The Boss

Bruce Springsteen, Danny DeVito, Whoopi Goldberg, more join forces in ‘Jersey 4 Jersey’ coronavirus relief show. How to watch.
Others committed to the show

By Bill Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com

If you would have told me two months ago that there would be no St. Patrick's Day Parade, March Madness, Broadway plays, the boardwalks, beach, live music and the bars, restaurants and most businesses would be closed, including the State Parks, where I had been taking refuge, I would have only thought that there must have been a nuclear holocaust.

I never considered a biological virus attack on our whole society, though one hundred and three years ago my grandmother, my mother's mother, died of the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918, a year after my mother was born.

And while  compiling a 100 year history of Camp Dix - now Joint Base McGuire Dix Lakehurst (JBMDL), I edited reports that indicated that flu ravished the base for about a year, killing more soldiers than those who died in combat in World War I. So I was quite aware of what such an epidemic could do.

I had also wrote about the U.S. Army Inspector General's Report on the Use of Human Subjects in Chemical Agent Research, which detailed how they tested different chemicals and biological agents on soldiers, students and prisoners. One major Army contract for such testing went to Hannahaman Hospital, which is now closed. Just last week, when they asked the owner of the building to reopen to handle Corona19 cases, he wanted a million dollars. So much for greed and human kindness.

The year I got that report, the Bicentennial summer of '76 - I worked with Bill Vitka, New Director of WMMR radio, who interviewed those in Philadelphia who were named in the report, and I think he won an award for his work.

That same  year I read a short item in the newspaper that said some biological warfare agents were missing from Fort Detrick, Maryland, where they do most of the chemical-bio warfare testing for the military, and shortly thereafter the Legionnaires Disease broke out at a veterans convention at the Bellview Stratford Hotel, the swankiest hotel in town at the time. It has symptoms very similar to Corona19 and attacks the lungs through the air.

I also worked with the Army at Fort Dix helping to train the soldiers before they are deployed overseas, and three of the dozens of scenarios we ran involved responding to chemical and biological warfare, and some units are trained and designated just for those types of operations.

The military has a contingency plan for every conceivable type of scenario, and they must have one for this pandemic, which is a foreign agent attack on our entire system and society.

I'd like to know if Corona19 is a naturally produced product or man made?

I find it strange that the city in China where the disease first surfaced is the home of one of only a few Level Four Labs that are built to study such harmful biological toxins.

During this crisis I thought of three movies that are worth mentioning - Bruce Willis in 13 Monkies, Andromeda Strain and On the Beach.

12 Monkies was filmed in Philadelphia and some of my old Camden neighborhood and features Willis as a time traveler sent back to Philadelphia to try to prevent the accidental release of biological toxins developed in a lab. It includes some interesting scenes of old Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden including some of the whore house motels and bars that are no longer there - thanks to Christie Whitman, who thought them obscene as the first thing you see when driving into New Jersey.

Then there's the old Met - Metropolitan Opera on North Broad street, where the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded, but in the film it is all falling apart, as it was for real, but only recently restored into a magnificent theater it once was, a musical venue that I hope we will be able to enjoy again soon.

Andromeda Strain is about a doctor and scientist who is called from his black tie party by some MPs who merely tell him "We have a fire," the key words that requires him to get a Hazmat Suit on and retrieve an airborne biological toxin that a military satellite brought back from outer space, crashed in the Nevada desert and was opened by a country doctor killing everybody around except an old man and child.

The movie gives a good view of a Level Five Lab, and how it is run - under an Agricultural Research Station and reached through an elevator disguised as a janitor closet.

I hope our Level Five Labs are all busy trying to figure out how to deal with Corona19, as I am sure they are at Fort Detrick.

And finally, On the Beach stars Gregory Peck as a 1960s era nuclear sub captain who retreats to Australia in a Post-Apocalyptic world to get away from the radio active fallout after a nuclear war, that nobody seems to know how or why was fought. How you live and what you do with the knowledge that eventually you are doomed, seems too much like today.

The Aussie outback song "Waltzing Matilda" can be heard throughout the film, which made me look it up and it just happened to be "Waltzing Matilda Day" as the song was first performed in April 1895, and I've been playing Tom Waits song, "Tom Traubert's Blues," that's based on the Waltzing Matilda melody.

As prolific Ocean City music hall concert promoter recently posted, music being recorded at home by musicians and singers is one of the highlights of being stuck in this rut.

I am Facebook friends with a number of musicians who have been gathering large followings by posting their performances on line - Hillary Klug, the Nashville fiddle player and Buck Dancer in boots is one. A young violinist who isn't a teenager yet is another.

And Billy Walton is the best. He has been presenting makeshift songs from his living room at home for a while now, placing his cell phone on a table, playing guitar and piano (I didn't know he could play the piano so well!), and sometimes having his son and daughter accompany him on drums and keys. Billy had to postpone a UK Tour because of this shit, and I know he is anxious to get back into performing live again with his full band.

Carmen and Nancy Marotta of Tony Marts fame are also doing a bang up job of booking really great talent for the Somers Point Beach Concerts and at Kennedy Park on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, just across from the old Convention Hall. I hope they can keep these acts together, and by summer we can get these shows underway.

But at this point in time I am very pessimistic, as things appear they will get worse before they get better, and we all have to stay healthy to live in the Post-Apocalypic World, whenever that comes and whatever it brings.

I'm pretty sure that before we will be all out and about, and go to bars, restaurants and concerts again, we will have a lot more of the remotely produced live streamed from home shows that we can only enjoy on our home computers, laptops and cell phones.

I think that the Casino Reinvestment Authority should financially back all of the casinos in making every theater in the city remotely accessible over wifi, so people can enjoy the shows from home or their phone and car, after all people now gamble from home and their phones, why not create remote entertainment venues that anyone can enjoy.

One problem will be to figure out how to make money from such remote shows - as I used to get paid for writing my Nightbeat Column for print, while  now I just post this blog without any income, even though I get hundreds of hits a day. How do you convert those hits to cash, that is the question?

One way is to buy their albums and CDs, as Billy Walton has a new one out that is really fantastic.

I'm sure we will figure it out, once the wildfire is out, but while we have so much time on our hands we can at least think about it, and give a hats off and salute not only to the health care workers on the front lines, and store clerks, but the musicians and entertainers who are trying to continue to make us happy, as we were before.

And next Wednesday, April 22 at 7 pm . New Jersey rockers will put together a benefit concert to raise money to fight the Corona 19 virus - a show that should include Bon Jovi, Bruce the Boss, Southside Johnny and probably Billy Walton, and other stars and celebrities - all live streaming from their homes, the new norm.

Organized by Governor Murphy's wife Tammy - a friend of Bon Jovi, the Fund has already raised $18 million that is being distributed to non-profits in the state. To contribute go to:
Home - NJ Pandemic Relief Fund

Bon Jovi's whose album 2020 and tour has been delayed by fate, wrote a new song - Do What You Can 
Jon Bon Jovi talks Jersey 4 Jersey, ‘Do What You Can,’ and being a social-distancing meme


JERSEY 4 JERSEY FUNDRAISER For NJPRF - New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund

Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Halsey to Perform for New Jersey Benefit

Jon Bon Jovi talks Jersey 4 Jersey, ‘Do What You Can,’ and being a social-distancing meme

Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Danny DeVito, more to play big Jersey 4 Jersey special


BK NOTES: I will try to add more links to this when I can
































No comments:

Post a Comment