I Can't Get Adjusted 

11:11 PM
 

Section One: THE METRO

MALE VOICE: "Federal Triangle, doors open on the right."

FEMALE VOICE: (mechanical, but seductive) "Doors opening.
Please watch your step."

A stringy and somewhat wispy blond-haired 8 year-old sits next
to me on her mother's lap. The mother is thin as well, with
short cropped black hair, held back by sunglasses which
she wears like a headband. The girl acts bored and fidgets
irritably while her mother tries to hold on to her. Her younger 
brother turns around from the seat in front of us and shows his
tongue. He's skinny and tow-headed and looks tired.

FEMALE VOICE: (still seductive) "Doors closing. Step back please."

MALE VOICE: "Next stop Metro Center."

In a moment we are whistling pneumatically through the concrete
tube of the subway tunnel. Our car is crowded even though it's
mid-afternoon, and today's a holiday. The crowd is noticeably silent
as people read books and newspapers or sit looking at their hands.

The father, standing next to us, leans in to talk to his family.
He's balding and very chubby. He's got one of those
modern Chinon cameras strapped around his neck. He's sweating
a little, beads along his upper lip, even though it's a perfect
air-conditioned 72 degrees in our hermetically sealed container.

"That's as close as you'll ever get to being with him, as I
can imagine," he says. 

"Did you notice how long his fingers were?" 

The kids just look at him. The mother smiles. 

"I mean, there he was, not ten feet away from us. He's tall,
don't you think?" he continues. "His hands; it's so strange,
how long his fingers are."

I turn to the mother and ask her if he's talking about the
President. The daughter looks up and gives me a smirk. The mother
says that they have just come from The Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier in Arlington Cemetery where the President gave a 
short address after laying a ceremonial wreath at the foot
of the tomb. She said the President promised to stand firm 
against the threat of the Iraqis and warned them not to 
under-estimate the resolve of an annoyed America.

The father says that they had gone to Arlington Cemetery to
see the Eternal Flame at John Kennedy's grave and then because
it was raining, headed to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
to get shelter. Inside, they found themselves at the front of
an area set up for some kind of event, then the room filled
with people and within minutes, the President was standing
right in front of them, not ten feet away. The father said he 
felt a shiver run through him and then he looked down and noticed
the President's hands.

"It was his fingers that caught my eye," he says. "They're long."

He holds up his hand to demonstrate for me. His hands are small
and his fingers are stubby.

"I mean, the fingers on his hands are twice as long as mine,"
he says, "and they're so slender."

I ask the mother where they are from. 

"New Jersey." she answers. 

"Mom," the girl says, "why does everyone ask us that question?"

MALE VOICE: "Pentagon City, doors open on the right."
 

Section Two: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Looking at the backlit display in the hallway just outside the
formal exhibit rooms for the Library of Congress' contentious
survey of Sigismund Schlomo Freud's contributions to psychoanalysis
and culture, my eye is caught by the reproduction of an LP record
cover from the late 1950's. A buxom blonde sprawls languorously
across a couch as a slender, bearded but neatly-trimmed gentleman
leans in to better hear what she has to say. He has a notepad in
hand and a pipe clenched between his teeth. He looks part professor
and part detective. The album is entitled: SONGS OF COMPULSION AND
CONSULTATION by Katie Lee. Songs include: Shrinker Man; The Will
to Fail; and I Can't Get Adjusted to the You That Got Adjusted
to Me.
 

Section Three: THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

ARCHIVE PHOTOS NOT OF JFK'S BRAIN, CONCLUDES AIDE TO REVIEW
BOARD. Staff Member Contends 2 Different Specimens Were Examined
by George Lardner, Jr., staff writer

The Washington Post
A3 NATIONAL NEWS
Tuesday, November 10, 1998

A staff report for the Assassinations Records Review Board said
that doctors who conducted the autopsy on President John F. Kennedy
may have performed two brain examinations in the days following
his assassination, possibly of two different brains. The report
summarizes perplexing discrepancies in the medical evidence and
is among more than 400,000 pages of internal records that the
now-defunct board compiled in its effort to make public as much
information about the assassination as it could find. The papers
were released Monday, November 9, 1998 at the National Archives.

The panel, closed down September 30, was not set up to make findings
about the assassination and did not take a position on the 
hypothesis set out in the 32 pages report by the board's chief
analyst for military records.

The central contention of the report is that brain photographs in
the Kennedy records are not of Kennedy's brain and show much less
damage than Kennedy sustained when he was shot in Dallas and
brought to Parkland Hospital there on November 22, 1963. The 
doctors at Parkland told reporters then that they thought he
was shot from the front and not from behind as the Warren
Commission later concluded.

"I am 90 to 95 percent certain that the photographs in the Archives
are not of President Kennedy's brain," said Douglas Horne, a former
naval officer and chief analyst for the board. "If they aren't,
that can mean only one thing - that there has been a cover-up of
the medical evidence." Horne contends that the damage to the
second brain reflected a shot from behind. He says the first brain
was Kennedy's and reflected a shot from the front.

A naval photographer who took photos at the original autopsy at 
the Bethesda Naval Hospital on November 22, 1963 recalled 
that "there was not too much of the brain left" when it was 
taken out of Kennedy's skull and "put in a white jar."
He said "more than half of the brain was missing." Photographs from
the Archives show a brain with "only this small section over here
missing. This almost looks like a complete brain." said the naval
photographer.

The assumption, based on conflicting recollections and testimony,
is that Kennedy's brain was returned to his personal physician,
George Berkley who gave it to Robert Kennedy for interment with
the President's body which was buried on the afternoon of November 25.

A second brain examination was conducted at the pathology department
of Bethesda Naval Hospital as late as December 2, and it is this
second brain that was photographed and entered into the records 
of the National Archives. J. Thornton Boswell, a member of the 
second examination team told a reporter that the brain was "examined
in detail" at the November 22 autopsy and once more "a few days
later". "It was the same brain," he said, referring to the 
second examination. Asked about the naval photographer's recollection
of differences in the two brain examinations, Boswell said "He's
full of shit."

Section Four: THE SUPREME COURT

'LOUIE, LOUIE': You Gotta Pay Now
by Paul Farhi, staff writer

Page 1, The Washington Post
Monday, November 9, 1998

The Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear an appeal
by two record companies holding the rights to The Kingsmen's 1963
recording of "Louie, Louie", effectively ending a five-year legal
battle with ten original and replacement members of the group. 
The court's action allows the Kingsmen's members to collect 
$200,000 in royalties held in trust since the group filed suit in
1993 on grounds that the companies had failed to honor a 1968 contract.

The song was written by Richard Berry, a black R&B singer from Los
Angeles who recorded it in 1956. The Kingsmen - four white teenagers
from Portland, Oregon - recorded it as an audition tape for a job
on a cruise line in April 1963. They failed to get the job and 
the record sold only a few copies. It would have died then and there
except for some college students in Indiana who brought the song home
and played it for their parents, who suspecting that lead singer
Jack Ely's nearly indecipherable style was masking indecent lyrics, 
complained to state officials and the governor of Indiana then
banned the song from sales and airplay in the state. The song 
eventually rose to No. 2 on the Billboard Pop Chart. A federal
administrative law judge later found the song "indecipherable at
any speed" and declined to ban it.

A search of the 'International Lyrics Server' site on the Internet
provided the complete lyrics:

Louie, Louie, me gotta go
Louie, Louie, me gotta go.

A fine girl, she wait for me
Me catch the ship across the sea
I sailed the ship all alone
I never think I'll make it home.

Louie, Louie, me gotta go.

Three nights and days we sailed the sea
Me think of girl constantly.
On the ship, I dream she there,
I smell the rose in her hair.

Louie, Louie, me gotta go.

Me see Jamaican moon above
It won't be long me see me love.
Me take her in my arms and then
I tell her I never leave again.

Louie, Louie, me gotta go.

In 1986, the song's writer, Richard Berry was given $2,000,000 in
royalties, but the band continued to get zero. Use of the song
in the film 'Mr. Holland's Opus' was recently worth $100,000 to
the record companies. The court's "recission" of the contract 
could have wide impact on software developers, screenwriters and
other musicians.
 
 

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