Let’s face it, my shtick was tired even from the beginning. The beret and shades, the lazy jive slang? No one wants to be around me, with my pathological neediness to be loved. Always trying so hard to ingratiate myself with the embarrassing charade of my “good taste:” the painting, music, poetry. Faked an interest in modern art I couldn’t stand, hired an interior decorator I couldn’t afford.

At a poorly attended Los Angeles gallery exhibition this week of the photographs of little-known celebrity photographer Howard Busgang, one image stood out among the rushed compositions of unwelcome encounters: a heretofore unseen photograph of Marlon Brando with his head in a cast.

The passing this week of Flushing delicatessen owner Fillmore Weinreb might have gone unnoticed were it not for his improbable claim nearly four decades ago that he, and not Neil Armstrong, had in fact been the first man on the moon, along with his cat, Max.