Mad Dog

“The essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp”

Camp, according to Susan Sontag is a sensibility of reducing that which others take seriously to frivolity.  Examples include John Waters’ “Hair Spray,”  RuPaul’s “Drag Race,” and the science fiction spoof “Dr. Who.”  The purest forms of Camp take themselves seriously.  Thus TV shows such as the 1960s “Batman” series that intentionally strive to be funny are “campy” but not true Camp, according to Sontag’s standards. Mad Dog is a Marvel Comics super-villain and also the nickname of Jack Martin of the Deadly Dozen and evil Joe Fasinera, who appeared in a 1981 “Moon Knight” Marvel comic series episode. 

“Mad Dog” has been used both literally and in a campy context as the nickname for gangsters, rock stars (such as Joe Cocker, whose 1970 “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tour was his path to fame)  and many pro wrestlers, rugby players, and other athletes. One of my favorites, Greg Maddux, pitched for the Cubs both at the beginning and near the end of a long career. Also known as the Professor, Maddux won four straight Cy Young awards and, according to legend, once deliberately yielded a home run to Astro slugger Jeff Bagwell so that when they faced each other in the upcoming playoffs, Bagwell would be looking for the same pitch but never see it.

The HBO series “Camping” straddles a thin line between Camp and campy.  Created by Lena Durham and starring Jennifer Garner and David Tennant as Kathryn and Walt Jodell, the premise is that four couples (plus a teenager) go camping to celebrate Walt’s 45th birthday.  Kathryn is an over-the-top control freak who won’t have sex with Walt but, when he is horny, offers to use her hand (he refuses). Kathryn’s carefully scripted arrangements go awry when free spirit Jandice (Juliette Lewis) shows up, the new girlfriend of one of Walt’s pals.  Another character is a recovering alcoholic who gets drunk and calls an African-American camper “Little Chocolate,” causing her husband to rush to her defense only to have his mate berate him for his trouble.  

Phrases.org describes “mad dog syndrome”as the capacity for unpredictable, dangerous actions, sometimes applied pejoratively for leaders like Saddam Hussein or admiringly for leaders like Civil War general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.  Phrases.org mentions the usage of “mad dogging” as a strategy of feigning outrageous or crazed behavior in order to stick a restaurant with the bill, something Toni and I once witnessed, a sorry spectacle indeed. Urban dictionary defines mad dogging as staring in an intimidating manner to convey disdain and a warning that fisticuffs are likely to ensue. “Mad Dog” is sometimes used ironically as a nickname for gentle folk.

Trump’s Secretary of War James Mattis, whose nickname “Mad Dog” emanated from the marine general’s exploits in Iran and Afghanistan, appears to be on the outs with his commander in chief. Mattis opposed the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, protested budget cuts that hindered his department’s ability to monitor climate change, and favors a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Once thought to be, along with Chief of Staff John Kelly, one of the few “adults in the White House” minding the store, Mattis allegedly once said that the President had the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader. Recently, Trump seems bent on insulting African-American women, including former First Lady Michelle Obama, Representative Maxine Waters (whom he’s labeled “Crazy Maxine” and “Low-IQ Maxine”), and several distinguished reporters, including Abby Phillip, April Ryan, and Yamiche Alcindor, who asked him perfectly legitimate questions.  He’s a disgrace.

R.I.P.: Billy Leo “Mad Dog” Madison, 71, born in Evarts, Kentucky, millwright at U.S. Steel for 41 years, married for 59 years to Virginia (nee Mann), great-grandfather to Lara and Emerson, and “Best Buddy,” according to his obit to brother-in-law Al Piunti.  On the Rees Funeral Home Guest Book Marshall Gjebre wrote: “I loved that man like a father. He was a gift to the world and will surely be missed.”

The Engineers won two games but lost series to Dorothy’s Darlings, named for octogenarian Dorothy Peterson, absent due to an outing with, to quote teammate Gene Clifford, her “church ladies.” I rolled a mediocre 430 but did pick up 3 splits, including a 3-6-7 and a 5-6-10.  More important, on a strike and facing a 6-7-10 split in the tenth frame of the one close game, I picked up the 6- and 7-pins for four points, exactly our margin of victory.  Opponent Ed Fox rolled a 686, the highest series all season.

In “‘I’m Not Gonna Die in This Damn Place’: Manliness, Identity, and Survival of American Vietnam Prisoners of War” (2018) Juan Coronado described the rise of Chicano militancy during the 1960s at a time when they were negotiating their American identity that also influenced who they were:

  Chicanos rallied behind an array of concerns ranging from addressing social inequality, along with police brutality, to supporting los pintos(Chicanos in Prison), to backing the struggles of farmworkers, to promoting cultural reaffirmation.  Chicanos were also adamant in endorsing their Mexican cultural and indigenous roots, which to a certain extent had faded due to forces and voluntary acculturation.  Cultural plurality became a key component as Chicanos embraced their heritage along with their identity as “Brown people” or “people of color.”  Chicanos took their pride to the streets during protest marches carrying signs that read “Brown Is Beautiful” and “Brown and Proud.”

In a chapter titled “The Manly Ideals of Machismo, Duty, and Patriotism,” Coronado writes that in captivity Latino POWs had their manliness tested in terms of how much torture they could endure.  On the other hand, by the late 1960s, many had begun to question the legitimacy of the cause they supposedly had been fighting for.

At the Gary Public Library doing research looking at back issues of the Gary American, a black weekly, on heavyweight champ Joe Louis’ participation in Par-Makers golf tournaments, I checked out Felix Maldonado’s mural depicting the history of Gary.  The Gary Crusaderphotographed visits by two Steel City natives depicted by Maldonado, “Peanut Man” Joe Mays and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.  For a half-century Mays hawked his wares on the corner of Twenty-First and Grant.  An adept juggler, he once toured with the Harlem Globetrotters and appeared several times of “Bozo’s Circus.”  One person I was unfamiliar with was builder Marcello Gerometta, whose structures included the Hotel Gary, the Palace Theatre, Holy Angels cathedral, and homes for 280 National Tube Works employees and their families. 

At the Hagelbergs for bridge Saturday, Brian Barnes mentioned receiving a letter from his 70-year-old brother in Bangladesh, who evidently was quite a hell-raiser in his youth but then joined the Roman Catholic Maryknoll Order of lay missioners. Known as the “Marines of the Catholic Church,” they move into impoverished areas and live side-by-side with indigenous people, not proselytizing but ministering to practical needs.   Brian’s brother travels by bicycle to remote villages and tries to help folks with no access otherwise to medical care.  He told Brian about asking an old paralyzed Muslim man who was dying if he could bring him a radio so he could listen to music.  The man shook his head no but whispered that he could do him one favor, bless him.

Cheryl Hagelberg told me that son Corey’s show at Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City was very successful except he had a severe allergy attack afterwards at the home of someone who owned a long-haired cat and was hospitalized for two days.  She also gave me an issue of Ball Bearings magazine that featured a write-up by Katie Savage who compared his work to social realists Ben Shahm and Philip Evergood. She wrote: 

  One of Corey’s woodcut prints, The Hoosier Slide, depicts a famous 200-foot sand dune that once sat in Michigan City, Indiana. Over a 30-year period beginning in the 1890s, the dune was dismantled and its sand hauled as far away as Mexico. In Muncie, the Ball Brothers used some of this sand to make their iconic blue-green canning jar. The logging of trees and removal of sand in the area destroyed a diverse habitat. More than 13 million tons of sand were taken from the Hoosier Slide until it was no more. Afterward, a coal-fired energy plant was built on the site and has been in operation for decades. Corey’s woodcut print depicts the sand dune and the ecosystem that once thrived there. The image includes a zigzag path, showing carts hauling the sand away.

A memorial service for Naomi Millender took place at Gary Genesis Center.  This eulogy appeared on Valparaiso University’s Welcome Center site:

  Today we mourn the loss and celebrate the life of Naomi Millender, our friend and collaborator. Naomi was an important person for the growth of our Flight Paths initiative – always connecting us to good people to interview and keeping us in the loop about important city events and historical preservation efforts. She was a Renaissance person - a musician, writer, educator, and advocate. She ran a summer camp that kept kids engaged with learning and creativity. Three years ago when her mother, Dolly, passed, she took on the work of preserving the rich history of Gary. Always generous with her time and wisdom, this photo of Naomi is from when she hosted Allison Schuette’s “Who's My Neighbor?” class at St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Gary.  We will miss you, Naomi. Thank you for all the good you brought into the world.

At Gino’s I ordered a draft beer at the bar, and the manger brought me a large plate of delicious plate of angel hair pasta.  When a woman nearby turned down the bar food, claiming she needed to get home and cook dinner for her children, he went to the kitchen and returned with a a container filled, I’m certain, with enough to feed her entire family. Book club member Keith Anderson spoke on “John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War and Seeded Civil Rights” by David S. Reynolds.  The author insisted Brown was not insane, as many detractors have alleged, and compared him to Old Testament prophets and seventeenth-century English Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell.  Like Ulysses S. Grant, who finished that Brown started, he had failed in almost every economic endeavor he’d tried.  Reynolds pronounced the raid on Harper’s Ferry to be a “doomed, heroic effort”and explained the slaughter of five Missouri “Border Ruffians” with broadswords at Pottawatomie Creek as understandable retribution for acts of terrorism committed against anti-slavery “Free-Staters” Kansas.  Brown’s only role in the actual massacre itself was to administer the coup de graceto a victim dying of grievous wounds.

During discussion of whether slavery would have eventually been abolished had there not been a Civil War, I brought up Maryland professor George Calcott’s thesis that the spread of democracy in the antebellum South hastened secession.  Patrician plantation owners tended to be loyal to the Union while the firebrands, for the most part, were young “man on the make” who dreamed of an expanding slave empire that extended in Cuba and Central America. As I was saying my good byes, former Emerson grad and attorney Paul Giorgi introduced me to a friend as a Gary historian who had written about his grandfather, Dr. Antonio Giorgi, having founded a medical clinic that treated African Americans and poor people, often free of charge, at a time when blacks were prohibited from using the facilities of Methodist or Mercy hospital.