Langston & The Earth-Movers

Billie  Holiday &  Orson  Welles

1
Billie Holiday and Orson Welles were
responsible for the only "man-made"
earthquake in the history of earth.

Traditionally, insurance companies
refer to earthquakes as
an "Act of God."

But the "man-made" earthquake
was an act of love and the date
was February 1, 1938.

Langston Hughes

 
2
February 1, 1938 was Langston Hughes' birthday.

On that day, the Harlem Renaissance poet
was thirty-six years old.

His birthday was celebrated in Harlem
by  the most famous people on earth.
How do I know this?

The Amsterdam News, Harlem's daily newspaper,
provided the details.

An excerpt is to follow.

Cotton Club

3
Half Of Harlem Was There 
And So Was Half Of Hollywood.  

The private party began on the eve 
of Langston Hughes' 36th birthday.

The Cotton Club was hopping. 
The gin was flowing. 

The jazz did flow 
and the dancers did 
shake their money makers. 


They shook them until there was almost one million dollars 
stuffed into their bosomy bosoms and their bouncy bottoms.

  
John Wayne, Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart,  Ernest Hemingway
Babe Ruth, Dorothy Parker, Bette Davis, Countee Cullen
were at the Cotton Club tonight  in honor 
of a distinguished Renaissance poet:
Harlem's LANGSTON HUGHES.

Cab Calloway entertained while Mae West shimmied 
with Fiorello LaGuardia, the mayor of New York City.

Then Frank Sinatra sang while Louis Armstrong played trumpet. 
Eleanor Roosevelt danced with a pimp named Leroy. 

Her husband, the President of the United States,could not attend 
but sent the Vice-President in his place. 

That was John Nance Garner and he won a trophy that night 
for doing the Charleston and Cha-Cha simultaneously.

4

I play it cool

And dig all jive

That's the reason

I stay alive

My Motto

As I live and learn

Is dig and be dug in return

Langton Hughes wrote that.

If ever you write a poem as good–and concise–as MY MOTTO,
the President of the United States, or his ChaChaCharleston
representative, might  attend your birthday party.

5

There was a Sleazy Does It  HOTEL
right next door to the Cotton Club in Harlem.

During the thirty-six hour party, countless pairs
of birthday celebrants from the Cotton Club
either very secretly or very obviously
departed from the club to get sleazy.

There were probably trios of people and orgy-sized groups of people
doing the same thing but, according to this historian,
none of that can be confirmed.

The birthday boy had his eye on a dancer.
Her name was Banda La Bandita.

Langston Hughes winked
and Banda danced.

To rousing applause, she leaped into his arms
and he carried her next door–to Room 333.

Then they made love. Sleazy love.

They deserved more applause.

6
At the the Sleazy Does It  HOTEL–in room 666–
Orson Welles made love to Billie Holiday.

It was the morning of  February 1, 1938.

The jazz singer was as talented and volatile
as the actor was volatile and talented.

Orson made love to Billie and Billie made love to Orson. 

The process was repeated ten times.

They made the bed shake.
They made the street shake.
They made the earth quake!

Literally.

7

There was an earthquake measuring 8.5 on the Richter Scale.
The epicenter would come to be known
as "God's Whoppee Cushion."

The epicenter would be known as THE BANDA SEA.

The date was February 1, 1938.

You can look it up




According to Wikipedia, it was the ninth largest earthquake of the 20th Century.
 

But when the  Los Angeles Times  published a list of the eighteen largest earthquakes
of the century, it ignored the BANDA SEA EARTHQUAKE,
despite the Banda's intensity qualifying it as the sixth
most violent shake of the planet.

In the Times' defense:  how the hell can you respect the magnitude
of an 8.5 quake when nobody died?

There were  no deaths on February 1, 1938 when the earth reverberated
from the magnitudinous, magnificent love-making in Harlem
next door to the world-famous Cotton Club.

A research paper found in the LCSoL archives
describes the Banda quake in the last chapter.




8 

Neither child nor adult nor goat nor chicken died 
as a result of this earthquake.

Not a building was destroyed when the earth shook 
in "God's Whoopie Cushion" on February 1, 1938.

Yet, by magnitude, it was the ninth largest earthquake 
of the twentieth century. 

It erupted in the Banda Sea, an obscure 
and remote tributary of the Pacific Ocean.

The Banda is  located hundreds of miles
from anything resembling civilization.

Coincidentally, In the early morning hours 
of the February 1, 1938 earthquake, 
Langston Hughes was making love
to a dancer named Banda.

Good thing he didn't make love 
to a dancer named Coney Island.
  
But the BANDA SEA EARTHQUAKE might never have happened 
if Billie Holiday & Orson Welles didn't have volcanic orgasms that night.

It would be wrong to regard this tremor 
as a "man-made" earthquake because, in addition
to two men, two women inspired it.

One of those women was Billie Holiday
who was good enough to inspire
a grasshopper to wear 
a gorilla suit.                  

Excerpted from the Lewis Carroll School of Logic Research Paper #142857