[billorites]

[JennysCool]

Thanks for the post! Pack bump!

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Frank Rich learned something from the Rat Pack?

That's a good one.

[stylin19a]

Good job on the picture....no Peter Lawford.

It's still Frank's world....we just get to live in it.

[battlegearboat]

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotomy."

[Servant of the 9]

They were the last public embodyment of the true Male.
Rhett Butler, Hemmingway, James Bond (in the early books) Bogy.....

I think it is illegal now in most states, certainly in Canada or most of Europe.

The only hope for the future is in the growing popularity of Tequila shots.

So9

[ericthecurdog]

great post... bump

[Skooz]

Rat Pack Tearfully, I sorted yellow photos; Steeped in watches and goblets of youth. A glance of sand and static pictures of "why?" A hand from nowhere changed the dial I forced myself to watch--but it wasn't easy: The smooth, hep smile of tailfins--quite a lot like my father's crew cut. Fleeting yellow nirvana of yesterdays strewn about my floor, I moved to touch just one. The mirage melted as I held it my palm. How were they to know that tailfins and radio and steel dashboards would soon bake in the sun, quiet, alone, as if they never were? Baccarat, with a knowing smirk and the hot thirsty pavement of a long stretch of desert highway, compelled them to throw everything into the pot. That moved us, somehow. The desert silently drifts to obscure; A deep dream so fresh it was real for a few minutes after I woke. Now, a clattering of one trembles in a room that reeks of old. A silent phone sits on the table. He stares through the wall, and looks West. copywrite 2001 Skooz

[Sundog]

Thanks man, I forgot what heroes are -- for a moment.

[albertabound]

"every day above ground is a good day"

[Sam the Sham]

Great article.

But there is more to it than that.

With the emergence of modern appliances and frozen foods in the 50's, men no longer needed to have a wife to have hot meals, clean clothes, and a clean house. Playboy magazine, the Thunderbird, later the pony cars of the 60's were pitched to this urban male professional revelling in the freedom and opportunities of the new bachelorhood with his swinging single bachelor pad and new stereo playing Dave Brubeck and Charlie Parker, watching Bergman movies, and pontificating about existentialism.

And maybe sexual morality is more relaxed in postwar periods like the 50's and 20's (among urban hep cats and swingers the sexual revolution already began) because of the simple fact that the male to female ratio has been skewed by war. For example France lost 29% of all males between the ages of 20 and 40 dead in WW1. When you add in maimed that must mean the pool of marriageable Frenchmen was halved. That means a lot of lonely women. No wonder 20's Paris was so hot.

The Rat Pack were the cultural expression of this period, the last in which sophisticated grownups would steer popular culture.

[perfect stranger]

Take the quiz! Which Rat Pack Member Are You?