The Choirboys

Written By Bernie Weisz Hiistorian Pembroke Pines, Florida e mail: Bernwei1@aol.com Title of Review: "The Choirboys: An Authentic 1975 Predawn Nightmare!"

In 1975, a Los Angeles Police Department officer-turned-novelist named Joseph Wambaugh wrote the controversial novel "The Choirboys". Still a hot book, Wambaugh wrote this almost 40 years ago! What was happening in 1975? Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, the city of Saigon on April 30th was surrendered to the North Vietnamese and all remaining Americans were evacuated, thus ending America's role in the Vietnam War. The U.S. "Apollo" and the Soviet "Soyuz" spacecrafts took off for their historic July 15th link up in space. Gerald Ford experienced two unsuccessful assassination attempts on his life, one by ex Charles Manson gang member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme. Muhammed Ali defeated Joe Frazier in the "Thriller in Manilla", The Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Minnesota Vikings in New Orleans to win the Super Bowl, and the Cincinnati Reds defeated the Boston Red Sox in 7 games to capture baseball's "fall classic", and Joseph Wambaugh penned "The Choirboys" The Choirboys was a tragicomedy that parodied the effects of urban police work on young officers, which Wambaugh exaggerated through the exploits of his characters, a group of Los Angeles police officers in the Wilshire Division of the L.A.P.D. Wambaugh used a group of ten patrol officers as his main characters that held end-of-shift "get together's" which Wambaugh euphemistically coined "choir practice". It was sarcastically called "choir practice" to disguise the true nature of these meetings from their superior officers, which involved heavy drinking, complaints about their superior officers, war stories, and group sex with a pair of raunchy, overweight "police groupie" barmaids. Wambaugh had these "choir practices" held in MacArthur Park, overviewing downtown Los Angeles. Although a novel, MacArthur Park (named after General Dou