 The Golden Bough(t)
Following up on a reader's question, I happened to be perusing Severed (not checking the spelling), last night. What a great resource that is. I love books, even though the things are pretty much obsolete. Author and Star Wars fan Joseph Campbell once did a series of television lectures on Joyce called, "The Wings of Art.', in which he gave a great tip for choosing books: Always open the book in the middle page for your sample because that is the literal and figurative heart of any book. Open Donald H. Wolfe's, The Black Dahlia Files to page 200 and there's Bugsy Seigel looking dapper in his houndstooth check sportcoat on the front page of the Examiner, Virginia Hill too. Case, as well as book, closed. It works. You just saved yourself $26.95 and the time and trouble to have to read the whole thing. Thanks Joe!
This lesson, it seems was not lost on Gilmore. When bisecting Severed you are greeted with a spectacular two-page wide angle, low trajectory photograph of the Norton Avenue scene looking west from across Norton. In a case legendary for it's shocking photography, this one is a double barreled shotgun blast to the face. The lighting is a wash of pure California sunshine, the composition dominated by the huge black cross of the unstrung telephone pole on the right, looking like the scorched remnant of the big Ku Klux Klan rally held there the night before, it's wispy smoke topping and curling into the mid-day sky.
No black dahlia's were allowed west of Cienega in those days. See? Culver City, The Birth of a Nation, cut to the chase. Today the Baldwin Hills are home to many thousands of upscale black families. But I digress. Another reason to read Gilmore again is his recountiing of the Leslie Dillon fiasco, keeping in mind that covering up this hilarious slapstick cross country civil rights violation is the sole reason for the 1949 Grand Jury even looking at the Short case at all. And certianly not to try and solve the thing and hurriedly close the case, as de River had so foolishly attempted, to the embarrassment of just about everybody in the L.A.P.D. and City Hall.
Amateur abnormal psychology seem's to be something of a cottage industry out there these days, judging by the endless laughable pseudo-psychiatrists buzzing around bethshort dotcom like classic cars at that after-hours Taco Bell in San Diego. All of them calling people (me) crazy, and sociopaths, and insane and such. I guess those are the kool kid put-downs of today, like we used to "play the dozens" and insult other peoples mothers, the difference being that these kool kids are grown up haters who are angry and serious about their opinions of me. I'm concerned, and keeping a very close watch on their ugly, sour, and menacing posts over there.Damn if I know what I did to offend them so badly, but I wasn't trying very hard. Rudeness? Taunting sheep. Bah. Penalty, Death. After less than five hundred posts, they seemingly believe they can, and have, diagnosed my dead pseud, Tim Finnegan's supposed mental problems on-line. Har!
It's because you can start you own religion in CA if it's screwy enough. Where movie has-beens can be lousy governors. Bartenders and slop jockies, and faith healers, housewives and hairdressers, and whatnot are free to practice quack medicine in writing without a license, make unqualified remote diagnosis, and dispense unsolicited advice of a medical nature for spite and profit upon unwilling patients. For all I really know they could be qualified healthcare providers, some of them, though they don't really seem like Good Samaritan types. In any case, I don't need of that kind of help, 'cause while old Finnegan he don't feel a thing, but you would get your butts locked up in jail for that pulling that kind of shit in any other state but California.
 J. Paul de River, M.D. "The Crime Doctor"
7:51:14 AM 
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