Different Slants

The DePaul film school sent a group of filmmakers to make a documentary of my store. They stayed five hours. Today,they posted a 14-minute segment on YouTube.

It seems they originally intended to tell a story about an endangered and exotic collectible store, but along the way they instead decided to focus on the eccentric old guy running the place…I guess. But it vividly shows
off the inventory and the front of the store, as well.

It is remarkably poignant, reminiscent of a silent movie in its style and left me in tears. I have no way to know how others may perceive it. Maybe if enough people see it and respond, I’ll succeed in my quiet spot on Oakton Street.

Note to my readers: Stephanie Sweas, a significant and imaginative writer in the Chicago-area, recently reviewed my 5th book:

A Chicago Newsstand Christmas Story:Miracle on 51st Street  

by Robert M. Katzman                                            

which has never been reviewed before, is about a true Chicago incident which occurred on Christmas Eve, 1977, which relates a story which defies belief, involving eighteen Christians of all denominations–and one Jew.  It is only available from me at my store in Skokie, Il. and has been gradually selling for years. It is a story I will never read in public.  Here is Stephanie’s concise review:

On the way back from your museum/store in Skokie, after purchasing a copy of your book:

A Newstand Christmas Story/The Miracle on 51st Street,

I wanted a ‘setting’ to sit down and read it for the first time.  I chose the lovely, awakening-to-Spring, ‘Marjorie Weinberg’ rotunda garden (@NWU), wherein I imagine, even Shakespeare would have lazily reclined.  I wanted to set the mood.  I wasn’t disappointed– by venue, nor by story that unfurled before my eyes (and yes, they were glistening when I closed the cover).  So, this is my applaud:

by Stephanie Sweas

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© 3/17/2012  St. Patrick’s Day

Some people are born with a sense of reciprocity, innate and clear, like salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

Other people, well, you could stick a giant glowing neon arrow up their ass in an effort to point them in the right direction, and it would serve no purpose.

Dobie Maxwell is someone who’s been kicked around in anonymity for a good chunk of his life, and yet still maintained his sense of right and wrong and when to speak up when he recognizes an injustice.  As a person so much like him, I know how rare it is to find a guy to buck the snarling crowd and say: Stop!

I will tell you who he is to me, and what happened to compel me to write this profile about him. I am not certain, but something tells me that not enough has been written about Dobie, and if so, not like what I’m going to say.

Except I know so little.

Funny, under the present circumstances.

I don’t know Dobie’s actual name.

I don’t know if he’s married or has children.

I don’t know where he lives or even his phone number.

We never went to dinner or a movie.

I don’t know what his car looks like.

But, I surely know Dobie.

He’s a standup comic waiting for a break. Years ago, a total stranger, he called me to sell his Mad Magazine collection at a time when I didn’t want or need them in my back-issue magazine store collection, and I had little cash to give to him, in any event.  No one had asked me for any issue of Mad for a couple of years. But we talked for a bit, anyway. Dobie has that something that makes talking to him as easy as breathing.

(Read on …)

© March 7, 2012

 The World talks and a Syrian Dies.

Israel, it could be you.  It has been you, at another time and another place.

Have you forgotten the despair, the injustice, the indifference, and the outrageousness of others turning away?

Who are you, as a nation, as a people, to allow this to happen to anyone else?

Israel, and yes, Jews: Take a stand.

Help the Syrians. 

Stop the killing of innocents.

But who am I?

Why give a damn what I think?

I’m not a diplomat.

Not a politician.

Not influential or wealthy.

Just a guy.

But also, long ago, a street fighter and always a Jew.

A person who has been outnumbered, overwhelmed and beaten badly while others stood by.

A person who fought back against crazy odds and won.

But also, a person whose life was saved from a mob by a man with a gun.  A cop.

Not a friend, but someone who was one against thirty in 1982 in Hyde Park.

He didn’t deliberate the risk while I was mauled or killed.  He acted.

He took a chance, took my side and I’m still here, and grateful.

Somehow, today, I feel like a Syrian.

And God help me, I hate a stacked deck.

(Read on …)