SO IT’S NOT BIG CITIES and big city folk; it’s NOT the explosion of post-WWII births, many unplanned if not actually unwanted (that is, the ‘baby boom’); it’s NOT crack cocaine; it’s NOT the penchant for blacks to just go on out there and be a hood in the hood; and it’s definitely NOT Satanic messages backmasked into heavy metal recordings, violent video games, down-and-dirty porn, or reading comic books as a child.
The above deduced from an article titled “America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead” by Kevin Drum for Mother Jones (January 2013 issue). If this article appears too long (as many online articles due due to the large type but they really ain’t) and you want to cut to the chase, scroll down about half way through the article where the paragraph begins: “In 1994, Rick Nevin Was A Consultant” and read from there. If that keeps your interest, go back to the beginning and read the rest. It is an amazing theory and may explain soooo much.
And this is NOT gonna be popular with racists . . .
(Remind be to post a blog on Dr. Frederic Wertham and his astounding, influential, crackpot book, Seduction Of The Innocent, which almost single-handedly brought the entire American comic book industry to its knees in the 1950s.)
To end “Let’s cut to the chase on the cause of crime everywhere,” I want to address the phrase cut to the chase—its meaning and origin. During the early days of movie-making, inexperienced screenwriters or directors, uncertain of how to get to the climax or lacking enough of a script to meet time requirements, would just make an abrupt transition, known as a ‘cut.’
These movies, particularly comedies, often climaxed in chase scenes, which were hugely popular with audiences and which added time to the film. So, when the director commanded, “Cut to the chase,” the editor literally cut out sections of the film to bring the chase scene on sooner!
Hence, the phrase “cut to the chase” means to get to the point without wasting time. (The online Free Dictionary is a bit more dictionary-like: “to focus on what is important; to abandon the preliminaries and deal with the major points.”)
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
