Phil Spector's Phollies
I have to say that, upon seeing The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector, that ol' Phil came across as whiny, petulant, paranoid, and as egotistical as they come. Fact is, he couldn't deal with the fact that popular music passed him by and that the Wall of Sound was passe even though his songs are played and enjoyed to this day. Having produced quite a lot of excellent records is in no way a justification for thinking the world is out to get you. Why does everyone hate Phil but love Tony Bennett? Well, they don't. Nobody's out to get you, Phil. Nobody is interested in railroading a washed-up record producer. Until and unless, of course, they stumble out of their mansion, smoking gun in hand, and tell their chauffeur, 'I think I just killed somebody.'
Now, to be phair to Phil, some of his points are well taken. For instance, who decides what will be played up ad nauseum and what will be ignored, in this case celebrity transgressions? Spector cites what he calls Tony Bennett's massive, longstanding cocaine addiction and the fact that no one ever mentions it, contrasted with the fact that people will forever remember himself, Spector, as the murderer, no matter what the outcome of the trial. (The trial was pending during the filming of the interview sequences; it ended in a mistrial and a second trial resulted in a conviction.) Now here Spector has a point, I think. To take a political example, it's very difficult to find an article on Saint Ronnie that mentions that he greatly expanded the size and spending of the federal government, or that he cheerfully dealt with terrorists in the Middle East and lied about it, just as it is difficult to find an article on Slick Willie that doesn't mention his sordid little tryst. Once you get a reputation for good or ill, it is very difficult to erase it in the public mind. Now as far as Phil is concerned, he didn't help matters with assorted reports of psychotic behavior over the years, including numerous incidents of waving guns around women. One might reasonably conclude that his luck ran out in the case of Ms. Clarkson. This is barely touched upon in the courtroom scenes in the film, most of which are sympathetic shots of the defense arguments.
So Phil, thanks for lots of good music. Too bad about that whole murder thing. RIP Lana. July 2010
Now, to be phair to Phil, some of his points are well taken. For instance, who decides what will be played up ad nauseum and what will be ignored, in this case celebrity transgressions? Spector cites what he calls Tony Bennett's massive, longstanding cocaine addiction and the fact that no one ever mentions it, contrasted with the fact that people will forever remember himself, Spector, as the murderer, no matter what the outcome of the trial. (The trial was pending during the filming of the interview sequences; it ended in a mistrial and a second trial resulted in a conviction.) Now here Spector has a point, I think. To take a political example, it's very difficult to find an article on Saint Ronnie that mentions that he greatly expanded the size and spending of the federal government, or that he cheerfully dealt with terrorists in the Middle East and lied about it, just as it is difficult to find an article on Slick Willie that doesn't mention his sordid little tryst. Once you get a reputation for good or ill, it is very difficult to erase it in the public mind. Now as far as Phil is concerned, he didn't help matters with assorted reports of psychotic behavior over the years, including numerous incidents of waving guns around women. One might reasonably conclude that his luck ran out in the case of Ms. Clarkson. This is barely touched upon in the courtroom scenes in the film, most of which are sympathetic shots of the defense arguments.
So Phil, thanks for lots of good music. Too bad about that whole murder thing. RIP Lana. July 2010
So what's with the All-Star game? When I was a young fellow, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, the fans got back the vote in 1970, I think, they voted in the starters and the ones who weren't hurt played in the game. Today, the week leading up to the game is filled with reports of players not playing. Certainly if a player is injured he shouldn't play, but a lot of times today, either they don't want to or management want to protect their investments from injury. So we get to see the best of the rest, you might say. As Ken Levine says on his blog, we got to see Michael Bourn and his .255 average and Omar Infante, who isn't even a starter. And can we get one thing straight? This nonsense about the game 'counting' is just ludicrous. Now, if the Series is a sweep, that's two games each. No advantage there. If it's a five game affair, then the team that is supposedly at a disadvantage gets three games at home to two for the 'winning' side. Six game Series? Three and three. So the only way the advantaged league actually gets an advantage is if the Series goes seven. Are you really telling me that starting the WS at home is that big a deal? Not bloody likely. I don't know. Seems like the ruling elite of MLB has sold us traditionalists a bill of goods. Again. Ah, for the good old days: Organ music between innings, complete games, less than ten pitching changes, none of that loathsome ploy the 'dh,' no jewelry on the field, relief pitchers going three, four, or five innings to really earn a save, no pointing to the sky, hitting the cutoff man, players taking speed instead of steroids, no losers in the playoffs, a World Series game during the day (ask your grampa, kids...) and I could go on but that's enough for now. July 2010
Why?
I was always taught that American enjoyed freedom of worship. Doesn't the First Amendment guarantee this, under the establishment clause? So I wonder about the vitriol surrounding the proposal for a cultural center in downtown NYC, because of the fact that the center would include a mosque. This raises a lot of questions. Do Americans hate freedoms when they are exercised by others? Why does organized religion do more harm than good? Why do people use these differences between us as excuses to kill? Why aren't Americans more concerned with the ongoing legislative attack on the Bill of Rights? Why don't more Americans embrace the freedoms that we purport to hold so dear? Why is it always, in the words of Nat Hentoff, freedom for me but not for thee? Why aren't there terrorist attacks in Sweden and Canada, if 'they' hate freedom so much? Why are anti-terrorist military actions so often in energy-rich countries? And why don't the people who deplore the violence but are equating Islam with terrorism, call for bringing terrorists like Dick Cheney, John Yoo, Oliver North, Jay Bybee, and their ilk to justice? Why is the fact that America has slaughtered many, many times the number that died in those attacks greeted with a yawn and a shrug? Maybe the answer is that America needs a demon to simultaneously rally the country around jingoistic issues and divert it from the uncomfortable ones that the ruling elite would rather ignore. How sad that American democratic values survived the turmoil of the Revolution, the Civil War, the Cold War and McCarthyism, and the Vietnam era, but will likely not survive the second decade of the 21st century. Terrorism isn't the reason, just the excuse.
July 2010
Denny Laine is in my ears, and in my book.
Last night there was a fantastic show at B.B. King's Grill in Manhattan featuring Jack Bruce, along with Joey Molland, who were instrumental (get it?) in the groups Cream and Badfinger, respectively. Now, there's no assigned seating, first come, first seated, so I left work a little early and strolled over and I'm glad I did because the place was quite crowded even though it was 90 minutes before show time. Once the show started (SRO!) I was surprised to see a group not listed on the bill, a quintet in silly costumes playing soft, mushy white bread funk. Unfortunately they did not go over well, as they just did not seem to have any conviction or the chops to put it across. But then Joey Molland took the stage and what a fine, energetic set he put on. My understanding is that this show is a break from a tour called Hippiefest. An unfortunate name, to be sure, but there is some mighty fine music going on. Molland and guitarist Godfrey Townsend, along with bass, drums and keys whose names I have unfortunately forgotten (with apologies to those worthy gentlemen) played 45 minutes of Badfinger's best, which is very good indeed. Molland told a funny story about when Come and Get It hit it big, they were speaking to George Harrison, being signed to Apple Records, and he said, 'Great! You've got a hit, and you'll play around the world to all your wonderful fans!' Joey: 'Yeah!' George: You'll have to play that song every day for the rest of your life.
Which is oh so true.
Then Jack took the stage with the same rhythm section (minus the bass player, of course) and Bernie Worrell on the Hammond, and much to my surprise did an all-Cream set, with the exception of the very first number which was a solo version of Theme from an Imaginary Western. Absolutely great. Then, in no particular order, came Sunshine of Your Love, N.S.U., I'm So Glad, I Feel Free, We're Going Wrong, Spoonful, White Room, Sitting On Top of the World, and oh my goodness what a treat! The arrangements were familiar but not rote imitations, particularly, and the band was tight but not automatons. Particular kudos to the gent on drums.
And a splendid time was had by all.
I'd gotten talking to the fellow sitting next to me who worked for a management company that represents several well-known artists, and after the show we decided to hang out and see if we could get an autograph. As it happened, I had the new biography of Jack with me to read on the subway and it seemed a good opportunity. So there we were, hanging around the front side entrance, and sure enough, out comes Jack. So we went over to say hello, great show, and would you mind? I held out my book and pen and said, 'I bought the book,' and as he signed it he said, 'You've got it all wrong, mate, I'm Denny Laine.'
And oh boy did I feel like a tool. Although I will say that at least three others who were there made the same mistake, so there are at least three people in the metro area who have Cream records signed by the fellow best known as Paul McCartney's guitarist in Wings. Well, they looked alike, what can I say? At least there's more than one dull tool in the tool box. August 2010
Which is oh so true.
Then Jack took the stage with the same rhythm section (minus the bass player, of course) and Bernie Worrell on the Hammond, and much to my surprise did an all-Cream set, with the exception of the very first number which was a solo version of Theme from an Imaginary Western. Absolutely great. Then, in no particular order, came Sunshine of Your Love, N.S.U., I'm So Glad, I Feel Free, We're Going Wrong, Spoonful, White Room, Sitting On Top of the World, and oh my goodness what a treat! The arrangements were familiar but not rote imitations, particularly, and the band was tight but not automatons. Particular kudos to the gent on drums.
And a splendid time was had by all.
I'd gotten talking to the fellow sitting next to me who worked for a management company that represents several well-known artists, and after the show we decided to hang out and see if we could get an autograph. As it happened, I had the new biography of Jack with me to read on the subway and it seemed a good opportunity. So there we were, hanging around the front side entrance, and sure enough, out comes Jack. So we went over to say hello, great show, and would you mind? I held out my book and pen and said, 'I bought the book,' and as he signed it he said, 'You've got it all wrong, mate, I'm Denny Laine.'
And oh boy did I feel like a tool. Although I will say that at least three others who were there made the same mistake, so there are at least three people in the metro area who have Cream records signed by the fellow best known as Paul McCartney's guitarist in Wings. Well, they looked alike, what can I say? At least there's more than one dull tool in the tool box. August 2010
I want very much to say, 'I told you so!'
I've been very critical of the 'ballparks for billionaires' welfare program for many years. I believe that forcing taxpayers to pony up hundreds of millions of dollars so sports team owners can make even more money is wrong, and that the justifications for doing so are specious. It will help the neighborhood, they say, all that extra business! Tell me, cherished reader, do you believe that the presence of a $1 billion plus playground in the Bronx will cause game spectators to say, 'Let's hang around awhile and go to bars and restaurants!" Considering that the majority of spectators at Yankee games are white suburbanites, it doesn't seem likely. Certainly the ongoing lousiness of a team like Pittsburgh gives the lie to the canard that increased revenue will enable the team to buy better players and win more games.
But I have always thought that club ownership (and here I am talking about baseball, I don't follow any other sport as the national pastime is good enough for me) constantly lie through their teeth when they cry poverty and claim to lose millions. For any competent accountant it is no trick to make a p & e statement look like whatever the boss wants it to look like. With the recent release of leaked mlb team documents, it seems clear that as suspected, a sports franchise is a license to print money, even a losing club, especially if you can get the taxpayers to subsidize your 'losses.' And I thought it was only Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Big Ag that could do that! So the magnates have been lying like rugs for a long time about how much money they were making and why they absolutely had to have a taxpayer funded ballpark right this second if they A) wanted to remain competitive or B) keep the team in town. Now we know, as we have always suspected, that they absolutely positively must have a taxpayer funded ballpark to C) make lots more money. It makes me a little ill to hear the backpedaling and continued lying of executives confronted with this new evidence of their duplicity. So, you tell me--what kind of country can't pay its teachers, firefighters, or electric bills, but can indefinitely finance ballparks, Wall Street handouts, dirty little wars, and subsidies to hugely profitable businesses? Go ahead. Tell me. August 2010
But I have always thought that club ownership (and here I am talking about baseball, I don't follow any other sport as the national pastime is good enough for me) constantly lie through their teeth when they cry poverty and claim to lose millions. For any competent accountant it is no trick to make a p & e statement look like whatever the boss wants it to look like. With the recent release of leaked mlb team documents, it seems clear that as suspected, a sports franchise is a license to print money, even a losing club, especially if you can get the taxpayers to subsidize your 'losses.' And I thought it was only Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Big Ag that could do that! So the magnates have been lying like rugs for a long time about how much money they were making and why they absolutely had to have a taxpayer funded ballpark right this second if they A) wanted to remain competitive or B) keep the team in town. Now we know, as we have always suspected, that they absolutely positively must have a taxpayer funded ballpark to C) make lots more money. It makes me a little ill to hear the backpedaling and continued lying of executives confronted with this new evidence of their duplicity. So, you tell me--what kind of country can't pay its teachers, firefighters, or electric bills, but can indefinitely finance ballparks, Wall Street handouts, dirty little wars, and subsidies to hugely profitable businesses? Go ahead. Tell me. August 2010
Europe 2010, Part one. Getting there is half the fun!
If, as it has often been said, a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step, then blogging about it begins with the first letter, I guess. Therefore, this blog has officially started with the letter 'I.'
October 4--left house at 1.30 pm en route JFK to De Gaulle for a 6 pm flight. Made it there uneventfully and left on time. Next stop--Paris. Arrived in the city of lights first thing Tuesday morning local time and set out for my hotel. I've been there twice before and I always stay at the same place, near the Place de la Republique, in the third. So when I got off the plane I took the bus for nine euro or so to L'Opera and planned to walk the rest of the way. Of course if I had had an ounce of sense, I would have taken the Metro, which costs less than the subway in New York and is easy enough to navigate. It's similar, just pick a line and scope out the terminus so you're going in the right direction. But no, I wanted to walk like I did the very first time I was there. A regular bug on nostalgia, me. It sure was a longer walk than I remember. Or maybe I'm just old. In any event I finally got to my hotel where they were nice enough to remember me, and I could at last drop my bag, peel off a few layers of clothes and go walk around. Ah, a stroll by the Seine! Good for what ails you. Strangely, though, I didn't have that 'wow, I'm in Paris!' feeling that I'd had before. Seemed almost anti-climactic. Still, being in Paris is a pretty good thing and I immediately set out for the Tuileries. I love to wander around the gardens and sit occasionally. (Once while sitting there, an attractive lady was walking by with a bunch of kids and smiled sunnily at me. I smiled back, of course, and the next thing a fellow comes up who was trailing her by 20-30 feet, says, 'That lady? My wife!' and I said, 'Hey, she smiled at me first.')
I remember the first time I was at the Jardin de Tuileries, I was so knackered that I went behind a row of hedges, spread out my trench coat, and slept for 45 minutes. Imagine my surprise when I returned home to find out that noted crooner Bing Crosby had been busted by the gendarmes for exactly the same thing in 1930! But what the hell, when I was there, a lot of people were lying around and nothing happened anyway. Maybe it's not illegal any more.
On the Ile de la Cite I passed the usual gaggle of tourists (not me, man, je suis un native) at Notre Dame cathedral and since it was free (and raining) I wandered in. I'm not much for religious mumbo jumbo but it was quite opulent and there was a fellow on the pipe organ and a singer rehearsing. Or maybe they were putting on a show. There are signs all over requesting folks remove their hats. No doubt as a sign of respect, I presume, but I always wondered when I see Jewish beanies or Muslim head scarves whether it is a truism that a deity would get sore if one's head was uncovered. Seems to me there's bigger fish to fry, but then I never subscribed to any particular dogma. Anyway I'm kind of glad I went in if only to say I'd been there. When you come right down to it, isn't that what holidays are all about?
In walking around Paris and in Europe generally I notice two things, that people tend to be better dressed for the most part, not decked out in designer gear really, just sort of more put together, and that there are a lot fewer fat people than there are here. And this is surprising the way the French eat--looks to me like a diet high in fat and sodium and such like, things that current wisdom tell us are bad. Maybe it's more walking/exercise? Something in the water? One thing's sure, I am one of the few who actually lose weight on vacation. No question about it. I walk miles every day, as my favorite method of vacationing is simply to wander around and look at whatever interesting thing floats through my field of vision. In addition I eat very carefully, both to save on the budget and because there is a long list of things I can't or won't eat. Less calories + more exercise=less weight. Now that's not rocket science, is it?
So the plan was to spend two days in Paris and then take the TGV (tres grand(e?) vitesse or very high speed) train to Nice, on the Mediterranean and soak up some sun. Paris was cool and rainy, and wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere warm! Next--the French Riviera! October 2010
October 4--left house at 1.30 pm en route JFK to De Gaulle for a 6 pm flight. Made it there uneventfully and left on time. Next stop--Paris. Arrived in the city of lights first thing Tuesday morning local time and set out for my hotel. I've been there twice before and I always stay at the same place, near the Place de la Republique, in the third. So when I got off the plane I took the bus for nine euro or so to L'Opera and planned to walk the rest of the way. Of course if I had had an ounce of sense, I would have taken the Metro, which costs less than the subway in New York and is easy enough to navigate. It's similar, just pick a line and scope out the terminus so you're going in the right direction. But no, I wanted to walk like I did the very first time I was there. A regular bug on nostalgia, me. It sure was a longer walk than I remember. Or maybe I'm just old. In any event I finally got to my hotel where they were nice enough to remember me, and I could at last drop my bag, peel off a few layers of clothes and go walk around. Ah, a stroll by the Seine! Good for what ails you. Strangely, though, I didn't have that 'wow, I'm in Paris!' feeling that I'd had before. Seemed almost anti-climactic. Still, being in Paris is a pretty good thing and I immediately set out for the Tuileries. I love to wander around the gardens and sit occasionally. (Once while sitting there, an attractive lady was walking by with a bunch of kids and smiled sunnily at me. I smiled back, of course, and the next thing a fellow comes up who was trailing her by 20-30 feet, says, 'That lady? My wife!' and I said, 'Hey, she smiled at me first.')
I remember the first time I was at the Jardin de Tuileries, I was so knackered that I went behind a row of hedges, spread out my trench coat, and slept for 45 minutes. Imagine my surprise when I returned home to find out that noted crooner Bing Crosby had been busted by the gendarmes for exactly the same thing in 1930! But what the hell, when I was there, a lot of people were lying around and nothing happened anyway. Maybe it's not illegal any more.
On the Ile de la Cite I passed the usual gaggle of tourists (not me, man, je suis un native) at Notre Dame cathedral and since it was free (and raining) I wandered in. I'm not much for religious mumbo jumbo but it was quite opulent and there was a fellow on the pipe organ and a singer rehearsing. Or maybe they were putting on a show. There are signs all over requesting folks remove their hats. No doubt as a sign of respect, I presume, but I always wondered when I see Jewish beanies or Muslim head scarves whether it is a truism that a deity would get sore if one's head was uncovered. Seems to me there's bigger fish to fry, but then I never subscribed to any particular dogma. Anyway I'm kind of glad I went in if only to say I'd been there. When you come right down to it, isn't that what holidays are all about?
In walking around Paris and in Europe generally I notice two things, that people tend to be better dressed for the most part, not decked out in designer gear really, just sort of more put together, and that there are a lot fewer fat people than there are here. And this is surprising the way the French eat--looks to me like a diet high in fat and sodium and such like, things that current wisdom tell us are bad. Maybe it's more walking/exercise? Something in the water? One thing's sure, I am one of the few who actually lose weight on vacation. No question about it. I walk miles every day, as my favorite method of vacationing is simply to wander around and look at whatever interesting thing floats through my field of vision. In addition I eat very carefully, both to save on the budget and because there is a long list of things I can't or won't eat. Less calories + more exercise=less weight. Now that's not rocket science, is it?
So the plan was to spend two days in Paris and then take the TGV (tres grand(e?) vitesse or very high speed) train to Nice, on the Mediterranean and soak up some sun. Paris was cool and rainy, and wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere warm! Next--the French Riviera! October 2010
Nice is nice
And so I entrained for the South of France. We chugged along at a good clip and towards the end of the five hour journey I started watching for my first view of the Mediterranean. Just when I was lulled into complacency we rounded a bend and--ZAM! there it is! Very blue close to shore, darker in color farther out, the waters of the Mediterranean, or as they call it around Nice, the Bay of Angels. Interestingly, where I was the waves come into the shore on an angle. I've wanted to stand knee deep, and only knee deep, in the Mediterranean for a long time and now I've done it three days in a row! In the 21st century and in very late middle age one learns to have goals one can actually do. Nice was sunny and 70-75 degrees when I was there and how nice it was! I must have strolled miles and miles along the water; I don't imagine I'd be very good in a landlocked area for I'm the sort that must have water around.
Prior to my departure I bought a pair of spiffy new trousers, and as I've lost some weight lately, I got them two full inches less in the waist. While going out on the town in Nice I put on my spiffy new trousers only to find them at half mast before I got two steps. Still too big! So I went into the local men's shop to get a belt, which I hadn't brought so as to have one less metal thing to cause trouble in airports. The gentleman there said their belts started at fifty euro and, seeing the look of astonishment on my face, directed me to a place down the street that had belts for ten euro, which I could handle. Problem solved, and hey! how about that? I lost more weight than I thought.
There are public bathrooms all over the larger cities in France, which is a good thing, but it takes some getting used to when you stroll into the gents only to see a cute young woman attendant sitting there. That must be some job. I hope they get paid a lot.
I met two nice Norwegian couples who listened sympathetically to my ranting and raving when I lost my door card, which one needed to not only open the door but activate the electricity. They loaned me their card and gave me half a glass of wine to relax my nerves which needed it. All the more so when I realized I had simply kicked the card under the nightstand and it was sitting there the whole time.
In addition to being knee deep in the Mediterranean, (and you'd better bring some sturdy sandals for the beach there, because it is not sand, but rocks. I'm serious.) I noticed that there is a big castle overlooking the town from one end of the beach which naturally I had to investigate. Well, of course it's hard not to notice, it's like 'noticing' the Empire State Building if you're at 34th and 5th. It dates back to the 12th or 13th century when the south of what would become France was constantly invaded. There is little left of the original structure now, it was dismantled early in the 18th century by one of the Louis. But when you climb to the top, and it's quite a climb, what a view!
There are different ways to see the city, and I did my share of walking but also went on a tram and on a bus to rest my dogs and to go places I might not have and to learn more about the area. Unfortunately my plan to take the train up to the nearby mountains was thwarted when the line for tickets at the train station was so long I missed it and my plan to boat around the Riviera was thwarted when I got faulty info from the tourism folks, went to take the boat Sunday only to find they were closed Sunday and Monday. But these things happen and I did take several boat trips, as we shall see.
A large artistic community resides in Nice and it is also home to museums of Chagall and Matisse, the latter of which I visited. See, I can't draw at all, but it's nice to know that there's someone who can. There's a sculpture near the city center of a giant head, which is not to be missed. Of course I missed it with my camera but I will post pics here eventually.
Close to Nice is Cannes, famous for the annual film festival. I wandered around there for a half a day and saw where all the bigwigs stroll on the red carpet and where they have a bunch of has-beens with hand prints in the cement like at Grauman's Chinese or whatever they call it now.
I was determined to have an Italian dinner at an Italian restaurant in Italy, which was handy because Ventimiglia is only half an hour away by train so I was able to sample real Italian food, which was a real treat. To be honest, though, the best feed I had was in Paris. Not so surprising when you think about it, although I found it difficult to find good vegetarian food in Nice.
Also close by on the train is Monaco, noted for being the scene of Grace Kelly's retirement from motion pictures and for the famous casino at Monte Carlo. Naturally I had to check it out. It is a small, not particularly imposing building near the water in the principality. Just as bold as brass, I strolled in like I owned the place. 'May I see your card, sir?' 'Uh, what card is that? Do you want to see my passport, is that it?' Turns out that you have to pay to get in--ten euro. Presumably this is to keep the riffraff out. A ten spot was my entire gambling budget so that was out, but I did peek through to see what I could see. A bunch of tables at which a bunch of folks dressed to the nines gambled. Me, I blew my ten spot on video poker pretty quick and figured I'd better split.
I celebrated my birthday in Nice and decided to have a hearty supper and a beer. I went to a local pub and everyone was watching a football match (soccer to you) France vs, I think, Romania, but my memory could be faulty. As you know they play 90 minutes of soccer and when I got there it was 0-0 after 80-some minutes. Then, quick as a flash, France got two goals and won the match, to the great glee of everyone present. Hey, I can pretend to be a native too. They wanted six Euro for a bottle of Heineken which I thought rather steep, so I said, Six Euro? C'est trop cher! (It's too expensive!) Then I reflected and said, C'est France! What the hell, you're lucky if you get a beer for as little as six dollars in New York.
So far we've seen Paris, the French and Italian Rivieras, and Monte Carlo. I am unconsciously emulating the European trip of the Ricardos and the Mertzes. I just haven't hit Scotland yet. Hey, you could do worse for role models than Lucy & Ricky & Fred & Ethel! They went to Switzerland, and now so am I!
October 2010
Prior to my departure I bought a pair of spiffy new trousers, and as I've lost some weight lately, I got them two full inches less in the waist. While going out on the town in Nice I put on my spiffy new trousers only to find them at half mast before I got two steps. Still too big! So I went into the local men's shop to get a belt, which I hadn't brought so as to have one less metal thing to cause trouble in airports. The gentleman there said their belts started at fifty euro and, seeing the look of astonishment on my face, directed me to a place down the street that had belts for ten euro, which I could handle. Problem solved, and hey! how about that? I lost more weight than I thought.
There are public bathrooms all over the larger cities in France, which is a good thing, but it takes some getting used to when you stroll into the gents only to see a cute young woman attendant sitting there. That must be some job. I hope they get paid a lot.
I met two nice Norwegian couples who listened sympathetically to my ranting and raving when I lost my door card, which one needed to not only open the door but activate the electricity. They loaned me their card and gave me half a glass of wine to relax my nerves which needed it. All the more so when I realized I had simply kicked the card under the nightstand and it was sitting there the whole time.
In addition to being knee deep in the Mediterranean, (and you'd better bring some sturdy sandals for the beach there, because it is not sand, but rocks. I'm serious.) I noticed that there is a big castle overlooking the town from one end of the beach which naturally I had to investigate. Well, of course it's hard not to notice, it's like 'noticing' the Empire State Building if you're at 34th and 5th. It dates back to the 12th or 13th century when the south of what would become France was constantly invaded. There is little left of the original structure now, it was dismantled early in the 18th century by one of the Louis. But when you climb to the top, and it's quite a climb, what a view!
There are different ways to see the city, and I did my share of walking but also went on a tram and on a bus to rest my dogs and to go places I might not have and to learn more about the area. Unfortunately my plan to take the train up to the nearby mountains was thwarted when the line for tickets at the train station was so long I missed it and my plan to boat around the Riviera was thwarted when I got faulty info from the tourism folks, went to take the boat Sunday only to find they were closed Sunday and Monday. But these things happen and I did take several boat trips, as we shall see.
A large artistic community resides in Nice and it is also home to museums of Chagall and Matisse, the latter of which I visited. See, I can't draw at all, but it's nice to know that there's someone who can. There's a sculpture near the city center of a giant head, which is not to be missed. Of course I missed it with my camera but I will post pics here eventually.
Close to Nice is Cannes, famous for the annual film festival. I wandered around there for a half a day and saw where all the bigwigs stroll on the red carpet and where they have a bunch of has-beens with hand prints in the cement like at Grauman's Chinese or whatever they call it now.
I was determined to have an Italian dinner at an Italian restaurant in Italy, which was handy because Ventimiglia is only half an hour away by train so I was able to sample real Italian food, which was a real treat. To be honest, though, the best feed I had was in Paris. Not so surprising when you think about it, although I found it difficult to find good vegetarian food in Nice.
Also close by on the train is Monaco, noted for being the scene of Grace Kelly's retirement from motion pictures and for the famous casino at Monte Carlo. Naturally I had to check it out. It is a small, not particularly imposing building near the water in the principality. Just as bold as brass, I strolled in like I owned the place. 'May I see your card, sir?' 'Uh, what card is that? Do you want to see my passport, is that it?' Turns out that you have to pay to get in--ten euro. Presumably this is to keep the riffraff out. A ten spot was my entire gambling budget so that was out, but I did peek through to see what I could see. A bunch of tables at which a bunch of folks dressed to the nines gambled. Me, I blew my ten spot on video poker pretty quick and figured I'd better split.
I celebrated my birthday in Nice and decided to have a hearty supper and a beer. I went to a local pub and everyone was watching a football match (soccer to you) France vs, I think, Romania, but my memory could be faulty. As you know they play 90 minutes of soccer and when I got there it was 0-0 after 80-some minutes. Then, quick as a flash, France got two goals and won the match, to the great glee of everyone present. Hey, I can pretend to be a native too. They wanted six Euro for a bottle of Heineken which I thought rather steep, so I said, Six Euro? C'est trop cher! (It's too expensive!) Then I reflected and said, C'est France! What the hell, you're lucky if you get a beer for as little as six dollars in New York.
So far we've seen Paris, the French and Italian Rivieras, and Monte Carlo. I am unconsciously emulating the European trip of the Ricardos and the Mertzes. I just haven't hit Scotland yet. Hey, you could do worse for role models than Lucy & Ricky & Fred & Ethel! They went to Switzerland, and now so am I!
October 2010
Swiss wheeze
If anyone ever actually reads this, you may be wondering about travelling alone, solo, as it were. Well, here's the deal from my perspective--it depends on the time of day. In the morning and afternoon it's a fine thing to be by yourself and say, that looks cool and I think I'll check it out, without having to consider anyone else's wishes. On the other hand it's not much fun eating alone every night and there are certainly times when it would be nice to have some company in the evening. Of course in Europe, especially in Paris, it seems that it would be pretty cool to go with a companion, so if I ever have a honeymoon or even a pleasant conversation with someone, give me France any time. That reminds me, on two separate occasions when I was overseas, I sat down to eat and a lady at a table opposite me got up and changed tables so as to be out of my field of vision. That wasn't very nice. I'm really not so bad once you get to know me.
The one time it wasn't sunny and warm in Nice was Monday the 11th when I entrained for Geneva. It was pouring rain which was a drag after all that nice weather and en route to Suisse my sinuses were killing me, I could hardly breathe or sleep, and it was about this time that my vision started to go south. I just couldn't focus or read small print. Not much help when trying to read a map! When I got off the train it was dark and having never been to Suisse and not having the slightest idea about the bus system and being unable to read the map in the station I actually took a cab which is unusual because I was on such a tight budget. Way to research, huh? Besides, taking a cab is such a tourist thing to do! Like I said, I like to walk and get the pulse of a city. (After a while, the only pulse I could feel was my throbbing dogs.) The thing was that Geneva is the most expensive city anywhere (8 euro for a pretzel? $1.50 on the streets of Manhattan!) and the only hotel I could afford was well away from the city center. But my cab driver had a book about Elvis Presley in the front seat and we got to talking, and talking led to singing at the top of our lungs. We duetted on Blue Suede Shoes, which is actually a Carl Perkins song, and I soloed on Heartbreak Hotel. I mentioned that he should check out not only Carl Perkins, but Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash and the like. So that was pretty cool. And I always tip generously unless the service is truly miserable, so he was happy too. As it happened, part of my deal with the hotel was a free bus pass, and it was a simple matter to hop on the number 10 bus downtown. Interestingly, the way it's done is you just get on the bus, the driver doesn't collect fares or anything. Every now and then an official makes a surprise inspection, and brother, you'd better have a ticket or they'll throw you off and make you pay a hefty fine.
So I'm honking and squinting away but bound and determined not to let a little blurred vision thwart my goals in Switzerland--a boat ride on Lac Leman and a look at the Alps. I'm too old and too lazy to actually CLIMB an Alp, mind you, I just want to say I'd been there. Ah, but the first full day I was there was a nice sunny day, a bit cool, but just right for a boat ride. So that's one goal fulfilled. There is a Jet d'Eau, a huge jet of water spraying up from the western end of the lake, and by gum it's a huge lake too. The water jet, which goes 180 meters high, I think they said, was constructed in the 1890s as a way to regulate the water pressure and is still used today unless it's really windy. So we boated around and saw all the pretty parks on the shores along with several historic buildings. (Sorry, picture inserting is not working. Will discuss limited computer skills and retry in the future.)
Then I was all set to go to Chamonix but the labor dispute in France prevented me from getting there. (More on that later.) So the concierge, who was most helpful in indulging my poor vision and million questions, suggested the number 8 bus which went a ways out of the city into the mountainous regions of western Switzerland. So that's what I did, and it was free! Remember I said that a bus pass was included? At least I saved a little dough. Thus I went strolling amongst the mountains in Switzerland. Who'd have thunk it?
While strolling along the street in Geneva, I happened along a small crowd of people and, being a curious sort, stopped to see what was what. It was a fellow taking bets on the old cup and ball game, where you have a ball under one cup and if you guess which one you win the money in the kitty. While I was watching, I noticed that the fellow seemed kind of clumsy, knocking askew the cups and making it pretty clear where the ball was. So naturally people were winning money hand over fist. Just as naturally I figured these folks were plants and the whole thing was scamola. I don't like to gamble much anyway, see Monte Carlo above.
So while the proprietor tried to enlist me, I was luckily immune to his charms. I suppose it's possible that it was all on the up-and-up, but.....nah.
One evening I returned from my carousing early and decided to go to the cinema, as there was one just down the street from the hotel, no bus pass required! I thought it would be interesting to do so in another country, and it was all of that and a bag of chips. What to see? Although it didn't look like it from the outside, it was quite big on the inside and unlike American multiplexes it had several shops, restaurants and bars. (If you can't find a drink in Europe, you're not half trying.) They had the usual assortment of Hollywood stuff dubbed into French, and I thought it would be easiest given my lousy French to see something escapist, so I settle on.........(wait for it)...........Piranha 3-D! Sure to become a classic. I heard it had mayhem and boobs, what can I tell you? Uh, wait a moment. Twenty three euro for a ticket and 3-D specs? Yow. Oh, well, I'm on vacation. Naturally I had to have popcorn so I went to the counter (Six euro for a petit popcorn? I can get a beer for that!) and the fellow said Sal ou Sucre? Now who the hell wants sugar on their popcorn? And I don't want salt either. So I said can I have neither? And he said, no! must be one or the other. So I didn't have any. Gotta love cultural diversity. And I brought the specs back so if I see a 3-D film here I can see if they work. As for the film, while dismal, it did live up to its promise of mayhem and boobs, and I'll be nice and not reveal the surprise ending.
Now it's off to Holland.
October 2010
The one time it wasn't sunny and warm in Nice was Monday the 11th when I entrained for Geneva. It was pouring rain which was a drag after all that nice weather and en route to Suisse my sinuses were killing me, I could hardly breathe or sleep, and it was about this time that my vision started to go south. I just couldn't focus or read small print. Not much help when trying to read a map! When I got off the train it was dark and having never been to Suisse and not having the slightest idea about the bus system and being unable to read the map in the station I actually took a cab which is unusual because I was on such a tight budget. Way to research, huh? Besides, taking a cab is such a tourist thing to do! Like I said, I like to walk and get the pulse of a city. (After a while, the only pulse I could feel was my throbbing dogs.) The thing was that Geneva is the most expensive city anywhere (8 euro for a pretzel? $1.50 on the streets of Manhattan!) and the only hotel I could afford was well away from the city center. But my cab driver had a book about Elvis Presley in the front seat and we got to talking, and talking led to singing at the top of our lungs. We duetted on Blue Suede Shoes, which is actually a Carl Perkins song, and I soloed on Heartbreak Hotel. I mentioned that he should check out not only Carl Perkins, but Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash and the like. So that was pretty cool. And I always tip generously unless the service is truly miserable, so he was happy too. As it happened, part of my deal with the hotel was a free bus pass, and it was a simple matter to hop on the number 10 bus downtown. Interestingly, the way it's done is you just get on the bus, the driver doesn't collect fares or anything. Every now and then an official makes a surprise inspection, and brother, you'd better have a ticket or they'll throw you off and make you pay a hefty fine.
So I'm honking and squinting away but bound and determined not to let a little blurred vision thwart my goals in Switzerland--a boat ride on Lac Leman and a look at the Alps. I'm too old and too lazy to actually CLIMB an Alp, mind you, I just want to say I'd been there. Ah, but the first full day I was there was a nice sunny day, a bit cool, but just right for a boat ride. So that's one goal fulfilled. There is a Jet d'Eau, a huge jet of water spraying up from the western end of the lake, and by gum it's a huge lake too. The water jet, which goes 180 meters high, I think they said, was constructed in the 1890s as a way to regulate the water pressure and is still used today unless it's really windy. So we boated around and saw all the pretty parks on the shores along with several historic buildings. (Sorry, picture inserting is not working. Will discuss limited computer skills and retry in the future.)
Then I was all set to go to Chamonix but the labor dispute in France prevented me from getting there. (More on that later.) So the concierge, who was most helpful in indulging my poor vision and million questions, suggested the number 8 bus which went a ways out of the city into the mountainous regions of western Switzerland. So that's what I did, and it was free! Remember I said that a bus pass was included? At least I saved a little dough. Thus I went strolling amongst the mountains in Switzerland. Who'd have thunk it?
While strolling along the street in Geneva, I happened along a small crowd of people and, being a curious sort, stopped to see what was what. It was a fellow taking bets on the old cup and ball game, where you have a ball under one cup and if you guess which one you win the money in the kitty. While I was watching, I noticed that the fellow seemed kind of clumsy, knocking askew the cups and making it pretty clear where the ball was. So naturally people were winning money hand over fist. Just as naturally I figured these folks were plants and the whole thing was scamola. I don't like to gamble much anyway, see Monte Carlo above.
So while the proprietor tried to enlist me, I was luckily immune to his charms. I suppose it's possible that it was all on the up-and-up, but.....nah.
One evening I returned from my carousing early and decided to go to the cinema, as there was one just down the street from the hotel, no bus pass required! I thought it would be interesting to do so in another country, and it was all of that and a bag of chips. What to see? Although it didn't look like it from the outside, it was quite big on the inside and unlike American multiplexes it had several shops, restaurants and bars. (If you can't find a drink in Europe, you're not half trying.) They had the usual assortment of Hollywood stuff dubbed into French, and I thought it would be easiest given my lousy French to see something escapist, so I settle on.........(wait for it)...........Piranha 3-D! Sure to become a classic. I heard it had mayhem and boobs, what can I tell you? Uh, wait a moment. Twenty three euro for a ticket and 3-D specs? Yow. Oh, well, I'm on vacation. Naturally I had to have popcorn so I went to the counter (Six euro for a petit popcorn? I can get a beer for that!) and the fellow said Sal ou Sucre? Now who the hell wants sugar on their popcorn? And I don't want salt either. So I said can I have neither? And he said, no! must be one or the other. So I didn't have any. Gotta love cultural diversity. And I brought the specs back so if I see a 3-D film here I can see if they work. As for the film, while dismal, it did live up to its promise of mayhem and boobs, and I'll be nice and not reveal the surprise ending.
Now it's off to Holland.
October 2010
Dutch treat
To my relief I learned that the trains were running that day and I was able to get from Geneva to Amsterdam with no trouble. I stayed at the same place from the other times I was there and they were nice enough to remember me. I really wanted to see the Rijksmuseum which has many wonderful works of art but which was mostly closed for renovation the last time I was there, and was scheduled to reopen fall 2010. Well, it's fall 2010 right now and now they say they'll reopen in 2013! Some things are the same no matter where you are. Any bets on whether the Second Avenue subway here in NYC will open on schedule in 2015? Last time I thought, well, I'll go to the museum anyway to see what they have but there was a line out the door and around the block, in the rain no less, so I went to the Amsterdam historical museum instead. This time there was no line at all so I just walked right in. Interestingly the security check was more thorough than at the airport. I was squinting at paintings as I took a hit off my water bottle and a guard came charging up to me nattering in Dutch which I translated as 'Don't drink water around these priceless paintings, idiot!' Oh, how I wish I had thought of going to a pharmacy and getting some magnifying glasses because I just couldn't see. Still, if I peered in from close enough I could make out the artworks all right so my days at the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum were highly enjoyable.
I'd always wanted to see the Concertgebouw ever since Paul McCartney name dropped it in 'Venus and Mars/Rockshow' so I took a stroll over there one day to see what was playing. Turned out is was a symphony orchestra playing works by a particular composer whose name I've forgotten. Although I'm not much of a fan of classical music I wanted to see something there and tickets were reasonable so I got one and set out after supper to see the show. Sadly, in the rain and with my spectacles fogged up I took a wrong turn somewhere (and boy is Amsterdam easy to get lost in) and was squinting at my map when a young woman on a bicycle took a bad spill right at my feet. I helped her up and asked if she was ok and if so could she tell me what direction the Concertgebouw was in but she didn't know much English apparently and kept saying I'm ok, I'm ok. So she went on her way and I kept stumbling along, at last arriving at the concert hall forty five minutes late. This is not as bad as it sounds for half a classical concert was probably just about right for this rock and roller. Some of the movements I liked, if I listen to classical pieces I like the stuff that's loud and strident as the quiet bits put me to sleep. Anyway I'm used to the three minute pop song and the melody lines in classical music are so long I've forgotten what the beginning was once we get to the end.
After the show as we were filing out I happened to be peering at a program on a counter and an elderly gent with a cane came up to me, tapped his cane and directed a barrage of Dutch at me. I guess he was either saying this conductor is great, go see it or else this conductor is terrible, don't bother. All I could think of to do was smile and nod and say ja, ja, which of course prompted another barrage of Dutch. I wonder what I was agreeing to?
For some reason I decided I wanted to see some Dutch theater. I thought it would be something different. So I toddled off to the Leidseplein where several theaters are located and inquired as to what English language theater there might be. In fact there was one show on but it was about the occupation of Iraq which to my mind does not make for entertaining theater. Same reason I didn't go to Anne Frank Huis--too depressing. But that night there was a show on called Hamlet Must Die and I thought, gosh, I can't go away without seeing this. The ticket agent took great pains to tell me that the show was not actually Shakespeare and that it was in Dutch. None of this deterred me, however, and I climbed many a stair to get to the theater space. It was a pretty good sized theater, seating maybe 300, and they had lots of lights and a sound board and all the amenities. Reminded me of a theater in a medium-large drama department.
As it happens I know nary a word of Dutch so it was a little iffy to figure out what was going on but as best I could get it, the show concerned a group of actors who were putting on a production of Hamlet and trying to decide how to off him. So there were some creative death scenes, the best of which was by a fellow who imitated a Hollywood blockbuster complete with spurting blood. They were all miced, as was the director who was sitting at a table down stage. He kept bursting onto the stage to re-direct the actors, most of whom got a big dramatic scene of conflict with him. So it was a show about actors playing actors with the director in on it too. I think. Despite the language barrier, I found I could tell pretty well who was smooth and who was rough on stage. For the most part they did a pretty good job and I enjoyed the evening. It was different, anyway.
October 2010
I'd always wanted to see the Concertgebouw ever since Paul McCartney name dropped it in 'Venus and Mars/Rockshow' so I took a stroll over there one day to see what was playing. Turned out is was a symphony orchestra playing works by a particular composer whose name I've forgotten. Although I'm not much of a fan of classical music I wanted to see something there and tickets were reasonable so I got one and set out after supper to see the show. Sadly, in the rain and with my spectacles fogged up I took a wrong turn somewhere (and boy is Amsterdam easy to get lost in) and was squinting at my map when a young woman on a bicycle took a bad spill right at my feet. I helped her up and asked if she was ok and if so could she tell me what direction the Concertgebouw was in but she didn't know much English apparently and kept saying I'm ok, I'm ok. So she went on her way and I kept stumbling along, at last arriving at the concert hall forty five minutes late. This is not as bad as it sounds for half a classical concert was probably just about right for this rock and roller. Some of the movements I liked, if I listen to classical pieces I like the stuff that's loud and strident as the quiet bits put me to sleep. Anyway I'm used to the three minute pop song and the melody lines in classical music are so long I've forgotten what the beginning was once we get to the end.
After the show as we were filing out I happened to be peering at a program on a counter and an elderly gent with a cane came up to me, tapped his cane and directed a barrage of Dutch at me. I guess he was either saying this conductor is great, go see it or else this conductor is terrible, don't bother. All I could think of to do was smile and nod and say ja, ja, which of course prompted another barrage of Dutch. I wonder what I was agreeing to?
For some reason I decided I wanted to see some Dutch theater. I thought it would be something different. So I toddled off to the Leidseplein where several theaters are located and inquired as to what English language theater there might be. In fact there was one show on but it was about the occupation of Iraq which to my mind does not make for entertaining theater. Same reason I didn't go to Anne Frank Huis--too depressing. But that night there was a show on called Hamlet Must Die and I thought, gosh, I can't go away without seeing this. The ticket agent took great pains to tell me that the show was not actually Shakespeare and that it was in Dutch. None of this deterred me, however, and I climbed many a stair to get to the theater space. It was a pretty good sized theater, seating maybe 300, and they had lots of lights and a sound board and all the amenities. Reminded me of a theater in a medium-large drama department.
As it happens I know nary a word of Dutch so it was a little iffy to figure out what was going on but as best I could get it, the show concerned a group of actors who were putting on a production of Hamlet and trying to decide how to off him. So there were some creative death scenes, the best of which was by a fellow who imitated a Hollywood blockbuster complete with spurting blood. They were all miced, as was the director who was sitting at a table down stage. He kept bursting onto the stage to re-direct the actors, most of whom got a big dramatic scene of conflict with him. So it was a show about actors playing actors with the director in on it too. I think. Despite the language barrier, I found I could tell pretty well who was smooth and who was rough on stage. For the most part they did a pretty good job and I enjoyed the evening. It was different, anyway.
October 2010
The long way home
Originally, the plan was to entrain from Amsterdam to Paris and unwind in the city of lights for two days before flying to JFK from De Gaulle. As it happened, the labor unrest in France caused the cancellation of the train for which I had a reservation so I was obliged to stay in Amsterdam those two extra days, which is not in itself a bad thing. Wouldn't you know, of the half dozen significant train trips I took, the only one I didn't take out cancellation insurance on was the Amsterdam-Paris route, so there went that ticket. In fact a couple of different people told me that transport was shut down to the point where there was no more gasoline at the airport, which would have made it difficult to fly. This is where the folks at my hotel in Amsterdam were so helpful. After alerting me that my train probably wasn't running they held a room for me and let my call the airline to change my itinerary to leave for New York from Schipol instead of CDG. This done, I set out to have maximum fun the last two days of my holiday.
Unfortunately and as usual, the American media simply lied when covering the French transport strike, taking its usual smug tone and saying, boy those lazy French, imagine striking because you can't retire at 60!
In fact, most French workers retire at 65, just like most Americans used to. Some were fortunate enough to retire early, just like some Americans used to. The issue is that the ptb wanted to raise the retirement age to 67, and disallow any early retirement until 62. So how would you like being told, after working for 40 years, that you had to work two more before you could retire? So the French people, who overwhelmingly support the strike according to what I was told while there earlier in the trip, took to the streets. This of course is in contrast to the US where folks have become inured to a declining standard of living in the service of enriching the elite. Heck, if Americans were allowed to organize and demonstrate without the fear of arrest or having their head broken open, we might have national health and dare I suggest, even be out of Iraq and Afghanistan by now!
As a union member myself, I'd be some kind of hypocrite if I supported my right to strike but thundered about the rights of others when it slightly inconvenienced me, wouldn't I?
But it worked out in the end, I got home safe and sound and had a happy reunion with the cat one week ago.
Now what about the next trip?
Unfortunately and as usual, the American media simply lied when covering the French transport strike, taking its usual smug tone and saying, boy those lazy French, imagine striking because you can't retire at 60!
In fact, most French workers retire at 65, just like most Americans used to. Some were fortunate enough to retire early, just like some Americans used to. The issue is that the ptb wanted to raise the retirement age to 67, and disallow any early retirement until 62. So how would you like being told, after working for 40 years, that you had to work two more before you could retire? So the French people, who overwhelmingly support the strike according to what I was told while there earlier in the trip, took to the streets. This of course is in contrast to the US where folks have become inured to a declining standard of living in the service of enriching the elite. Heck, if Americans were allowed to organize and demonstrate without the fear of arrest or having their head broken open, we might have national health and dare I suggest, even be out of Iraq and Afghanistan by now!
As a union member myself, I'd be some kind of hypocrite if I supported my right to strike but thundered about the rights of others when it slightly inconvenienced me, wouldn't I?
But it worked out in the end, I got home safe and sound and had a happy reunion with the cat one week ago.
Now what about the next trip?
Literary pretensions
Here are two haikus about Amsterdam that I wrote while dining out on one of my last nights on holiday:
narrow rainy streets
cobble stoned in history
winding with canals
rainy on and off
narrow winding cobblestones
canals shroud the flow
narrow rainy streets
cobble stoned in history
winding with canals
rainy on and off
narrow winding cobblestones
canals shroud the flow
Let's all go to the movies!
Let's get it straight---most movies suck. I personally think it's because most film directors were/are the sort of people who were unpopular and probably bullied, never got anywhere with women, and were generally considered weird. You know, kind of like me!
But this theory, if true, has led to a rash of films that are basically a case of arrested development jerking off on film and showing what it means to be a misogynist. This of course does not apply to the handful of films I have appeared in. It seems to me that so much of what comes out of Hollywood is recycled tripe where women are mere objects and the computers are the stars as far as simply generating onscreen images that once had to be created using outmoded things like imagination and innovation. Further, does it not seem as though Hollywood is very timid when it comes to new ideas in film? Okay, a show of hands--who thinks that remakes of old television shows or movies that were lousy in the first place is a good idea? Seems their thinking is, well, if we put out this dreck with a title that the baby boomers recognize, maybe they'll drag their brats to it. I mean, my goodness, Alvin and the Chipmunks?
I'm coming across like a negative nellie here, and I take pains to point out that there are a lot of good movies around. Like for instance, the other night I saw Double Indemnity with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson. Now there's a quality film. Right up there with my all-time favorites. What else, you may ask? Welp, I like the Bond films with Sean Connery. I like all five Beatles films. Quick, can you name all five? I liked the first two Girl Who....films based on the Larsson books; in fact, this very night I"m off to see the third in the series. Now, my rule of thumb is that the more the critics roasted it, the more I am likely to enjoy it, so I am gratified at the number of slams. They are remaking these films with an American cast, but I find it hard to believe that anyone could play Lisbeth Salander any better than Noomi Rapace. Indeed, why remake them in the first place since the originals are so good? Is it because of the perception that audiences don't like subtitles? Don't bother me any. Do the powers that be feel that American actors will go over better than the Swedish folk in the original? Or is it simpler, just a case of bandwagon jumping or, Hey, here's something we can make some money on! For my money, give me the originals any old day. For that matter, I have turned into a film curmudgeon over the years. I agree with the folks who feel that older movies are better. Without the crutch of computers, there was a reliance on good scripts and solid acting. Don't get me wrong, now, I would have chafed under the restrictive studio system that reigned from the 20s to the 50s, but at least I would have been working steadily. Not like now. But there is just a life to films from yesteryear that seems missing today. Have we all gotten that cynical? Is everything meant to be an ironic reference to something else? Oh, I don't know what makes me have these thoughts. Time to go wash out my brain with popcorn.
(A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, Let it Be. Wouldn't want you to lose any sleep or anything.) November 2010
But this theory, if true, has led to a rash of films that are basically a case of arrested development jerking off on film and showing what it means to be a misogynist. This of course does not apply to the handful of films I have appeared in. It seems to me that so much of what comes out of Hollywood is recycled tripe where women are mere objects and the computers are the stars as far as simply generating onscreen images that once had to be created using outmoded things like imagination and innovation. Further, does it not seem as though Hollywood is very timid when it comes to new ideas in film? Okay, a show of hands--who thinks that remakes of old television shows or movies that were lousy in the first place is a good idea? Seems their thinking is, well, if we put out this dreck with a title that the baby boomers recognize, maybe they'll drag their brats to it. I mean, my goodness, Alvin and the Chipmunks?
I'm coming across like a negative nellie here, and I take pains to point out that there are a lot of good movies around. Like for instance, the other night I saw Double Indemnity with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson. Now there's a quality film. Right up there with my all-time favorites. What else, you may ask? Welp, I like the Bond films with Sean Connery. I like all five Beatles films. Quick, can you name all five? I liked the first two Girl Who....films based on the Larsson books; in fact, this very night I"m off to see the third in the series. Now, my rule of thumb is that the more the critics roasted it, the more I am likely to enjoy it, so I am gratified at the number of slams. They are remaking these films with an American cast, but I find it hard to believe that anyone could play Lisbeth Salander any better than Noomi Rapace. Indeed, why remake them in the first place since the originals are so good? Is it because of the perception that audiences don't like subtitles? Don't bother me any. Do the powers that be feel that American actors will go over better than the Swedish folk in the original? Or is it simpler, just a case of bandwagon jumping or, Hey, here's something we can make some money on! For my money, give me the originals any old day. For that matter, I have turned into a film curmudgeon over the years. I agree with the folks who feel that older movies are better. Without the crutch of computers, there was a reliance on good scripts and solid acting. Don't get me wrong, now, I would have chafed under the restrictive studio system that reigned from the 20s to the 50s, but at least I would have been working steadily. Not like now. But there is just a life to films from yesteryear that seems missing today. Have we all gotten that cynical? Is everything meant to be an ironic reference to something else? Oh, I don't know what makes me have these thoughts. Time to go wash out my brain with popcorn.
(A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, Let it Be. Wouldn't want you to lose any sleep or anything.) November 2010
Books are good.
Just now at the shop, the phone rings, I answer it, and it's a woman. She says, "Do you know if such-and-so title is available at Barnes and Noble?" I replied, "I don't have the slightest. Probably you should call them." Retorts she in the frostiest possible tone, "Well, obviously I would have had I been able!" --slams phone down---
It seems to me that isn't obvious at all. I mean, if she found our number she could have just as easily found theirs, since their stock is what she was querying about. Ah, but that's only the tip of the iceberg in the book business. As antiquarian book dealers (dealing strictly in old and rare items) we hear certain themes all the cotton picking time.
~variations without number of 'how much is this worth?' Answer: What someone else is willing to pay.
~I have that book! Is that how much it's worth? A subset of the above.
~Aren't books obsolete? Uh, no.
~Glad to see you're still here! This is not accompanied by any actual purchase.
~What a great little shop! Ditto.
~Do you buy books? No, actually we get our stock by stealing.
~What should I do with my books? Read them.
~How can I sell/make money with my books? Brother, if I knew that, I'd be living in a chalet on the Riviera!
I have a feeling that Antiques Roadshow has very high ratings, as most people seem to think that anything more than twenty years old will sell for a fortune. 'Taint so. In fact it's rare that someone coming into the shop with books to sell will actually do so. Sometimes they want too much, sometimes we offer too little, but the majority of the time we simply don't want what they have.
Just now the phone rang again. Me: Good morning, ______Books. Man: Do you want your feet licked? Me: What? Man: Do you want your feet licked? Me: Nnnnnooooo. Man: Are you sure? Me: Yes. [hang up]
This is all very surreal. Is there a full moon?
The demise of the printed word in book form has been predicted for many years, but now the chorus is becoming a scream with the rising popularity of electronic reading devices and the like. While I freely admit my pro-book bias, I think the demise of the tome is much exaggerated and will be many years off. Even here in NYC, the cutting edge of useless new gadgetry, I see many more people reading the printed page rather than digi-books. Certainly more folks will continue to try out the latest in e-books but I don't see them replacing a proper volume for quite some time to come. After all, who among us hasn't browsed in a bookstore, picking up and looking through that two-volume set on the history of the widget? Who hasn't inhaled the musk of a library? Who hasn't learned something by reading it in a book? Who hasn't looked forward to getting home after a busy day and settling in with a favorite story? Who hasn't stayed up till all hours with a book you just couldn't put down? Who hasn't known the joys of discovering a great author in that book you took a chance on for a quarter at the library sale, and went on to read that author's entire oeuvre? Who? Huh? Who? December 2010
It seems to me that isn't obvious at all. I mean, if she found our number she could have just as easily found theirs, since their stock is what she was querying about. Ah, but that's only the tip of the iceberg in the book business. As antiquarian book dealers (dealing strictly in old and rare items) we hear certain themes all the cotton picking time.
~variations without number of 'how much is this worth?' Answer: What someone else is willing to pay.
~I have that book! Is that how much it's worth? A subset of the above.
~Aren't books obsolete? Uh, no.
~Glad to see you're still here! This is not accompanied by any actual purchase.
~What a great little shop! Ditto.
~Do you buy books? No, actually we get our stock by stealing.
~What should I do with my books? Read them.
~How can I sell/make money with my books? Brother, if I knew that, I'd be living in a chalet on the Riviera!
I have a feeling that Antiques Roadshow has very high ratings, as most people seem to think that anything more than twenty years old will sell for a fortune. 'Taint so. In fact it's rare that someone coming into the shop with books to sell will actually do so. Sometimes they want too much, sometimes we offer too little, but the majority of the time we simply don't want what they have.
Just now the phone rang again. Me: Good morning, ______Books. Man: Do you want your feet licked? Me: What? Man: Do you want your feet licked? Me: Nnnnnooooo. Man: Are you sure? Me: Yes. [hang up]
This is all very surreal. Is there a full moon?
The demise of the printed word in book form has been predicted for many years, but now the chorus is becoming a scream with the rising popularity of electronic reading devices and the like. While I freely admit my pro-book bias, I think the demise of the tome is much exaggerated and will be many years off. Even here in NYC, the cutting edge of useless new gadgetry, I see many more people reading the printed page rather than digi-books. Certainly more folks will continue to try out the latest in e-books but I don't see them replacing a proper volume for quite some time to come. After all, who among us hasn't browsed in a bookstore, picking up and looking through that two-volume set on the history of the widget? Who hasn't inhaled the musk of a library? Who hasn't learned something by reading it in a book? Who hasn't looked forward to getting home after a busy day and settling in with a favorite story? Who hasn't stayed up till all hours with a book you just couldn't put down? Who hasn't known the joys of discovering a great author in that book you took a chance on for a quarter at the library sale, and went on to read that author's entire oeuvre? Who? Huh? Who? December 2010
Thumbnails
As a member in good standing in the Screen Actors Guild, I am eligible to vote for the SAG awards, which are like the Oscars, only better, since it is actors handing out awards for acting without all the political foolishness. To facilitate viewing the nominated films, SAG sends screeners or passes to shows or codes for downloads. Thus I've seen several of the current hit films. And now, my thumbnail reviews:
The Social Network: A real yawnfest. I didn't care a damn for those idiot kids.
The Kids are All Right: Too precious by half, wildly unrealistic, and full of CLEVER MOVIE DIALOGUE that no one would actually say. In Roger Ebert's review, he called the dialogue realistic and the setting natural. We must have watched two different films.
The Rabbit Hole: Some decent acting, and I liked the way they didn't show the accident but referred back to it. It's a sign of good writing to layer on the details as you, the viewer, go along, as opposed to boring exposition speeches.
Black Swan: Pedestrian dancer soap opera until the last half hour when things get really wacky. Worth a look for that alone. And a spicy scene that rather works.
The King's Speech: Haven't gotten around to that one yet, stay tuned.
Do, gentle reader (if such there be) take these with a grain of salt for, as I've indicated, I tend to like old films better but am making a concerted effort to be objective. Do most movies suck? Yes. Do all movies suck? No. Are movies with me in them automatically good? Yes.
January 2011
The Social Network: A real yawnfest. I didn't care a damn for those idiot kids.
The Kids are All Right: Too precious by half, wildly unrealistic, and full of CLEVER MOVIE DIALOGUE that no one would actually say. In Roger Ebert's review, he called the dialogue realistic and the setting natural. We must have watched two different films.
The Rabbit Hole: Some decent acting, and I liked the way they didn't show the accident but referred back to it. It's a sign of good writing to layer on the details as you, the viewer, go along, as opposed to boring exposition speeches.
Black Swan: Pedestrian dancer soap opera until the last half hour when things get really wacky. Worth a look for that alone. And a spicy scene that rather works.
The King's Speech: Haven't gotten around to that one yet, stay tuned.
Do, gentle reader (if such there be) take these with a grain of salt for, as I've indicated, I tend to like old films better but am making a concerted effort to be objective. Do most movies suck? Yes. Do all movies suck? No. Are movies with me in them automatically good? Yes.
January 2011
Ad Libs and Coronets
This afternoon I had an audition for an internet commercial. You've seen it, one of the kinds of things where the protagonists are dressed up like Vikings or conquering hordes or the like. It was intended to be shown around the time of the big college basketball tourney and us visigoths are representing the Visigoth Sports Network. So we're supposed to be interviewing a basketball coach a la ESPN. The first time through I read it like I've seen sports announcers do many a time. They seemed to like the way I read and asked me to do it again, so I tried to read it straighter, less breathlessly. They said I could ad lib a little so I did, a little. They really seemed to like what I did. But when I left and was walking back to work, I thought of about half a dozen really funny ad libs that I could have done. This is common in many kinds of endeavors, the self second guess. 'If only I had done this or that or the other!' I'll bet it's more common in acting, though, since the very process lends itself well to thinking, 'well, I'd have totally gotten the part if only I'd said/done/not said/not done this or that.' Now, I used to be very bad at letting go of auditions but have improved over the years. So why today do I have a case of the 'should haves?' After all, now that I think about it the auditioners did specifically say that I could ad lib a little. So maybe it's good that I didn't think about all the great ad libs I could have done until it was too late. Maybe that would have been overkill. Why don't I ever look at it that way? Now if I don't get a callback I'll forever think that it was because I did/didn't ad lib enough/too much. Lord, show business is a worrying thing.
January 2011
January 2011
I'll watch the Oscars when I'm nominated.
Well, it's all political, isn't it? Now me personally, I'd rather get a SAG award because it's actors critiquing other actors. Of course you can't beat the prestige of an Academy Award(tm) so I wouldn't say no, but I'm kind of turned off by the whole, 'this is better than that' situation. Can't we just say that it's very difficult to make or act in a film and give kudos to everyone involved? That's right, I'll watch the Oscars when I'm nominated--I won't actually attend unless I win!
Having seen the King's Speech, I can say that it was the best of the handful of current films that I saw in preparation to vote for the SAG awards. It didn't blow me away but there was some swell acting and it was an interesting story. You wouldn't think you could get an entire feature out of speech therapy, would you?
So to recap I thought that The Kids Are All Right and The Social Network were dull and overrated, Black Swan was ok, especially the last half hour when it all got surreal, Rabbit Hole was ok, and King's Speech was slightly better than the rest. Kind of lukewarm, I know, but I wonder what it would be like if there were 'posthumous' Oscars for old films? Let's revote on 1939! 1968! 1975! 1988! Who would win?
February 2011
Having seen the King's Speech, I can say that it was the best of the handful of current films that I saw in preparation to vote for the SAG awards. It didn't blow me away but there was some swell acting and it was an interesting story. You wouldn't think you could get an entire feature out of speech therapy, would you?
So to recap I thought that The Kids Are All Right and The Social Network were dull and overrated, Black Swan was ok, especially the last half hour when it all got surreal, Rabbit Hole was ok, and King's Speech was slightly better than the rest. Kind of lukewarm, I know, but I wonder what it would be like if there were 'posthumous' Oscars for old films? Let's revote on 1939! 1968! 1975! 1988! Who would win?
February 2011
It's all an Illusion, isn't it?
Last night I went to the cinema and saw 'The Illusionist.' WARNING: Here be spoilers! I'm generally fond of animation, maybe because I can't draw a lick. Too, I generally shun the typical Hollywood blockbuster as so much drek which is why I'm quite attracted to offbeat stuff like 'The Illusionist.' It lived up to that, no doubt about it. It is just so different than anything else out there. The animation is topnotch, for a start. In many places it looked like film. And there is very little dialogue, so they didn't have to blow most of the budget on 'names' doing the characterizations. Perhaps there's hope for film yet if such a quirky idea can actually get made as a quality film. As you may know, it concerns a fellow doing sleight of hand tricks in run down theaters who ends up in Scotland, where he befriends a young girl. This is Hollywood Divergence #1--there's nothing salacious about it. The filmmaker feels no need to explain how anything happens, but given the absence of dialogue, everything you need to know is shown, for Hollywood Divergence #2. For example, the very bittersweet ending where our protagonist sets his big mean bunny free you can see his anguish and even that of the bunny, which harks back to the scene where the girl, Alice, makes soup and he thinks that, since bunny is nowhere to be seen, that it is 'soupe lapin.' It wasn't, though. So when he lets bunny go, I would have puddled up if I weren't such a bitter, jaded son of a gun. Alice eventually connects with a dashing young man, bunny hops around freely in a field with other bunnies, but what does the Illusionist have? A long, boring train ride to the next crappy gig. And this after he had taken other jobs to make enough money to support himself and Alice in Edinburgh, including working in a garage, to hilarious effect, and demonstrating in a department store, since the illusion game generally doesn't pay enough to support one person and a bunny, never mind two people. As is perhaps obvious, my favorite character was the big fat bunny, who snaps and bites at everyone, even the Illusionist, but even so is known to occasionally nap on the Illusionist's lap. There are many such poignant moments, as well as many sight gags, but, again, it is all so bittersweet and so different from typical film fare, I would certainly recommend it if you favor things off the beaten path.
I'll look forward to seeing it again once the dvd hits the library, for it's the kind of film that you can watch more than once and always get something new out of it.
In the realm of television, I've lately watched all seven of the Prime Suspect series, with Helen Mirren, and therein you can find topnotch acting and quality writing. Sadly, these things are in short supply sometimes and it is refreshing to see quality work, even if the first of them goes back twenty years. Word on the street is that Hollywood is doing an 'Americanized' version, and along with the same rumor about the Steig Larsson books, the hope here is that they minimize the damage. In this, the age of lowered expectations, the best that we can hope for is that things don't get screwed up too much.
March 2011
I'll look forward to seeing it again once the dvd hits the library, for it's the kind of film that you can watch more than once and always get something new out of it.
In the realm of television, I've lately watched all seven of the Prime Suspect series, with Helen Mirren, and therein you can find topnotch acting and quality writing. Sadly, these things are in short supply sometimes and it is refreshing to see quality work, even if the first of them goes back twenty years. Word on the street is that Hollywood is doing an 'Americanized' version, and along with the same rumor about the Steig Larsson books, the hope here is that they minimize the damage. In this, the age of lowered expectations, the best that we can hope for is that things don't get screwed up too much.
March 2011
England '93
In November of 1993, I went to England to fulfill a longstanding desire to see London and Liverpool. While there, I kept a journal and herewith are some excerpts:
The very first entry:
11/1/93 6 am local time London
One notices a striking similarity between Britain and the US--the graffiti--it looks the same everywhere. People here do seem to be more reticent about littering; the underground is quite clean and litter-free.
11/2 Tue.
1st stop--Harrods. The world famous dept store is huge. I spent abt. 2 1/2 hrs. wandering about. My original intention was to purchase a derby to keep my poor head warm and dry. After all, a Florida Marlins cap is fine for the States but it's just not London. When I arrived at the hat department I saw that the cheapest derby was 99 pounds. That put a quick kibosh on that idea. Then I thought I'd get a woolen or cloth workers cap.
Ha! 39 pounds to start. Oh, well, Marlins it is.
11/4 Tue.
Then the tube to Abbey Rd. and there it was--a white bldg with an iron fence around it with graffiti everywhere. I snapped a few pics then went inside to ask where the infamous zebra crossing was. The Pinkerton said he hadn't a clue but he knew it was in another part of London. I thought, 'Right, you lyin' bastard, I know it's around here.' But I didn't say it. After all, mustn't be an ugly American! So I asked him
if I could ask the receptionist and he growled at me. So I asked her and it was right outside where the statue was, I took lots o' shots, but I could not get one of myself crossing as it was rush hour and much too crowded. So I walked across 6 times instead!
11/6 Sat.
Went to Tower Bridge today. Quite a feat of engineering for 1894 as the tour proved. The Tower of London I
thought would be a small tower--here's the jewels, here's where Walter Raleigh was gaoled, and that's it.
Wrong! It's huge, has a drained moat, ravens (if they ever disappear, England will die, but they seem to be captives), and lots of rooms and chambers to roam. I had a nifty guidebook about it but I must have left it
on the tube because I sure can't find it.
11/8 Monday
Took the tube to Brixton last night to see Deep Purple. Box office closed, sidled up to a scalper and asked how much?--Whadja want, one then? Thirty quid.--Haven't got it.--How much then?--No way on thirty--Name your price, mate I've only got two left and I want to go home--I'll give you twenty--Right, give us the twenty then.
Not a bad show for a bunch of old geezers; the crowd was sure into it--and except for the fellow who did a bad
Ian Gillan imitation and screamed in my ear, a jolly good time. A fitting final night in London. Next stop-NYC.
These are the actual entries as I wrote them at the time. At the time a pound was about $1.60. That Deep Purple show was one of the last with original guitarist Blackmore and was the best of the three times that I've seen them. One was in '07, here in NYC. Talk about geezers! I did see them once in '84 at the Cow Palace in San Francisco when they and I were young(er). I also saw Ginger Baker, best known for his work with Cream, and Danish bassist Jonas Hellborg in London which was very good too. I think I still have the poster around somewhere and I def. have Ginger Baker's drumstick.
May 2011
The very first entry:
11/1/93 6 am local time London
One notices a striking similarity between Britain and the US--the graffiti--it looks the same everywhere. People here do seem to be more reticent about littering; the underground is quite clean and litter-free.
11/2 Tue.
1st stop--Harrods. The world famous dept store is huge. I spent abt. 2 1/2 hrs. wandering about. My original intention was to purchase a derby to keep my poor head warm and dry. After all, a Florida Marlins cap is fine for the States but it's just not London. When I arrived at the hat department I saw that the cheapest derby was 99 pounds. That put a quick kibosh on that idea. Then I thought I'd get a woolen or cloth workers cap.
Ha! 39 pounds to start. Oh, well, Marlins it is.
11/4 Tue.
Then the tube to Abbey Rd. and there it was--a white bldg with an iron fence around it with graffiti everywhere. I snapped a few pics then went inside to ask where the infamous zebra crossing was. The Pinkerton said he hadn't a clue but he knew it was in another part of London. I thought, 'Right, you lyin' bastard, I know it's around here.' But I didn't say it. After all, mustn't be an ugly American! So I asked him
if I could ask the receptionist and he growled at me. So I asked her and it was right outside where the statue was, I took lots o' shots, but I could not get one of myself crossing as it was rush hour and much too crowded. So I walked across 6 times instead!
11/6 Sat.
Went to Tower Bridge today. Quite a feat of engineering for 1894 as the tour proved. The Tower of London I
thought would be a small tower--here's the jewels, here's where Walter Raleigh was gaoled, and that's it.
Wrong! It's huge, has a drained moat, ravens (if they ever disappear, England will die, but they seem to be captives), and lots of rooms and chambers to roam. I had a nifty guidebook about it but I must have left it
on the tube because I sure can't find it.
11/8 Monday
Took the tube to Brixton last night to see Deep Purple. Box office closed, sidled up to a scalper and asked how much?--Whadja want, one then? Thirty quid.--Haven't got it.--How much then?--No way on thirty--Name your price, mate I've only got two left and I want to go home--I'll give you twenty--Right, give us the twenty then.
Not a bad show for a bunch of old geezers; the crowd was sure into it--and except for the fellow who did a bad
Ian Gillan imitation and screamed in my ear, a jolly good time. A fitting final night in London. Next stop-NYC.
These are the actual entries as I wrote them at the time. At the time a pound was about $1.60. That Deep Purple show was one of the last with original guitarist Blackmore and was the best of the three times that I've seen them. One was in '07, here in NYC. Talk about geezers! I did see them once in '84 at the Cow Palace in San Francisco when they and I were young(er). I also saw Ginger Baker, best known for his work with Cream, and Danish bassist Jonas Hellborg in London which was very good too. I think I still have the poster around somewhere and I def. have Ginger Baker's drumstick.
May 2011
Warm.
After the winter that we had, I for one am glad glad glad it is warm. I revel in being warm, having about froze the last eight months or so. I hope it's in the 80s for the next six months.
Many folks are always cold. My mom is one of these. I used to needle her about it, but now those chickens have come home to roost. I myself am much more sensitive to cold than I used to be, and I can well understand the impulse to move somewhere warm once the chill settles in the old bones. Fortunately for me my mom has too much class to gloat over my newfound sensitivity, but I wouldn't blame her if she did.
It occurs to me that I've never once lived anywhere that had air conditioning, so when I go somewhere like the grocery that has it cranked up it's not real comfy for me. I hear so many people say they couldn't live without it, what will they do when there's not enough electricity to go around and it's no longer possible to live in 65 degree temps when it's 88 outside? Won't bother me at all but they'll be out of luck! Personally I'm fine with having a fan and wearing less clothes when it's warm. You do remember that just a couple of weeks ago it was like 45 degrees and rainy and windy. Not very spring like if you ask me.
All through November, December, January, February, March, April, and most of May, whenever I took an icy gust to the face I thought 'Soon, soon it'll be warmer and I'll be strolling along here in short trousers.'
That has now come to pass, and I am the most appreciative camper around. At no time will anyone hear me complain about being too hot. Warm. It's warm at last.
May 2011
Many folks are always cold. My mom is one of these. I used to needle her about it, but now those chickens have come home to roost. I myself am much more sensitive to cold than I used to be, and I can well understand the impulse to move somewhere warm once the chill settles in the old bones. Fortunately for me my mom has too much class to gloat over my newfound sensitivity, but I wouldn't blame her if she did.
It occurs to me that I've never once lived anywhere that had air conditioning, so when I go somewhere like the grocery that has it cranked up it's not real comfy for me. I hear so many people say they couldn't live without it, what will they do when there's not enough electricity to go around and it's no longer possible to live in 65 degree temps when it's 88 outside? Won't bother me at all but they'll be out of luck! Personally I'm fine with having a fan and wearing less clothes when it's warm. You do remember that just a couple of weeks ago it was like 45 degrees and rainy and windy. Not very spring like if you ask me.
All through November, December, January, February, March, April, and most of May, whenever I took an icy gust to the face I thought 'Soon, soon it'll be warmer and I'll be strolling along here in short trousers.'
That has now come to pass, and I am the most appreciative camper around. At no time will anyone hear me complain about being too hot. Warm. It's warm at last.
May 2011
Truther?
Does it make me a 'truther' if I seek the answers to the following questions?:
1. Why did the 'administration' prior to Obama's ignore numerous specific warnings about an imminent attack?
2. After having spent trillions of dollars over the years on fancy military hardware, why were the hijacked planes not stopped? Why were so many fighter jets 200 miles away from NYC and DC undertaking drills designed to practice thwarting an invasion from the former Soviet Union? At best, an extremely unlikely event but also conveniently leaving the Northeast corridor unguarded.
3. Why did the buildings fall when they were specifically designed to withstand the impact of a jumbo jet?
4. Why did they fall straight down, as an implosion, and not topple over when they were hit?
5. Why were the numerous eyewitness accounts of explosions within the buildings ignored in the official report?
6. Why was the remaining scrap metal melted down and/or shipped to China and India before it could be examined to ascertain the plausibility of the official story, that the burning jet fuel was so hot it melted the beams?
7. Why did Number 7, located down the street, fall as well despite not being touched?
8. Why was the head of the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence Service) meeting with two Senators on the morning of September 11?
9. Why were members of the Bin Laden family and other prominent Saudis flown out of the US during a time when all non military flights to or from the US were supposedly grounded?
10. Why did the FBI and the CIA deliberately thwart investigations into suspicious events and people in the days before the attacks?
I think these are important questions. It's coming up on ten years since the event, and the time is long past for some straight answers. I don't think we'll ever get them. Questioning the official story is one of America's many third rails--the possibility is never to be entertained. But what are the answers? June 2011
1. Why did the 'administration' prior to Obama's ignore numerous specific warnings about an imminent attack?
2. After having spent trillions of dollars over the years on fancy military hardware, why were the hijacked planes not stopped? Why were so many fighter jets 200 miles away from NYC and DC undertaking drills designed to practice thwarting an invasion from the former Soviet Union? At best, an extremely unlikely event but also conveniently leaving the Northeast corridor unguarded.
3. Why did the buildings fall when they were specifically designed to withstand the impact of a jumbo jet?
4. Why did they fall straight down, as an implosion, and not topple over when they were hit?
5. Why were the numerous eyewitness accounts of explosions within the buildings ignored in the official report?
6. Why was the remaining scrap metal melted down and/or shipped to China and India before it could be examined to ascertain the plausibility of the official story, that the burning jet fuel was so hot it melted the beams?
7. Why did Number 7, located down the street, fall as well despite not being touched?
8. Why was the head of the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence Service) meeting with two Senators on the morning of September 11?
9. Why were members of the Bin Laden family and other prominent Saudis flown out of the US during a time when all non military flights to or from the US were supposedly grounded?
10. Why did the FBI and the CIA deliberately thwart investigations into suspicious events and people in the days before the attacks?
I think these are important questions. It's coming up on ten years since the event, and the time is long past for some straight answers. I don't think we'll ever get them. Questioning the official story is one of America's many third rails--the possibility is never to be entertained. But what are the answers? June 2011
See: Show business, no business like.
On Thursday the second instant, I was sitting on the train on my way home when I got to thinking. I'd seen an awful lot of people toting guitars around for some reason and it occurred to me that it was past time that I played a set o'music. So, somewhat on the spur of the moment, I went to the Bohemian Beer Garden near my home in Astoria and spoke to the manager. Oh, I gave him my best spiel; about how I can entertain an audience, and how I play the kind of tunes people like to sing along to, and more importantly, drink beer to. I really laid it on thick. Mr. Manager, a burly fellow with a long goatee, said, 'What do you want from me?' and I replied, 'An opportunity to play.' He said, 'I'll give you the opportunity. What do you want from me?' I said, ' I don't care so much about the money, I just want to play, believe it or not' so he said, 'What are you doing tomorrow?' to which I replied, 'Uh, I'm working.' We eventually decided on an evening in the following week along with a time frame and a payment, and I was off homeward to rehearse. This is in marked contrast to last summer when I tried to book a gig there, the fellow wanted a cd which I happily provided but from then on I got a major runaround upon following up. The manager ( a different fellow) was never there or busy or what have you and I never did get an answer.
Now the question becomes what to play? I felt that the thing to do would be to play the best of the 60s and 70s like I said I would and do less originals and obscurities, so people hopefully would really sing along and tap their feet and drink beer. So I got a tentative set list together. Then the logistics of the matter. I had to get my amplifier, PA system, guitar, microphone stand, and what have you over to the venue, which is a few blocks from my house. Luckily, they let me borrow one of their hand trucks to load in. The day of the gig dawns, I go get the hand truck, walk to my house, load up the equipment, take it to the beer garden, go back to my house, get the rest of the stuff, go back to the venue, and start setting up. By the way it was 95 degrees out. I think by the time I was done setting up, I was about all worn out!
So. I had a nice neat list of songs to play, everything was plugged in and ready to go, and there I stood in the stage lights, all set for a fun night of entertainment.
Then I died a death.
I'm telling you that I went over like a lead balloon. I just couldn't make them pay attention. Foolishly, I had forgotten to bring a towel and it was difficult to keep my hands dry and if that wasn't enough, I wasn't 100% healthy, but there aren't any excuses. I just bombed. I made some careless mistakes and I'm sorry to say that I let the audience's lack of attention affect my focus. I wasn't concentrating as much as I should have been. Not that I played badly, mind you, except for those mistakes, but I wasn't on top of it as much as I should have been. This upset me. I take pride in performing as best I can and I consider myself a professional (for the moment we will leave aside the question of how others consider me) and to fumble the ball, so to speak, grieves me severely. But what to do? Anyone can have an off night. But then I had to lug everything back home in the heat, which didn't improve my mood any. I played thirty songs and I got applause after a grand total of one. No one was even listening. Ah, the hell with it. I'm tired of whining. The world doesn't care if I had a dud gig.
If you play a song and no one listens, did you make a sound? June 2011
Now the question becomes what to play? I felt that the thing to do would be to play the best of the 60s and 70s like I said I would and do less originals and obscurities, so people hopefully would really sing along and tap their feet and drink beer. So I got a tentative set list together. Then the logistics of the matter. I had to get my amplifier, PA system, guitar, microphone stand, and what have you over to the venue, which is a few blocks from my house. Luckily, they let me borrow one of their hand trucks to load in. The day of the gig dawns, I go get the hand truck, walk to my house, load up the equipment, take it to the beer garden, go back to my house, get the rest of the stuff, go back to the venue, and start setting up. By the way it was 95 degrees out. I think by the time I was done setting up, I was about all worn out!
So. I had a nice neat list of songs to play, everything was plugged in and ready to go, and there I stood in the stage lights, all set for a fun night of entertainment.
Then I died a death.
I'm telling you that I went over like a lead balloon. I just couldn't make them pay attention. Foolishly, I had forgotten to bring a towel and it was difficult to keep my hands dry and if that wasn't enough, I wasn't 100% healthy, but there aren't any excuses. I just bombed. I made some careless mistakes and I'm sorry to say that I let the audience's lack of attention affect my focus. I wasn't concentrating as much as I should have been. Not that I played badly, mind you, except for those mistakes, but I wasn't on top of it as much as I should have been. This upset me. I take pride in performing as best I can and I consider myself a professional (for the moment we will leave aside the question of how others consider me) and to fumble the ball, so to speak, grieves me severely. But what to do? Anyone can have an off night. But then I had to lug everything back home in the heat, which didn't improve my mood any. I played thirty songs and I got applause after a grand total of one. No one was even listening. Ah, the hell with it. I'm tired of whining. The world doesn't care if I had a dud gig.
If you play a song and no one listens, did you make a sound? June 2011
Keep on rocking that piano...
On a Saturday afternoon in mid-June it was very warm and I decided to take the ferry to Staten Island, which is free, in order to get out on the water and some fresh sea air. It was an enjoyable ride and when I got to the Island, I strolled over to the small ballpark that's there, having some idle thought that I could maybe score a free ticket. Well, it turns out that no one was around, presumably because the team was away or playing that night, but what do you suppose was sitting in the small courtyard near the box office but a piano? Just sitting there like it grew out of the ground. It looked lonesome so I had to sit down and play it. So I banged away for the thirty minutes it took to run through my limited repertoire and took the boat back to Manhattan. The next day I made my usual sojourn to Astoria Park and what do you think? There was a piano sitting there too! It is some sort of cultural program that seeds keyboards here & there in the city for anyone to play. Now there's a worthy thing, if you ask me. Of course it's polite to wait your turn if someone else is playing, and not to hog it if someone is waiting. But really the only drawback I could see is, being as they are outside and exposed, half the keys don't sound and the other half are horrendously out of tune. What the heck, the way I play it doesn't make much difference anyway. So there I was, sitting in Astoria banging away last week. Some folks were gathered around and one lady asks, 'Is this your piano?' and I replied, 'Yeah, I brought it over from home.' She smiled and nodded approvingly and I thought, good gosh, does she actually believe that I put it on my shoulder and brought it to the park? Next time I see her I'll have to sell her my beachfront property in Vegas......
But I went to the park on July 3 to exercise and then to play but the piano was gone. The program must be over. Too bad, I really needed the practice! July 2011
But I went to the park on July 3 to exercise and then to play but the piano was gone. The program must be over. Too bad, I really needed the practice! July 2011
Maybe we should have a monarchy
It's pretty clear that the USG is openly hostile to the aspirations of working people. I mean, slashing or eliminating so many government initiatives that benefit so many Americans so that the ruling elite can have still more? My goodness, a large majority in this country want a cessation of hostilities in the six majority-Muslim countries we are currently occupying and/or bombing, higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporate entities, justice for the victims of torture and mass murder in the last and present administrations, and jobs jobs jobs. The fact that none of these things has a prayer of happening makes me wonder how we can continue to pretend to be a democracy. So what do you think about having a king or queen?
This is what some members of Congress thought about the abdication of Edward VIII in December 1936:
Senator Gore (OK) 'If I had been King I would have had the coronation in due course, then married this woman, then said to the world it's your move next.' (This senator was related to Gore Vidal, not Al Gore.)
Rep Clark (ID) 'I regret that the King didn't fight it out with the old fossils who run the British Empire.'
Senator Burke (NE) 'I think if the King loves the woman, he ought to marry her.'
Senator Wheeler (MT) 'I think he's foolish to abdicate....tremendous stupidity has been displayed by (Prime Minister) Baldwin and the King.'
Anybody listening? August 2011
This is what some members of Congress thought about the abdication of Edward VIII in December 1936:
Senator Gore (OK) 'If I had been King I would have had the coronation in due course, then married this woman, then said to the world it's your move next.' (This senator was related to Gore Vidal, not Al Gore.)
Rep Clark (ID) 'I regret that the King didn't fight it out with the old fossils who run the British Empire.'
Senator Burke (NE) 'I think if the King loves the woman, he ought to marry her.'
Senator Wheeler (MT) 'I think he's foolish to abdicate....tremendous stupidity has been displayed by (Prime Minister) Baldwin and the King.'
Anybody listening? August 2011
Proper speling is important.
A free service provided by your friends at Chocolate Frosted Bloggos.
Discreet: Wise or judicious in avoiding mistakes; prudent; circumspect.
Discrete: Detached from others; separate; distinct; discontinuous.
Your: The possessive form of you.
You're: Contraction meaning 'you are.'
Etc.: Abbreviation meaning 'and so forth.'
Ect.: No meaning in English.
There: Denoting a place.
Their: Possession of a group of people.
This message has been brought to you by Chocolate Frosted Bloggos--The tasty, chocolatey blog treat your
child or man-child or woman-child is guaranteed to hate the least!
September 2011
Discreet: Wise or judicious in avoiding mistakes; prudent; circumspect.
Discrete: Detached from others; separate; distinct; discontinuous.
Your: The possessive form of you.
You're: Contraction meaning 'you are.'
Etc.: Abbreviation meaning 'and so forth.'
Ect.: No meaning in English.
There: Denoting a place.
Their: Possession of a group of people.
This message has been brought to you by Chocolate Frosted Bloggos--The tasty, chocolatey blog treat your
child or man-child or woman-child is guaranteed to hate the least!
September 2011
What I did on my vacation.
See last year's entries for my exciting trip to Europe. This year, all I could afford was a 'staycation' so I took a few day trips, worked on a play that I'm writing and one that I'm rehearsing, worked on some comedy stuff, spent quality time with the cat.
On the first day I had a rehearsal, but on the second day, which also happened to be my birthday, I wanted to go someplace that was a short train ride, inexpensive, yet also cool. I decided to go to Fraunces tavern downtown. It's the oldest building still standing in the city, built in 1719, and among other notables, George Washington held strategy meetings there. Some of it is still a functioning tavern, and while it was a little early in the day to start lushing it up, I did make a mental note to go back some evening. Some of the premises is preserved the way it was in Washington's time, and a brief guided tour was most interesting. As it was a really nice day I strolled along Battery Park and the west side and soaked up some rays until it was time to go. Monday I decided to go out on the 7 train to Corona Park and explore that area, which, according to the relevant website, had mini golf. So I wandered around a while, on another beautiful day, and found the mini golf tucked into a corner near the tennis courts and proper golf course. Eight dollars to play and I have to say that I've played mini golf in many places and this one takes the prize as the lamest. By a wide margin. Each hole was like five feet long and straight as a string, an easy one or two. No obstacles, no particular challenge. Just as weak as can be.
Tuesday I went on the Chinatown bus for a day trip to Philadelphia. Only $20 round trip, can't beat that. I wanted to see the Rosenbach museum and library, as they have a huge collection of rare books, which is an interest of mine. Now Philadelphia is an interesting place. It kind of has the advantages of a big city without so much sprawl and of course is positively dripping with history. Of course I was only there for a few hours, so you can't go by such a small sample, but I'll have to get back out there soon.
Wednesday I had rehearsal but Thursday I was determined to see the Scorsese documentary on George Harrison, which had a limited theater release here, and Thursday was the last day, so I took advantage of the 12.00 matinee. There were maybe a dozen people there and it was nice to have some elbow room. It was awfully long at three hours plus but it didn't feel long, which is the sign of a good film. It was very entertaining and although I'd thought I'd seen every frame of Beatle footage there was, there were some surprises even for so jaded a fan as me. No doubt it will be on dvd shortly and I for one wouldn't mind owning my own copy, assuming a reasonable price.
So those are the highlights, the rest of the week was occupied with rehearsals, writing, lounging in various parks, and an audition for Madame Bovary. I really must learn a new Shakespeare monologue; the one I've been using from Titus Andronicus is getting a bit stale. Next up, tentatively scheduled for January, a trip down south to visit Mom and maybe see Graceland.
October 2011
On the first day I had a rehearsal, but on the second day, which also happened to be my birthday, I wanted to go someplace that was a short train ride, inexpensive, yet also cool. I decided to go to Fraunces tavern downtown. It's the oldest building still standing in the city, built in 1719, and among other notables, George Washington held strategy meetings there. Some of it is still a functioning tavern, and while it was a little early in the day to start lushing it up, I did make a mental note to go back some evening. Some of the premises is preserved the way it was in Washington's time, and a brief guided tour was most interesting. As it was a really nice day I strolled along Battery Park and the west side and soaked up some rays until it was time to go. Monday I decided to go out on the 7 train to Corona Park and explore that area, which, according to the relevant website, had mini golf. So I wandered around a while, on another beautiful day, and found the mini golf tucked into a corner near the tennis courts and proper golf course. Eight dollars to play and I have to say that I've played mini golf in many places and this one takes the prize as the lamest. By a wide margin. Each hole was like five feet long and straight as a string, an easy one or two. No obstacles, no particular challenge. Just as weak as can be.
Tuesday I went on the Chinatown bus for a day trip to Philadelphia. Only $20 round trip, can't beat that. I wanted to see the Rosenbach museum and library, as they have a huge collection of rare books, which is an interest of mine. Now Philadelphia is an interesting place. It kind of has the advantages of a big city without so much sprawl and of course is positively dripping with history. Of course I was only there for a few hours, so you can't go by such a small sample, but I'll have to get back out there soon.
Wednesday I had rehearsal but Thursday I was determined to see the Scorsese documentary on George Harrison, which had a limited theater release here, and Thursday was the last day, so I took advantage of the 12.00 matinee. There were maybe a dozen people there and it was nice to have some elbow room. It was awfully long at three hours plus but it didn't feel long, which is the sign of a good film. It was very entertaining and although I'd thought I'd seen every frame of Beatle footage there was, there were some surprises even for so jaded a fan as me. No doubt it will be on dvd shortly and I for one wouldn't mind owning my own copy, assuming a reasonable price.
So those are the highlights, the rest of the week was occupied with rehearsals, writing, lounging in various parks, and an audition for Madame Bovary. I really must learn a new Shakespeare monologue; the one I've been using from Titus Andronicus is getting a bit stale. Next up, tentatively scheduled for January, a trip down south to visit Mom and maybe see Graceland.
October 2011
Movin' on from town to town
It was an epiphany. Suddenly I woke up, and thought 'What the hell am I doing in this crappy basement apartment?' I mean, the neighborhood is nice and I like being close to the park and the river, but the bottom line is that this is a crappy basement apartment. Poorly maintained and tiny. I didn't help matters by being a miserable housekeeper, either. So when the landlady told me that certain plumbing issues would never, repeat never, be fixed, I thought, the hell with this, I'm out of here. So I started looking. Criteria: cat friendly, under a grand, and no more basements! I started by looking on Craigslist and was immediately surprised at how few prospective landlords returned my messages. Easily 95% of my calls were ignored. Strange. Presumably any decent advert placed will get zillions of responses so that is likely to be the reason, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. Eventually I ascertained that I didn't want to live in the Bronx, I couldn't afford Queens, and the hinterlands of Brooklyn were too far away. Then someone suggested New Jersey. Hmmm. Right across the river, accessible via PATH, possibly lower cost of living.....Hmmm. So I went out there to look around at the various neighborhoods. Not bad. I got tired of Craigslist pretty quickly so I started looking online for proper realtors and eventually found some promising places and moved in to one of them last week. A one-bedroom, cat friendly, at least twice the size of my last place, close to the PATH, near amenities, and mine all mine. A brand new kitchen (although jeez, the smoke detectors are really sensitive, which is good, I think, but why does my space heater set them off?) A place where I'd be happy to have company over. It's even suitable for ladies! Honest. My broken down old body was not up to moving by myself, so I went back on good old Craigslist and found one that seemed reputable. I contracted for two strong guys and one big truck for $60 per hour, and they not only arrived on time but sent three guys, for $80 an hour. Which I figured was all right since the job would be done that much quicker. And I was right, for they started at 8.10 and unloaded the last of it at twenty to twelve, three and a half hours on the nose. When they were done packing the old place up, they said, OK, we'll see you over there, and I said, can't I come with you, I got no car. They said it was illegal for four of us to be in the cab of the truck so I said I'll just ride in back with the cat, and they said that's even more illegal! So I said surely you don't expect me to let perfect stranger ride off into the sunset with everything I own and the cat too? And they said, are you kidding? With the stuff you got? Which I had to admit was not only a good line but pretty well true. So off I went on the subway, and just as they said, by the time I got there they were almost done. All in all, a pretty smooth move. I've got my internet hooked up and will assemble the new bookcase and dresser this weekend and thus can get the clothes and remaining books off the floor, which will be good. I might even get a small piece of carpet! Kitty is adjusting pretty well as near as I can tell after seven years of living in the same place. I was watching when she discovered the windows! She was sprawled on the easy chair, happy because it was a familiar thing, and then she sort of looked around and it caught her eye, and she gave it a good hard squint, maybe you've seen it when a kitty is intrigued, their neck sort of bobs up and down and you could almost see the wheels turning---'hmm, two big windows to look out of, wait, was that a bird? I think it was! And the sun is right on me when I lie on the windowsill. Maybe this place isn't so bad after all. It doesn't smell like home but maybe it will someday.' It's been a week and she seems to be less nervous and a little more used to it. This wasn't helped by the fact that for the first four nights in the new place I was gone from nine in the morning till one the next morning as I was doing a play in addition to working. In fact, said play did so well that it made money for the producers and so the cast will get a little bonus in addition to the possibility of more shows in January. Stay tuned...... (addendum from January--we might have more shows over the summer, but not in January. Also I thought I'd lost my concert-used Ginger Baker drumstick in moving but found it again the other day.)
December 2011
December 2011
Your Pantheon of Actors
Who is in your pantheon of actors? By that I mean who would you drop everything to see? What performers will you make time for no matter what? Supposing that you notice that Double Indemnity is on tonight. Are Barbara Stanwyck and/or Fred MacMurray on your pantheon of actors, like they are on mine? My Complete Pantheon:
John Cleese
William Shatner
Barbara Stanwyck
Fred MacMurray
Humphrey Bogart
Carroll O'Connor
Lucille Ball
Jack Webb
Sean Connery
Robert Young
Mind you, I reserve the right to add/subtract/change my pantheon at my leisure.
Who is in your pantheon? Anyone else get a strange, comforting feeling seeing Honeymooners and Twilight Zone marathons over the weekend like in the old days?
January 2012
John Cleese
William Shatner
Barbara Stanwyck
Fred MacMurray
Humphrey Bogart
Carroll O'Connor
Lucille Ball
Jack Webb
Sean Connery
Robert Young
Mind you, I reserve the right to add/subtract/change my pantheon at my leisure.
Who is in your pantheon? Anyone else get a strange, comforting feeling seeing Honeymooners and Twilight Zone marathons over the weekend like in the old days?
January 2012
The Play's the Thing, or at least it should be.
We are proceeding apace with rehearsals for my play 'Never Underestimate Karma,' which will be opening on the evening of February 13. Or at least we were until I got an email this morning, less than a week before we open, from my leading lady telling me she got a gig she likes better and has quit us. Stunningly unprofessional. But I am determined to put this show up and I am not going to quit. So, I solicited actresses on the Short Play Lab facebook page and have several prospective replacements coming in to read with me and the other gentleman who is in the cast. See the Coming Up! page for more details if you are in the NYC area, or even if you're not.
February 2012
February 2012
The Play's the Thing, and it is!
We were so fortunate as to find the wondrous Casey Ann Hayward to co-star in our play! Along with the
perfectly cast Angelo Angrisani, we are even doing more performances in March! See the Coming Up! page for all the lowdown. Don't miss it--even if you did! (Also I'm directing one of the other shows on the bill
so don't miss that one either.)
March 2012
perfectly cast Angelo Angrisani, we are even doing more performances in March! See the Coming Up! page for all the lowdown. Don't miss it--even if you did! (Also I'm directing one of the other shows on the bill
so don't miss that one either.)
March 2012
Are Actors Cattle?
Alfred Hitchcock was supposed to have said that actors are cattle, but what he really said was that actors should be treated like cattle, which is a different thing. But no. Actors are not cattle nor should they be treated like animals. Having recently done some directing and having acted quite a bit, I've found that, in taking to and directing actors (at least for the stage) one should always accentuate the positive and couch changes in the most neutral terms, like 'Let's try it this way and see what happens.' Actors are pretty sensitive, most of them, and it's generally best to tread lightly. Of course it's better to have experienced performers, as I don't like to micro direct, much better to let them have their head and then tweak from there. Speaking of talented, experienced actors, I couldn't have been luckier than to have worked with five topnotch performers in our recent productions at the Producers Club and Roy Arias Studios. So here is public kudos to my co-stars in Never Underestimate Karma, the wondrous Casey Ann Hayward and the amazing Angelo Angrisani, and my charges in Limo Guy, Kelly Barrett, Michael Rehse, and Ashley Marinaccio. A splendid job by one and all! All, including me, will be seen on the stage again soon, so stay tuned!
March 2012
March 2012
Boris the Spider
When I was a very young lad, we lived in Hamden, Connecticut, and I remember swinging on our swing set one fine day when all of a sudden I saw a big (to me) spider perched quite close to me. I did a little-kid freakout and was nervous for a while afterwards, wondering if more spiders were out to get me. Now that I think of it, if that happened today I'd probably be drugged into insensibility but what my father did at the time was Solomonesque in its wisdom. He took me to the library and we looked for a book that would explain spiders to little kids and help them not be afraid of our arachnid friends any more. I can't remember the name of the book but I can sort of see it in my mind's eye. It did the trick--the more I learned about them, the less I was afraid. How's that for a lesson in dealing with our increasingly toxic (in every sense of the word) society? Battling fear and ignorance with knowledge and learning? Who knew?
May 2012
May 2012
All the World's a Stage, and the men and women merely players.
Finished in fine fashion our production of As You Like It, and jumped right into rehearsal for Hamlet. My play
Shamus, in which I'll play a hard-boiled private eye, should if all goes well be ready for production in September and maybe another of my pieces up in the fall, so stay tuned!
June 2012
Shamus, in which I'll play a hard-boiled private eye, should if all goes well be ready for production in September and maybe another of my pieces up in the fall, so stay tuned!
June 2012
Days of Future Past
I'm about halfway through Stephen King's latest, 11/23/1963, which concerns a fellow who is apprised of a way to travel back in time, to 1958, and back he goes to try to kill Lee Oswald before he can make it to Dealey Plaza. Naturally there are several observations by the main character about the differences in American society between 2011 and 1958, and it makes my desire to travel back in time even more acute. I do NOT want to go forward in time as it's difficult enough watching America commit slow suicide as it is, but how interesting it would be to have a look at the way things used to be from a firsthand perspective. It's a common belief that people were much less frightened, paranoid, and distrustful of one another then than now, and that is an accurate assessment in my view. 24-hours-a-day yapping was decades away, and newsgathering organizations actually felt a responsibility to society as a whole rather than a handful of shareholders and thus did their best most of the time to accurately and objectively report the news as opposed to promoting a particular political agenda. Doors left unlocked, neighbors caring for one another instead of being fearful they might have or get something you have or want, and a general sense of the common good as opposed to today's I've got mine, the heck with you. Of course, I wasn't even around in '58, and I am not saying everything was perfect then or that everything sucks now. Certainly at that time women were quite constrained in their lives and were expected to make the damn dinner and shut up, and people of color were second class citizens plain and simple. But over the course of reading the first half of the book, you know what I found myself wanting the most, based on Mr. King's description? The food. Fifty-four years ago at this writing, food was much fresher with many less chemicals and preservatives. Partly this was because a lot of those things hadn't been discovered or invented yet, partly because there were many more small family farms growing locally, and partly because feeding people cheap crap in order to increase profits was not yet on the radar. And of course most folks neither knew nor cared about things like cholesterol, and there was a relative lack of understanding of nutrition. That reminds me that I read a story about a ballplayer, can't remember offhand who it was, but he was prescribed a diet by his doctor for whatever reason of steak and eggs for every meal! Tasty, but I can hear those arteries slamming shut from here! Of course, this begs the question that if we know so much more about nutrition nowadays, why aren't we healthier? The reason of course is the ever-pervasive money-grubbing that has taken hold in our society. It seems to me that that is the biggest change between '58 and '12--it used to be considered wrong to be selfish and greedy, and now it's not. But I'll let you know once I've perfected my time machine. Ha! It'd be just my luck to pull an H.G. Wells and go into the future to the year 600,000 or something. I wonder what things will be like then? Wait, no I don't.
July 2012
July 2012
Why ask 'why?' Why not ask 'why not?'
In what is unfortunately becoming a predictable pattern, in the aftermath of the massacre in Aurora, Colorado, we watch and listen as commentators from Obama on down dance around the big honking blood soaked elephant in the room and avoid the issue of easy availability of guns in America. Sadly, we have decided (or it's been decided for us) on a policy of guns for all, and of course this inevitably leads to horrendous occurrences like the Batman slaughter. Then we see a temporary bump in discussions about gun control, (and possibly a bit about untreated mental illness) then we see the NRA bribe Congress to maintain the status quo, and it's back to square one. We really should be honest with ourselves and admit that with our gun saturated society, mass murder will be much easier and therefore more commonplace than if we controlled weapons. But we'll always have the NRA and their puppets continuing to willfully misinterpret the second amendment, which, as all of us patriotic Americans know says, in its entirety, 'A WELL REGULATED MILITIA, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' So there you go. A WELL REGULATED MILITIA. Not every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has been whipped into a paranoid frenzy by the right wing media, not every shlub who needs to compensate for having a teeny wang, not every clown with a healthy dose of blood lust, and not every miscreant with a grudge against small furry animals. I really think it's unlikely that the founding fathers meant to arm everyone with assault rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers. Maybe, as I saw on the net the other day, we should arm everyone with muskets. What? Guns don't kill people? Ok, let's make it harder, not easier, for people to kill people. What? If you outlaw guns, then only outlaws will have guns? Great! That will make it easier to tell the crooks from us law-abiding citizens, won't it? Look, if you want to kill a person or a deer or some such, you'll have to work for it. No more of this shooting from a distance stuff. Strangling someone or stabbing someone means you have to work a lot harder and be a lot closer to your intended victim, and I for one think that if you want to draw blood you should earn it.
July 2012
July 2012
A fairy tale, or, Once Upon a Time
I found a copy of a story that I wrote along about 1997, presented here without change.
A long time ago, in a town called Gillespie, there lived a Hungarian princess called Genny.
Princess Genny was a good princess, and a happy princess, for she was in charge of all the arts including painting, music, theater, and picture frames. She flew around on her magic milk crate and, with her bright green hair flowing in the wind, she undertook to brighter people's lives with art.
She brought music to the musicless.
She brought pictures to the pictureless.
She brought drama to the dull.
and guess what she brought to people who wanted to be framed?
Now, in a hamlet just west of Gillespie called Babalu there dwelt a wandering minstrel named Leo.
Leo moved from place to place, village to village, house to house, singing songs and playing his lute,
which after years of wandering only had one string left.
One day Leo was wandering in the forest between Gillespie and Babalu and was softly singing to himself:
Lulubelle, Lulubelle, how fair your pretty feet
Lulubelle, Lulubelle, your feet I'd like to eat
Just then, Princess Genny flew overhead on her magic milk crate. She took care to bring her invisible stick,
for it would not do for the people to see the princess of all Gillespie flying around like any old princess.
And so she was invisible to anyone who did not have a viewing rock, which very few people had, as they were quite dear.
Thus, Leo did not see her and kept singing:
Lulubelle, Lulubelle, your nose I suppose it grows
Lulubelle, Lulubelle, when it snows I throws your toes
He was on his way to serenade Lulubelle, a maiden from the wee burg of Lennin, whom Leo had been courting
for the past year. Just lately, he thought, she'd been remembering his name, and that was cause for hope.
Suddenly, up rushed a messenger. 'O wandering minstrel, favor us with your worthy tunes! It is the feast of
no return in the town of Jimi and our minstrel has lost his horn to the evil gasbag! You must help us, for what is a feast without pretty sounds?'
'Lead on, sir, to the town of Jimi' said Leo, although he was saddened that he would not be seeing Lulubelle today. But he was, after all, a wandering minstrel and he was wont to do what he did--wander, and minst.
From her position in mid-air, Princess Genny wondered what she could do the help poor Leo, who, through no fault of his own was to be deprived of the sight of the fair Lulubelle. Genny thought and thought. 'I know!'
she exclaimed. 'If I created a second Leo, one could play at the feast of no return and one could visit her
loveliness.'
She clapped her hands gaily. What a wonderful idea! And it was done.
And so one Leo travelled east to Lennin and one Leo travelled west to Jimi and each was, I'm sure, unaware of
the others' existence. Indeed, each thought he was the one and only Leo, the wandering minstrel.
But when he arrived at the dwelling of the fair Lulubelle he found her not at home. Her mother Bessie told Leo
that she was in Jimi at the feast of no return. 'Ye can find her there, now be off wi' you!' Leo and Bessie had not gotten along since Leo had accidentally tripped Bessie, who had fallen down the stairs carrying a load of rusty razors.
Thinking it over, though, Leo soon regained his cheerful demeanor. Just think, he thought, I'll soon see the fair one, and maybe there'll be a bonny trap for me at the feast, sure and why not?
So with a gladdened heart, Leo trod down the road to Jimi and before he knew it he smelt the smells and harked the sounds of the feast of no return. He whipped out his one-stringed lute and began to play.
The feast of no return is grand
The feast of no return is good
The feast of no return will never be
in your neighborhood
While he was singing, Leo scanned the crowd for the lovely Lulubelle. He saw a wizened old man at a sneezing booth and said, 'Ho! Hast thou seen the lovely Lulubelle, aged one? Tell me, and I will bard you a bard!'
Sneeze sneeze sneeze
Sneeze your troubles away
Cheese cheese cheese
Cheese will make you sneeze
The old man snorted and hawed and said, 'How many times are you going to caterwaul that miserable racket, you young whippersnapper? Now, away, away!'
Grumpy old man, thought Leo. But no matter, it's a lovely day and the mist of the fair Lulubelle is borne upon the winds:
Cloudy Day!
Skies are charcoal gray!
On our way
to the feast so gay
What's that smell?
What the hell?
Oh! Do tell!
It's just Lulubelle
The fairest of the fair!
After walking and walking all day, Leo felt hungry and stopped at the booth of buckets. He said to the proprietor one small pail, please, kind victual vendor. The proprietor slowly opened one yellow eye, and unfurled one three toed tentacle and tapped Leo on the tum.
'Ye must be hollow pail bucket where ye puttin' it?'
Leo just looked at he sloth until one of the tentacles plucked two lupins from Leo's purse, one tentacle offered one larch change, and one proffered the aforesaid pail which Leo happily gobbled.
He continued to stroll around the feast of no return singing:
Full belly full belly full belly boo
pail bucket lunch bucket maple tree too
Feeling lucky, Leo alighted at the mice-diving contest. For a pittance, he dove into the pond but failing to surface with a mouth mouse, lost his entry fee of six yew. The gimpy at the cigar-box change purse eyed Leo with his one rheumy eye and said 'U reesh trow mony way like dat.'
Leo did not wonder at the reaction of the people at the feast of no return, as most respectable citizens knew that all wandering minstrels looked alike, were generally shiftless, and in all likelihood involved in who knows what shady deals.
Suddenly there was a great commotion in the woods with trees. From within, there came a consternation that chilled Leo to the bone. Unheeding, he raced in the direction of the conflagration and so disappeared.
When he came out of the woods with trees and beheld the clearing, he saw a horrible sight, for there was the fair Lulubelle, all six hundred eighty limbaughs of her, huddled on the ground, cowering before the wrath of the evil gasbag. 'What ho!' Leo cried, rushing into the glade and confronting the beast, 'leave her alone!'
With hardly a thought, the beast turned and swatted Leo, sending him head over applecart--WHAM!--and leaving him in a heap on the ground.
Hm! thought Leo. 'Tis time to use a little strategy. Whereupon he picked up his one-stringed lute and pointed it at the beast and sang:
Music hath charmed the savage breast
If ye only close your ears
I will tame thee, a hairy beast
Your bloodshot eyes will be in tears
As Leo played, the evil gasbag began to change. First he got a little less hairy, then a little less smelly, then a little less chelly, then a little less brelly. And when Leo kept playing and the transformation was complete, Leo found himself staring at---Leo!
The Leos burst out laughing and, linking arms, left the fair Lulubelle prone on the ground and walked away, singing:
Oh, a one stringed lute
Plus a one stringed lute
makes a pair of two stringed lutes
the better to harmonize
if you listen
to our two stringed lutes
you can bet we Sympathize!
Sometime in 1997/September 2012
A long time ago, in a town called Gillespie, there lived a Hungarian princess called Genny.
Princess Genny was a good princess, and a happy princess, for she was in charge of all the arts including painting, music, theater, and picture frames. She flew around on her magic milk crate and, with her bright green hair flowing in the wind, she undertook to brighter people's lives with art.
She brought music to the musicless.
She brought pictures to the pictureless.
She brought drama to the dull.
and guess what she brought to people who wanted to be framed?
Now, in a hamlet just west of Gillespie called Babalu there dwelt a wandering minstrel named Leo.
Leo moved from place to place, village to village, house to house, singing songs and playing his lute,
which after years of wandering only had one string left.
One day Leo was wandering in the forest between Gillespie and Babalu and was softly singing to himself:
Lulubelle, Lulubelle, how fair your pretty feet
Lulubelle, Lulubelle, your feet I'd like to eat
Just then, Princess Genny flew overhead on her magic milk crate. She took care to bring her invisible stick,
for it would not do for the people to see the princess of all Gillespie flying around like any old princess.
And so she was invisible to anyone who did not have a viewing rock, which very few people had, as they were quite dear.
Thus, Leo did not see her and kept singing:
Lulubelle, Lulubelle, your nose I suppose it grows
Lulubelle, Lulubelle, when it snows I throws your toes
He was on his way to serenade Lulubelle, a maiden from the wee burg of Lennin, whom Leo had been courting
for the past year. Just lately, he thought, she'd been remembering his name, and that was cause for hope.
Suddenly, up rushed a messenger. 'O wandering minstrel, favor us with your worthy tunes! It is the feast of
no return in the town of Jimi and our minstrel has lost his horn to the evil gasbag! You must help us, for what is a feast without pretty sounds?'
'Lead on, sir, to the town of Jimi' said Leo, although he was saddened that he would not be seeing Lulubelle today. But he was, after all, a wandering minstrel and he was wont to do what he did--wander, and minst.
From her position in mid-air, Princess Genny wondered what she could do the help poor Leo, who, through no fault of his own was to be deprived of the sight of the fair Lulubelle. Genny thought and thought. 'I know!'
she exclaimed. 'If I created a second Leo, one could play at the feast of no return and one could visit her
loveliness.'
She clapped her hands gaily. What a wonderful idea! And it was done.
And so one Leo travelled east to Lennin and one Leo travelled west to Jimi and each was, I'm sure, unaware of
the others' existence. Indeed, each thought he was the one and only Leo, the wandering minstrel.
But when he arrived at the dwelling of the fair Lulubelle he found her not at home. Her mother Bessie told Leo
that she was in Jimi at the feast of no return. 'Ye can find her there, now be off wi' you!' Leo and Bessie had not gotten along since Leo had accidentally tripped Bessie, who had fallen down the stairs carrying a load of rusty razors.
Thinking it over, though, Leo soon regained his cheerful demeanor. Just think, he thought, I'll soon see the fair one, and maybe there'll be a bonny trap for me at the feast, sure and why not?
So with a gladdened heart, Leo trod down the road to Jimi and before he knew it he smelt the smells and harked the sounds of the feast of no return. He whipped out his one-stringed lute and began to play.
The feast of no return is grand
The feast of no return is good
The feast of no return will never be
in your neighborhood
While he was singing, Leo scanned the crowd for the lovely Lulubelle. He saw a wizened old man at a sneezing booth and said, 'Ho! Hast thou seen the lovely Lulubelle, aged one? Tell me, and I will bard you a bard!'
Sneeze sneeze sneeze
Sneeze your troubles away
Cheese cheese cheese
Cheese will make you sneeze
The old man snorted and hawed and said, 'How many times are you going to caterwaul that miserable racket, you young whippersnapper? Now, away, away!'
Grumpy old man, thought Leo. But no matter, it's a lovely day and the mist of the fair Lulubelle is borne upon the winds:
Cloudy Day!
Skies are charcoal gray!
On our way
to the feast so gay
What's that smell?
What the hell?
Oh! Do tell!
It's just Lulubelle
The fairest of the fair!
After walking and walking all day, Leo felt hungry and stopped at the booth of buckets. He said to the proprietor one small pail, please, kind victual vendor. The proprietor slowly opened one yellow eye, and unfurled one three toed tentacle and tapped Leo on the tum.
'Ye must be hollow pail bucket where ye puttin' it?'
Leo just looked at he sloth until one of the tentacles plucked two lupins from Leo's purse, one tentacle offered one larch change, and one proffered the aforesaid pail which Leo happily gobbled.
He continued to stroll around the feast of no return singing:
Full belly full belly full belly boo
pail bucket lunch bucket maple tree too
Feeling lucky, Leo alighted at the mice-diving contest. For a pittance, he dove into the pond but failing to surface with a mouth mouse, lost his entry fee of six yew. The gimpy at the cigar-box change purse eyed Leo with his one rheumy eye and said 'U reesh trow mony way like dat.'
Leo did not wonder at the reaction of the people at the feast of no return, as most respectable citizens knew that all wandering minstrels looked alike, were generally shiftless, and in all likelihood involved in who knows what shady deals.
Suddenly there was a great commotion in the woods with trees. From within, there came a consternation that chilled Leo to the bone. Unheeding, he raced in the direction of the conflagration and so disappeared.
When he came out of the woods with trees and beheld the clearing, he saw a horrible sight, for there was the fair Lulubelle, all six hundred eighty limbaughs of her, huddled on the ground, cowering before the wrath of the evil gasbag. 'What ho!' Leo cried, rushing into the glade and confronting the beast, 'leave her alone!'
With hardly a thought, the beast turned and swatted Leo, sending him head over applecart--WHAM!--and leaving him in a heap on the ground.
Hm! thought Leo. 'Tis time to use a little strategy. Whereupon he picked up his one-stringed lute and pointed it at the beast and sang:
Music hath charmed the savage breast
If ye only close your ears
I will tame thee, a hairy beast
Your bloodshot eyes will be in tears
As Leo played, the evil gasbag began to change. First he got a little less hairy, then a little less smelly, then a little less chelly, then a little less brelly. And when Leo kept playing and the transformation was complete, Leo found himself staring at---Leo!
The Leos burst out laughing and, linking arms, left the fair Lulubelle prone on the ground and walked away, singing:
Oh, a one stringed lute
Plus a one stringed lute
makes a pair of two stringed lutes
the better to harmonize
if you listen
to our two stringed lutes
you can bet we Sympathize!
Sometime in 1997/September 2012
My first concert.
June 1977. My sophomore year in high school has only a week or two to run, but that's not the exciting news. In fact that school year I had a perfect attendance record, didn't miss a single day, but that's not the exciting news either. (In fact, when I look back at it now, I wonder what the hell I was thinking, going to school each and every day! What an upstanding kid!) The exciting news is that my favorite band, the mighty Led Zeppelin, is in town. Well, in New York, anyway, playing at the Garden. Of course we didn't know it at the time but this would be their very last US tour. I want to go! But how? Too young to drive and anyway I don't have a ticket. But when I got to school one sunny June morning (perfect attendance, remember?) a fellow I knew, one of the cool kids, Geoff, let word get around that he had gotten a block of four and two of them were available, at $25 each, which was double the face value, if you're curious. Score! Of course, I didn't have the money, but I had managed to save up half the cost of one ticket so I then did the logical thing. It went something like this:
Mike: I'll be your slave for life if I can borrow $12.50.
Dad: You don't have to be my slave, just pay me back someday, and don't start whining when I ask you to mow the lawn.
Mike: Deal!
Pretty much everyone I knew, in school and in my neighborhood, was really into the rock and roll of the time, now celebrated/derided as 'classic rock,' so my task now was to find someone who could buy the other ticket from Geoff, who only wanted to sell his extra pair as a pair, and preferably someone who could drive us there too. I mentioned the concert in history class one day and a fellow I hung out with called Peter enthusiastically claimed the other ticket. But he was only fifteen like I was and so to close the deal he offered his mother's services as chauffeur. Not ideal, but at least we'll get there. So, with my $12.50 and Dad's $12.50 and Peter's $25, we handed over a pile of change and crumpled dollar bills to Geoff, and we were ready to go. I spent the day in excited anticipation. What would they play? Keep in mind, younger readers, that the members of Led Zeppelin had been slammed by the rock music press, which even as a clueless teen I understood was mostly pretentious drivel written by jealous failed rock stars, and so they did very little publicity and there were few pictures or press releases promoting the band. They preferred to let their music do the talking and thankfully there were no wolfhounds on the trail of each and every 'celebrity' out there, so it was possible at that time to be a bit reclusive if need be. So all day (It must have been a weekend, I don't recall having had to go to school that day, but it's a while back and I may be wrong. Now that I think of it, maybe it was during the week. As noted below, I did go to school the next day.) I wondered if they would do my favorite songs.
Eventually at last it was time to leave and Peter's mom, having good-naturedly allowed herself to be volunteered as driver, picked me up and off we went. My first concert with my favorite band! (I should say active band, as everyone knows the Beatles are the Best Band Ever, but they had been inactive for seven years by then. I still remember about 1972, going into a store in downtown Stamford with Mom & brother, saying gleefully, 'I'm going to buy the new Beatles record!' and my brother saying, 'There aren't any new Beatles records, stupid! They don't play together any more!' and I said, 'When did that happen?' and him saying, 'A couple of years ago,' and I was alternately crushed and outraged.)
Me being extremely naive and kind of gullible, Geoff had warned me before the show that I would see people taking LSD and sexing in the aisles and all kinds of mayhem. To my young imagination, this conjured up images of needles and debauchery that I didn't dare even fantasize about. But I really didn't see anything like that. Just clouds and clouds of reefer smoke and lots of flasks and wine skins. A few days earlier, a fellow in one of my classes who I barely knew but who was supposed to be a hotshot guitar player (Just like I would become, oh, thirty years later!) asked/told me to take his Instamatic and snap some photos. Not actually being able to say 'no' at that time, I said ok but I wanted copies, and he said sure. I'm still waiting!
The lights went down! A huge roar from the crowd! Would they start with 'Rock and Roll,' like in the movie?
(In 1976, you could pay your admission to the movies and sit through it as many times as you liked. I saw The Song Remains the Same a half-dozen times that way. Four bucks. Imagine that today?)
NO! It's.....it's.....what is it? Everyone is on their feet and screaming so loud I can't hear what song they are playing. Gee, it's just like the Beatles. Wait! It's....The Song Remains the Same! WOO-HOO! And we're off! Although the members of the band and the aforementioned clueless critics have characterized this tour as not their best playing, you couldn't have proven it by me, as I was hanging on every note. I had just started fooling around with guitar and had hoped to cop some licks but was sitting too far away. I've looked at seating charts of the Garden to try to figure out where we were sitting but I can't remember. It's 35 years ago (!) and my ticket stub was stolen (along with my 1969 Mets World Series tickets, may the thief rot in hell forever) and I never did get to see the pictures I took, as I've said.
So on the mighty Zeppelin played, going through their set of the time, No Quarter, Moby Dick, a bunch of stuff from Physical Graffiti, Nobody's Fault But Mine, Ten Years Gone, a fantastic acoustic set, Achilles' Last Stand, and finishing the set proper, of course, with Stairway to Heaven. At some point someone produced a smoldering, stubby little metal thing and here it came to me. Was this.......weed? I'd heard of it but never even seen it. So, just to be sociable, I tried a puff. Nothing.
Oh, well. Back to the music. Towards the end of the show some miscreant threw a firecracker on stage, hitting guitarist Jimmy Page right in the hand. He went off and came back a few minutes later with a bandage, and singer Robert Plant commented, 'It seems there's always got to be a comedian in the audience.' So they did a desultory Whole Lotta Love and that was it.
It seems that Peter was rather the worse for the wear for the 'weed' so he asked me to do all the talking on the way home so he wouldn't get 'busted.' He said that when Mom asks him how was the show, he'll say, 'Great, tell her, Mike.' So I did, the best I could.
And weren't we stars the next day in school, with our black concert T-shirts which you still see all over the place today. (I have one but not my original, which was torn to pieces five years later during drunken revelry at university. I replaced it a few years ago in a shop in Hollywood for some reason.) Our history teacher was relatively 'hip' and wanted to hear about it so we regaled him with concert tales. Forever after until graduation, I insisted that they had played 'Over the Hills and Far Away' and Peter insisted they hadn't. He kept saying, 'It's part acoustic and part electric, so there's no way they could have done it!' In a rare burst of logic from me, I said, 'Just because it's that way on the record doesn't mean they have to play it that way live!' He was not swayed by my brilliant argument. I haven't seen him since '79. I wonder if he remembers the show?
Two weeks later Pink Floyd came to town, touring behind Animals, then as now my favorite record of theirs. This time it went something like this:
Mike: I'll be your slave for life if you lend me $12.50.
Dad: What, again? You haven't paid me back from last time.
Mike: But I'm growing up so fast!
Strangely, this did not sway Dad, so no Pink Floyd for me.
Postscript: A few years ago, I happened across a sidewalk sale in downtown NYC where they were selling music dvds, including a bootleg of the 1977 Zeppelin show in Seattle, about a month after the one I saw. Generally don't go in too much for bootlegs, but this one I couldn't resist. Same staging, same costumes, mostly the same songs and boy did it bring me back.
So that's my first concert. What was yours?
October 2012
Mike: I'll be your slave for life if I can borrow $12.50.
Dad: You don't have to be my slave, just pay me back someday, and don't start whining when I ask you to mow the lawn.
Mike: Deal!
Pretty much everyone I knew, in school and in my neighborhood, was really into the rock and roll of the time, now celebrated/derided as 'classic rock,' so my task now was to find someone who could buy the other ticket from Geoff, who only wanted to sell his extra pair as a pair, and preferably someone who could drive us there too. I mentioned the concert in history class one day and a fellow I hung out with called Peter enthusiastically claimed the other ticket. But he was only fifteen like I was and so to close the deal he offered his mother's services as chauffeur. Not ideal, but at least we'll get there. So, with my $12.50 and Dad's $12.50 and Peter's $25, we handed over a pile of change and crumpled dollar bills to Geoff, and we were ready to go. I spent the day in excited anticipation. What would they play? Keep in mind, younger readers, that the members of Led Zeppelin had been slammed by the rock music press, which even as a clueless teen I understood was mostly pretentious drivel written by jealous failed rock stars, and so they did very little publicity and there were few pictures or press releases promoting the band. They preferred to let their music do the talking and thankfully there were no wolfhounds on the trail of each and every 'celebrity' out there, so it was possible at that time to be a bit reclusive if need be. So all day (It must have been a weekend, I don't recall having had to go to school that day, but it's a while back and I may be wrong. Now that I think of it, maybe it was during the week. As noted below, I did go to school the next day.) I wondered if they would do my favorite songs.
Eventually at last it was time to leave and Peter's mom, having good-naturedly allowed herself to be volunteered as driver, picked me up and off we went. My first concert with my favorite band! (I should say active band, as everyone knows the Beatles are the Best Band Ever, but they had been inactive for seven years by then. I still remember about 1972, going into a store in downtown Stamford with Mom & brother, saying gleefully, 'I'm going to buy the new Beatles record!' and my brother saying, 'There aren't any new Beatles records, stupid! They don't play together any more!' and I said, 'When did that happen?' and him saying, 'A couple of years ago,' and I was alternately crushed and outraged.)
Me being extremely naive and kind of gullible, Geoff had warned me before the show that I would see people taking LSD and sexing in the aisles and all kinds of mayhem. To my young imagination, this conjured up images of needles and debauchery that I didn't dare even fantasize about. But I really didn't see anything like that. Just clouds and clouds of reefer smoke and lots of flasks and wine skins. A few days earlier, a fellow in one of my classes who I barely knew but who was supposed to be a hotshot guitar player (Just like I would become, oh, thirty years later!) asked/told me to take his Instamatic and snap some photos. Not actually being able to say 'no' at that time, I said ok but I wanted copies, and he said sure. I'm still waiting!
The lights went down! A huge roar from the crowd! Would they start with 'Rock and Roll,' like in the movie?
(In 1976, you could pay your admission to the movies and sit through it as many times as you liked. I saw The Song Remains the Same a half-dozen times that way. Four bucks. Imagine that today?)
NO! It's.....it's.....what is it? Everyone is on their feet and screaming so loud I can't hear what song they are playing. Gee, it's just like the Beatles. Wait! It's....The Song Remains the Same! WOO-HOO! And we're off! Although the members of the band and the aforementioned clueless critics have characterized this tour as not their best playing, you couldn't have proven it by me, as I was hanging on every note. I had just started fooling around with guitar and had hoped to cop some licks but was sitting too far away. I've looked at seating charts of the Garden to try to figure out where we were sitting but I can't remember. It's 35 years ago (!) and my ticket stub was stolen (along with my 1969 Mets World Series tickets, may the thief rot in hell forever) and I never did get to see the pictures I took, as I've said.
So on the mighty Zeppelin played, going through their set of the time, No Quarter, Moby Dick, a bunch of stuff from Physical Graffiti, Nobody's Fault But Mine, Ten Years Gone, a fantastic acoustic set, Achilles' Last Stand, and finishing the set proper, of course, with Stairway to Heaven. At some point someone produced a smoldering, stubby little metal thing and here it came to me. Was this.......weed? I'd heard of it but never even seen it. So, just to be sociable, I tried a puff. Nothing.
Oh, well. Back to the music. Towards the end of the show some miscreant threw a firecracker on stage, hitting guitarist Jimmy Page right in the hand. He went off and came back a few minutes later with a bandage, and singer Robert Plant commented, 'It seems there's always got to be a comedian in the audience.' So they did a desultory Whole Lotta Love and that was it.
It seems that Peter was rather the worse for the wear for the 'weed' so he asked me to do all the talking on the way home so he wouldn't get 'busted.' He said that when Mom asks him how was the show, he'll say, 'Great, tell her, Mike.' So I did, the best I could.
And weren't we stars the next day in school, with our black concert T-shirts which you still see all over the place today. (I have one but not my original, which was torn to pieces five years later during drunken revelry at university. I replaced it a few years ago in a shop in Hollywood for some reason.) Our history teacher was relatively 'hip' and wanted to hear about it so we regaled him with concert tales. Forever after until graduation, I insisted that they had played 'Over the Hills and Far Away' and Peter insisted they hadn't. He kept saying, 'It's part acoustic and part electric, so there's no way they could have done it!' In a rare burst of logic from me, I said, 'Just because it's that way on the record doesn't mean they have to play it that way live!' He was not swayed by my brilliant argument. I haven't seen him since '79. I wonder if he remembers the show?
Two weeks later Pink Floyd came to town, touring behind Animals, then as now my favorite record of theirs. This time it went something like this:
Mike: I'll be your slave for life if you lend me $12.50.
Dad: What, again? You haven't paid me back from last time.
Mike: But I'm growing up so fast!
Strangely, this did not sway Dad, so no Pink Floyd for me.
Postscript: A few years ago, I happened across a sidewalk sale in downtown NYC where they were selling music dvds, including a bootleg of the 1977 Zeppelin show in Seattle, about a month after the one I saw. Generally don't go in too much for bootlegs, but this one I couldn't resist. Same staging, same costumes, mostly the same songs and boy did it bring me back.
So that's my first concert. What was yours?
October 2012
Deutschland ist gut, ja?
In 2008, I was getting ready to go on my very first jaunt to continental Europe. During that summer, a charming family from Germany came into the store whilst on holiday, and we got to talking and they gave me some good advice as to what to do & see. They have remained friends and customers and are forever asking me when I am coming to Germany to visit. Well sir, last week I had a chance to actually go to Germany to see the sights and visit my friends, and this is my story. I wrote of my trip of 2010 above; this now is Europe 2012!
Upon arrival in Dusseldorf Friday morning, my host had a business meeting so his wife and myself had a delicious lunch and took a look around the downtown area as well as the altstadt (old town) section. This is my fourth visit to Europe and I can say with assurance that folks there litter much less than here. I mean, look around! In the metro area where I am there's trash all OVER the place, but in Europe, Germany particularly, hardly any. This puzzles me. Do we have a country of people who shout from the rooftops how much they love the good ol' USA then turn around and throw garbage around while they stash their money in the Caymans to avoid taxation? I hope not, but the proof is in the pudding. Another thing I noticed is, in NYC, folks will cross the streets whenever nothing is coming but in Germany people wait and wait until the light changes, even in the middle of the night. I'm telling you, I felt like a criminal!
Then, a nice home cooked meal and some rest and we are ready for more sightseeing! Since it is October and it is Germany, one must have some beer. It's like a law or something. Actually Oktoberfest starts in September and had just ended when I got there, but my hosts wanted to show me the local beer garden after lunch so I had a short one. Strolling around these parts always brings home the fact that I am in another country, indeed another continent, because there are many more older buildings and the kind of cobblestoned streets that one doesn't see much of in the States. For example, we strolled through a village I cannot now recall the name of where the dwellings were mostly from the sixteenth century, and it is a strict law that if one wants to make additions, improvements, or repairs to the property, one must at all costs use the same materials as the original so as to retain the essence of the structure. This necessitates an increase in costs, to be sure, but on the whole it seems to me a good thing to preserve such an ancient heritage. After all, once gone, it's gone for good!
I snapped a few pics of downtown Dusseldorf, which is a fine-looking city, and had a few snapped of your correspondent ( I am going to post pictures soon, honest!) After visiting the beer garden we had an herbal schnapps which was tasty and unusual, then a stop in a large department store which I also can't remember the name of. Coupons were being passed out as we entered, which I originally declined, since, after all, they were in German which I can't read, but it turned out that you could scan them at any register and get a discount on certain purchases, so I availed myself of a 10% deal and got a snazzy rust-colored sweater in my never-ending quest to upgrade my wardrobe from slovenly to barely acceptable. Then home for supper, after which my host and myself decided to get a drink. So off we went to downtown Bochum, where he showed me the movie theater his grandfather had taken him to to see Godzilla and Dr. No. At the tavern, I decided to have a vodka martini in honor of my boss, who made the trip possible, but after I ordered the bartender said, 'Ok, but you'll have to show me how to make it.' I wasn't sure myself, but I thought it was just vodka with some vermouth, but she didn't have any vermouth so I had some tequila instead. We went to another place and this bartender said 'Ja, ja' when we asked if he could make a vodka martini but I think he used sweet vermouth because it wasn't anything like the martinis I've had in the past. (All two of them!) Anyway it was pretty good but it was getting time to get along as I was to catch a train Sunday morning for the next part of my adventure.
Next stop: Cologne and the Rhine!
Upon arrival in Dusseldorf Friday morning, my host had a business meeting so his wife and myself had a delicious lunch and took a look around the downtown area as well as the altstadt (old town) section. This is my fourth visit to Europe and I can say with assurance that folks there litter much less than here. I mean, look around! In the metro area where I am there's trash all OVER the place, but in Europe, Germany particularly, hardly any. This puzzles me. Do we have a country of people who shout from the rooftops how much they love the good ol' USA then turn around and throw garbage around while they stash their money in the Caymans to avoid taxation? I hope not, but the proof is in the pudding. Another thing I noticed is, in NYC, folks will cross the streets whenever nothing is coming but in Germany people wait and wait until the light changes, even in the middle of the night. I'm telling you, I felt like a criminal!
Then, a nice home cooked meal and some rest and we are ready for more sightseeing! Since it is October and it is Germany, one must have some beer. It's like a law or something. Actually Oktoberfest starts in September and had just ended when I got there, but my hosts wanted to show me the local beer garden after lunch so I had a short one. Strolling around these parts always brings home the fact that I am in another country, indeed another continent, because there are many more older buildings and the kind of cobblestoned streets that one doesn't see much of in the States. For example, we strolled through a village I cannot now recall the name of where the dwellings were mostly from the sixteenth century, and it is a strict law that if one wants to make additions, improvements, or repairs to the property, one must at all costs use the same materials as the original so as to retain the essence of the structure. This necessitates an increase in costs, to be sure, but on the whole it seems to me a good thing to preserve such an ancient heritage. After all, once gone, it's gone for good!
I snapped a few pics of downtown Dusseldorf, which is a fine-looking city, and had a few snapped of your correspondent ( I am going to post pictures soon, honest!) After visiting the beer garden we had an herbal schnapps which was tasty and unusual, then a stop in a large department store which I also can't remember the name of. Coupons were being passed out as we entered, which I originally declined, since, after all, they were in German which I can't read, but it turned out that you could scan them at any register and get a discount on certain purchases, so I availed myself of a 10% deal and got a snazzy rust-colored sweater in my never-ending quest to upgrade my wardrobe from slovenly to barely acceptable. Then home for supper, after which my host and myself decided to get a drink. So off we went to downtown Bochum, where he showed me the movie theater his grandfather had taken him to to see Godzilla and Dr. No. At the tavern, I decided to have a vodka martini in honor of my boss, who made the trip possible, but after I ordered the bartender said, 'Ok, but you'll have to show me how to make it.' I wasn't sure myself, but I thought it was just vodka with some vermouth, but she didn't have any vermouth so I had some tequila instead. We went to another place and this bartender said 'Ja, ja' when we asked if he could make a vodka martini but I think he used sweet vermouth because it wasn't anything like the martinis I've had in the past. (All two of them!) Anyway it was pretty good but it was getting time to get along as I was to catch a train Sunday morning for the next part of my adventure.
Next stop: Cologne and the Rhine!
Sailing along the Rhine
I'm the sort that likes to be around water. I wouldn't do so well in a land locked environment. So whenever I travel somewhere where there's a handy river I like to take a sail on it. And so on Sunday, October 14, 2012, I was fortunate enough to find myself sailing along happily on a cold, cloudy but dry afternoon along the Rhine river in Cologne, continuing my whirlwind trip to Germany. Of course there were buildings all along the riverbanks, but there were several areas where there would be run of the mill buildings, then right in the middle of it you'd see a castle looking thing that like as not was five hundred years old. Of course the main attraction is the Cologne Cathedral. There were houses of worship at the site, right on the river, since about the year 300, and construction on the present cathedral started in the year 1248. Work stopped in the fourteenth century and the cathedral wasn't finished until 1880! Think today's highway projects are interminable? In strolling across the Rhine on one of the bridges thereover, I noticed that folks proclaimed devotion to another person by writing their names on a padlock and locking it on the railings of a bridge, which was a new one on me. I only had one day in Cologne, so it was good that the Cathedral and the old part of the city, as well as the river, were very near the train station. There were two big museums right there too, the Roman-German history museum, which delves into the Roman era in Germany and which I didn't have time to explore, and the Ludwig museum, which was started by a family called Ludwig who donated a lot of their fantastic collection to the city. As I was strolling by the building, fully intending to go in, I noticed a big sign that there was an exhibit by Art Speigelman, well known for the Pulitzer Prize winning 'Maus' and for many covers of the New Yorker. So I was happy to see that, as I like his work. And if you haven't read 'Maus,' you should. There was a marathon running in Cologne that day so all day I was dodging runners as I strolled along the river. Presently I found myself in a lovely park and saw, as I had read, that there was a cable car across the river. I couldn't pass that up, could I? That's the sort of thing you travel for in the first place! Below is one pic from the cable car, two from the river, one of the locks on the bridge, and one of the Cathedral.
The Darker side
In February 1933, a fire broke out at the Reichstag building in Berlin. This is where the German Parliament met and naturally a political motive was suspected. Found in the still-smoldering building, an unemployed bricklayer called Marinus van der Lubbe. He was, as they say, a card-carrying Communist and his presence was shown as evidence that reds were trying to take over the German government. A. Hitler had only been Chancellor for four weeks but used the incident and the 'evidence' to justify rounding up everyone who was a commie, or who looked like they might be, or who the government just didn't like. With all of the CP members who had been sitting MPs in jail, the National Socialists then had a majority, spelling the end of democracy in Germany for quite some time to come.
Ich Bin Ein Berliner
Yes, Kennedy said that, and yes, a Berliner is a tasty pastry, but still the term 'Berliner' means someone from Berlin, just as New Yorker means someone from New York, yes? As JFK was in Berlin when he said it, he was correct, giggles notwithstanding. And now, after a forty-five minute flight from Dusseldorf, here I was in Berlin! One of the world's most amazing cities! I got a transport card at the airport good for 48 hours on any bus or train, and, as in Switzerland, the way it's done, they don't collect fares or tickets, they have spot inspections now & again and if you don't have a ticket you get thrown off the vehicle and fined eighty euro. Easier just to buy a ticket! Anyway I was tooling along in the bus from the airport, inhaling the breakfast that my hosts had graciously packed for me (although I'm not at all sure eating is allowed on Berlin buses. But I was neat and discreet.) As we were rolling down the street I noticed a sign for Alt Moabit, which is the street my hotel was on! How about that? So I got off, strolled a few blocks and checked in. Now, I only had a day and a half in Berlin and at first I made myself crazy by trying to see the whole city in five minutes! Berlin is a really big city, and I finally had to calm myself and prioritize. I wanted to see the Reichstag, pictured above, and the Brandenburger Tor, among lots of other things. As I'm partial to parks, I wanted to walk in the Tiergarten, and everyone said don't miss Unter den Linden and Ku'damm, as well as Potsdamer Platz, where I found the best pizza slices ever for 1.70 euro. Who knew that Berlin was a bastion of pizza pie making?
And we cannot neglect the obligatory boat ride, this time on the River Spree. This was a bit disappointing, however, as we only went up the river a ways and then right back down again, seeing the same things twice. Which was all right, except that the commentary was all in German! So I didn't really know what I was seeing. You'd think they could let a guy know. Unter den Linden was a wide thoroughfare behind the Brandenburg Gate that had shops and stalls selling food & drink to tourists like me. On one side of it were a lot of smaller shops selling tourist stuff and apartments too, on the other side you'll find the river which had a lot of cafes which were still attended as the weather was pretty good if a bit chilly. The Ku'damm was a big street reminiscent of Fifth Avenue in New York, all posh shops. So I wandered around all day, a planned wandering, and then went back to my room to empty my pockets, eat some pistachios, and rest up before my night in Berlin. Night in Berlin! How exotic it sounds! How like a film from the forties with intrigue, romance, and adventure! But what to do? I wasn't really into the nightclubs, and my host had a friend in Berlin, a lady who he thought might make a good dinner companion, but she wasn't free that night, alas. I had thought about going to the theater like I did in Amsterdam, and noticed that the Berliner Ensemble was near the river only a few minutes walk from my hotel. So I walked over during my day of wandering, and what do you suppose was playing that night but a work by Bertolt Brecht. Now, I ask you, what says 'Night in Berlin' more than seeing a Brecht play? It was the Caucasian Chalk Circle, and yes, it was entirely performed in German, of which I know about five words. But that didn't deter me, I figured it would be like watching teevee with the sound off and that I could figure out what was going on by the visuals. As near as I could get it, it had to do with a snooty woman who didn't really want to be bothered with her young son, and our upstanding heroine who finds the kid and eventually has to prove that she deserves to raise him as she is better suited to do so despite not being the kid's actual mom. Then there's a subplot about the soldier she's in love with who has to go off and fight. And there's the Brechtian social(ist) commentary. Any conservative trained to shout 'Socialism!' whenever the subject of taxation or national health care comes up ought to read some Brecht. That'll learn ya! Anyway the acting was generally good and there were some songs too and I enjoyed my first Brecht play, incomprehensible German and all. It's disconcerting to be somewhere where you can't understand a word anyone says, like when I was walking along near the symphony hall and a fellow called, 'Hallo Hallo Hallo!' and I thought, gee, what a friendly fellow, I don't even know him and he's giving me a cheery greeting! In a moment, however, I found that he meant, 'Don't stumble into the symphony rehearsal, idiot! Can't you understand the language?' Well, no. No I can't.
Walking back to my hotel from the theater after Brecht, I stumbled quite by accident on a big shop that sold cds and dvds and books and that was open till midnight that my host had recommended. I couldn't find it, though, and it's interesting to note that buildings are numbered consecutively in parts of Germany instead of odd numbers on one side of the street and evens on the other, just to make it extra confusing. So I went into the shop to look around and found myself in the drama section. Naturally they had a section on Brecht and I remember thinking, boy it would be cool if they had Caucasian Chalk Circle in English so I won't have to look for it at the Drama Book Shop....and lo and behold, they did have it! In English! So when I read it I saw that I had the gist of it more or less right but missed most of the nuance, predictably. I also found a cd of Jack Bruce at the BBC, which I haven't seen here. Snapped it right up. Also found one of only two Beatles cds that I don't have. Snapped that right up, too. Near a corner of the Tiergarten I also walked by a musical instrument museum but didn't have enough time for it this trip. I'm planning to go to Berlin again. Maybe I'll have enough moxie to go back to Hamburg next time too...........
Next: Day two in Berlin. October 2012
And we cannot neglect the obligatory boat ride, this time on the River Spree. This was a bit disappointing, however, as we only went up the river a ways and then right back down again, seeing the same things twice. Which was all right, except that the commentary was all in German! So I didn't really know what I was seeing. You'd think they could let a guy know. Unter den Linden was a wide thoroughfare behind the Brandenburg Gate that had shops and stalls selling food & drink to tourists like me. On one side of it were a lot of smaller shops selling tourist stuff and apartments too, on the other side you'll find the river which had a lot of cafes which were still attended as the weather was pretty good if a bit chilly. The Ku'damm was a big street reminiscent of Fifth Avenue in New York, all posh shops. So I wandered around all day, a planned wandering, and then went back to my room to empty my pockets, eat some pistachios, and rest up before my night in Berlin. Night in Berlin! How exotic it sounds! How like a film from the forties with intrigue, romance, and adventure! But what to do? I wasn't really into the nightclubs, and my host had a friend in Berlin, a lady who he thought might make a good dinner companion, but she wasn't free that night, alas. I had thought about going to the theater like I did in Amsterdam, and noticed that the Berliner Ensemble was near the river only a few minutes walk from my hotel. So I walked over during my day of wandering, and what do you suppose was playing that night but a work by Bertolt Brecht. Now, I ask you, what says 'Night in Berlin' more than seeing a Brecht play? It was the Caucasian Chalk Circle, and yes, it was entirely performed in German, of which I know about five words. But that didn't deter me, I figured it would be like watching teevee with the sound off and that I could figure out what was going on by the visuals. As near as I could get it, it had to do with a snooty woman who didn't really want to be bothered with her young son, and our upstanding heroine who finds the kid and eventually has to prove that she deserves to raise him as she is better suited to do so despite not being the kid's actual mom. Then there's a subplot about the soldier she's in love with who has to go off and fight. And there's the Brechtian social(ist) commentary. Any conservative trained to shout 'Socialism!' whenever the subject of taxation or national health care comes up ought to read some Brecht. That'll learn ya! Anyway the acting was generally good and there were some songs too and I enjoyed my first Brecht play, incomprehensible German and all. It's disconcerting to be somewhere where you can't understand a word anyone says, like when I was walking along near the symphony hall and a fellow called, 'Hallo Hallo Hallo!' and I thought, gee, what a friendly fellow, I don't even know him and he's giving me a cheery greeting! In a moment, however, I found that he meant, 'Don't stumble into the symphony rehearsal, idiot! Can't you understand the language?' Well, no. No I can't.
Walking back to my hotel from the theater after Brecht, I stumbled quite by accident on a big shop that sold cds and dvds and books and that was open till midnight that my host had recommended. I couldn't find it, though, and it's interesting to note that buildings are numbered consecutively in parts of Germany instead of odd numbers on one side of the street and evens on the other, just to make it extra confusing. So I went into the shop to look around and found myself in the drama section. Naturally they had a section on Brecht and I remember thinking, boy it would be cool if they had Caucasian Chalk Circle in English so I won't have to look for it at the Drama Book Shop....and lo and behold, they did have it! In English! So when I read it I saw that I had the gist of it more or less right but missed most of the nuance, predictably. I also found a cd of Jack Bruce at the BBC, which I haven't seen here. Snapped it right up. Also found one of only two Beatles cds that I don't have. Snapped that right up, too. Near a corner of the Tiergarten I also walked by a musical instrument museum but didn't have enough time for it this trip. I'm planning to go to Berlin again. Maybe I'll have enough moxie to go back to Hamburg next time too...........
Next: Day two in Berlin. October 2012
Charlottenburg and the zoo
Way back in 1695, Frederick of Prussia, soon to crown himself king, built a palace/summer home for his snuggle-bunny, Sophie Charlotte. Unfortunately she didn't have much time to enjoy it, as she died in 1705, but forever after it was known, along with the surrounding area, as Charlottenburg. The palace wasn't used too much by Frederick's successor, but the next few kings liked to stay there, so it was expanded and modernized and it's still there today! Of course it is, that's why I'm writing about it! It is a huge building with a huge garden behind it and it reminded me quite a bit of Versailles outside of Paris except maybe not quite so ornate. I didn't actually go inside as I felt twelve euro a bit steep and anyway I didn't have time, I had to get back to the airport for my flight back to Dusseldorf. But before I left Berlin I wanted to do something exotic, not to say erotic, and get a massage at the Oriental massage place near my hotel. But I didn't. I decided to go to the zoo instead. Figured it would be cheaper and last longer. Which it did, I think. Naturally I also wanted to see where the Wall used to be. There are still pieces of it left standing here and there, and there was even a booth where a fellow would stamp your passport with vintage stamps from the districts of divided Berlin and the GDR, which I thought had enough retro cool to do. So I saw the zoo and bits of the wall and if I could find the pictures, I'd post them! So to Berlin we say, Bis Bald! (See you soon!) November 2012
Vroom!
One of the many nice things about my 2012 trip to Germany was being with my wonderful hosts. Their hospitality was topnotch and I really enjoyed seeing how folks actually lived as opposed to staying in hotels and seeing all the touristy stuff. One pleasant surprise they had in store for me was a trip to pick up a brand new Audi at the actual factory, in a town called Ingolstadt, down south near Munich. It was about a five hour drive from Bochum and so I got to experience a fair bit of the countryside, the Ruhr, and the autobahn. Parts of it do have speed limits, but parts do not, and sometimes we'd be boiling along at 130-140 mph, which takes some getting used to if you're used to going half that fast in the States! So we got to the factory/showroom and they set us up with a nice lunch and a tour where we saw how they actually make the cars. Of course they frowned on photography, but if I recall they make fully 3200 cars per day and have a customer already for each and every one of them. It turned out that because of a mixup involving the license plates, which the dealer is responsible for instead of the DMV, we couldn't pick up the car right then but they delivered it two days hence along with a technician to explain all the features, and none other than yours truly was the very first passenger! Nine kilometres were on the odometer as we travelled to Wurttemburg to see a vintage auto place. There they would store or restore or repair your vintage car and they were happy to have visitors, for free, and show all the fancy rides. A fitting conclusion to my fantastic holiday in Deutschland! Zupper! I can't wait to go back and see some more and myself and my friends Ralf, Ela, and Marcel hope to meet again in Europe in the spring, perhaps for jaunts to Vienna and/or Poland, and in NYC next fall. Can't wait!
November 2012
November 2012
So you want to be a producer.
I guess that 'hyphenate' would be more appropriate, as they say in Hollywood, because I am putting up the newest play that I've written, called 'Friendly,' and I am also directing, producing, stage managing, and playing one of the roles. So that's why they call it a hyphenate because I am the writer-producer-director-actor-stage manager. Notice all the hyphens? But it's not all beer and skittles. First my leading lady dropped out via email the morning of the first rehearsal because she got some paying work. This after telling me for months that she had January and February free. Oh well. The same thing happened to me last year when my leading lady dropped out FIVE DAYS before we opened. At least this time we have five weeks before we open, and at least this time I had a plan B. A lady I worked with in one of the shows I did in December was very good and I thought that she could play the lead in Friendly with aplomb and I was right! I wasn't planning to act in this one, just write and direct (Honest!) but I just couldn't find anyone in the limited time I had and with the limited resources I have that read it the way I wanted, and so I decided to play it myself. One less person to pay, anyway! So we are finally cast and ready to start discussions and read throughs. But wait! Thought it was that simple? Think again, for this morning I got an email from one of gentlemen in the cast. He has pneumonia and won't be able to participate. Yikes! Of course the main priority is for him to get well, but now I have to find another actor, and after the trouble I had finding everyone in the first place! So I postponed rehearsal for tonight and started the search yet again. This puts questions of the rehearsal schedule, props, wardrobe, etc., all of which I am responsible for figuring out, on the back burner for we need a cast first!
Stay tuned.
January 2013
Stay tuned.
January 2013
Now what do I do?
We've wrapped up the play in fine fashion after our three scheduled performances and everything went well apart from some technical problems. Lesson learned--recruit my very own technical person to run lights and sound instead of using the overworked, under rehearsed fellow contracted by the theater. And now it's on to the next thing. Whatever that is. Music, more theater, teevee, film, what? Who knows? Stay tuned.
February 2013
February 2013
We are so screwed.
It's difficult to overstate the extent to which working people in America have been stepped on by the ruling elite. Despite a doubling of productivity over the last thirty years, wages continue to decline in real terms. Trillions in taxable income has been hidden overseas, and to the people who say that millionaires will leave the country en masse if society has the audacity to require that they pay a fair share for the upkeep of the country they pretend to love, I say good riddance! Let them curl up next to their safe deposit boxed in the Cayman Islands, no doubt they will be very happy together. Even as we remain tens of millions of jobs short, corporate profit and executive pay and bonuses are at record highs, as is the DJIA. Since the ruling classes have been largely unaffected by the economic upheaval, it is considered irrelevant that the middle class is continuing to shrink and that the standard of living for millions of Americans continues to decline. What about unions? Well, thirty years of anti-labor propaganda and the fact that corporate entities can bribe Congress to look after their interests counts for a great deal in persuading working folks to oppose their own interests. Otherwise we'd be seeing opposition to laws that force unions to extend protections to members who don't pay ('right to work,', another hideous misnomer for which America is well known) as well as to the lack of enforcement of laws that clearly state that it is illegal to fire or intimidate a union organizer, and the ever-present threat of deportation in industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor. In fact clear majorities of Americans want the protection of organized labor but the failure of the administration to live up to its promise to support the Employee Free Choice Act, or indeed give a damn about labor at all except come election endorsement time, clearly shows that workers have no friend in the White House. Too, would-be protestors would do well to remember that the oppression of the Occupy forces is only the beginning in the drive to criminalize dissent. The USG has plans to domestically deploy up to 30,000 drones to make sure the rabble doesn't get out of line. Doesn't sound like a lot until you realize the total of all commercial aircraft in the entire country is about 7,000. Pre-emptive imprisonment, infiltration, phony terrorism charges---all these weapons have been and will continue to be used against any and all perceived threats to the hegemony of the corporate controlled ruling elite. As long as the punditocracy obsesses about the deficit instead of the critical shortage of decent paying jobs there is not much hope for a happy people. What about in other countries? Well, Iceland was held up as a basket case after the meltdown and has largely recovered. How? By holding corrupt bankers liable and spending prudently on things like education, housing, and job creation which are things the USA won't do, as they may cut into profits. If the born-again deficit hawks are concerned about budget issues, they will support the reversal of policies that created the deficit in the first place. Remember, when legitimately elected President Clinton left office, the country was in surplus, then the illegitimate 'administration' turned that into a huge deficit very quickly with the connivance of Congress. Two unfunded and unnecessary occupations, two welfare handouts to rich folks which have been renewed time and again since, another handout to Big Pharma in the form of an unfunded Medicare pill plan, skyrocketing medical costs due to our lack of national health and the attendant profit motive, out-of-control military spending, the ever increasing costs of maintaining an empire, and so on. This is WHY there is a deficit, but far from addressing these issues, the powers that be are using them as an excuse to attack Social Security and Medicare, which are separate trust savings funds and have NOTHING to do with the deficit at all. It's voodoo economics all over again--create a huge deficit, then claim that this and that which might benefit working Americans must be cut to save the country. It's getting pretty tired, but people still fall for it. It's all part of the same interconnected system in which increasing un- and under-employment, increasing hunger, and increasing insecurity about the future are considered, in the already tired phrase, the new normal. If the pleas for jobs, a sane foreign policy, prosecution for crimes committed in high places, and protection of Social Security and Medicare go ignored in favor of what the ruling elite want, how can we be considered to be a representative democracy?
February 2013
February 2013
Tod, wo ist dein Stachel?
Next year it will be twenty years since the passing of my father and I miss him each and every day. There have been many times that I wished I could ask him for some fatherly advice, but I couldn't, so I had to rely on myself and to a lesser extent Simpkins the cat, for counsel. He had been ill for some time and so his slipping from the mortal coil was not a surprise but still hit hard for all of that. He was a native of South Jersey and back I went for the service in August 1994, only one year after a good-sized family reunion which I'm certainly glad he (and I) were able to attend. After the memorial we repaired to my auntie's house, his older sister Virginia, called Gin or Ginny by all, to reminisce and deal in our own way. My way was to be alone for a while with my memories and to remember one of the nice times I'd had with him recently by wearing my Washington Senators shirt that I'd got when we went to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. I have a few pictures from then and when I see myself t-shirted while everyone else is dressed much more formally I kind of wince at my youthful cluelessness, but only a little. I hate wearing suits and ties and no one knew that more than he! And I sincerely intended to remember the nice trip we took in 1991. Now that I think of it, I wasn't so youthful, being in my early thirties at the time but it seems kind of young now. Around the time we went upstate, he had started asking me if I wanted to go to movies and ball games and such much more often than was usual and I've often wondered since then if he had some subliminal knowledge that he wasn't destined to be here much longer. I remember going to a New Britain Red Sox game summer of '91 or maybe '90 when they announced a trivia contest over the PA. You'd write your answer on a bit of paper and they'd take all the correct ones and pick one at random for a prize. The question was who gave up Roger Maris' record-breaking 61st home run back in '61 and I happened to know the answer was Tracy Stallard. When they announced that they were going to pick the winner, my father nudged me and said, 'You're going to win. I can feel it.' Sure enough, I did win and I thought, this is great, my father can predict the future and I'm going to get some cool prize from the ball club like season tickets or a chance to throw out the first ball or take batting practice or.....a gift certificate from McDonalds? Big deal. Even back then I'd been a strict vegetarian for years so it wasn't much of a gift, although of course the team couldn't be expected to know that. I wanted to just give it to Dad but he insisted that we two go after the game to the local franchise and so I had a soft drink and a salad, on the grounds that it's hard to screw up lettuce and tomatoes! Which it is. Since I was a young fellow in the 70s my one and only ambition was to learn to play the guitar and so I spent a lot of time practicing. The only trouble was, I didn't have much in the way of talent so I must have sounded pretty brutal until I was finally able, years later, to get to the point where I could play in public without making a boob out of myself, but happily my folks were tolerant of my constant bashing away and I am glad that I had a chance to thank pater at the reunion in '93. My family have never been demonstrative with feelings and usually dealt with delicate matters by ignoring them so it wasn't easy but I'm glad I mustered the wherewithal to do so. To this day I have trouble with deep emotional issues not expressed in song or on stage which might be one reason I've never even come close to having an 'adult relationship' but who knows, I'll leave that one to the headshrinkers! I consider myself fortunate indeed to have grown up in the time and place that I did, and to have the parents that I had. It's all the more poignant, I suppose, since I'll not have kids of my own, but at least I recognize my good fortune, I'll give myself that much! I stressed out poor Pop no end because I was a really really annoying teenager but I was a better adult mostly and he did express a relative pleasure at the way I turned out but it is a huge regret that he passed a couple of years before I started performing professionally as I believe that he would have gotten a big kick out of that and would have come to see anything I did, especially after he retired. He told me often how much he was looking forward to doing so and 'sleeping my life away' but sadly he never got the opportunity. His own father, who was a teacher, simply dropped dead one day when I was about two so I never knew him, but he told me lots of times that that was really the way to go, just BAM! and out. He said the one thing he didn't want was a lingering, painful death. So he exercised, ate right, and took care of his family, and what was his reward for that? A lingering, painful death. And people ask me why I don't believe in deities. I was surprised that he was a deacon in his church; he never mentioned it although he would ask me every year to go and hear the music on Xmas eve but I never did because I just can't handle organized religion in any way, shape or form, and to his credit he accepted that although he did occasionally comment, 'For crying out loud, they're not going to make you take communion!' He and we were fortunate that he had a really good medical plan that allowed him to have home care, back in the days when that was possible for working Americans. He was one of the relatively few people that got more progressive as he aged and he would have HATED America's decline into corporate oligarchy. In the 80s I got him a subscription to the Nation magazine and we had many thoughtful discussions over the issues of the day even though we did not always agree. He loved a good gadget and if around today would have every gizmo under the sun. I wonder what he would have thought of digital music, as an audiophile he might have found it cold with little range, as many veterans of the analog era do.
I've changed an awful lot since then, hopefully mostly for the better, and I often wonder what it would be like if he had lived until now, but the thing to do is to consider my good fortune that he was a good man and was here with us seeing me successfully into adulthood.
March 2013
I've changed an awful lot since then, hopefully mostly for the better, and I often wonder what it would be like if he had lived until now, but the thing to do is to consider my good fortune that he was a good man and was here with us seeing me successfully into adulthood.
March 2013
I miss civil liberties.
In an episode from The Simpsons' eleventh season, adult Lisa Simpson becomes the President of the United States and is told by adviser Kearney that she is entitled to three free kills per term. Us Simpsons fans laughed, sort of, the kind of laugh that makes you shudder as well, because like much good humor, there is an element of truth amidst the absurdity. That episode aired thirteen years ago, and in the meantime America has used the excuse of violence in the world to abandon practical application of the values that we pretend to cherish and eliminated most of the Bill of Rights. The President now claims the right to murder or disappear anyone, at anytime, without any of those quaint liberal premises like 'evidence' or 'proof' or 'due process' getting in the way. He has exercised those newly minted powers. And nary a peep of protest from most Americans or the 'liberal' media. If it were possible to poll Americans secretly, without fear of censure or reprisal, how many would feel that the response to the bombings in Boston was a significant overreaction? To declare de facto martial law and search house-to-house for suspects? Unthinkable under the Constitution. Now that we don't live by that document any longer, it's something of a misnomer to use the term 'suspect,' since the 'suspects' have already been tried and convicted, without the bother of a 'trial' or 'evidence' or 'proof.' This is not to say that there isn't evidence that the infamous Chechen brothers did indeed perpetrate the crime; it certainly looks as though they did. But what a world it would be if we held that same low bar of 'proof' to, for example, punishing people who lie us into war, or people who lied our way into a gravely damaged economy or people who committed atrocities while members of the military. Of course, in America today any questioning of the official response to certain acts of violence is taken as sympathy to terrorism, so it isn't possible to have a reasoned debate on that subject, or on any similar. Between domestic and international epidemics of violence, the response is always the same--more power for the government to surveil and lockdown and attack the vulnerable, and less rights for the non-elite citizenry, all for the illusion of greater safety. Soon there won't be any liberties left to trade for that illusion, and then where will we be? It's a very narrowly constructed illusion, too. Examinations of the issues of safety and security begin and end with bombings and the gun massacres that are common in America, and are never expanded to include the lack of security inherent in the elimination of the middle class, the shredding of the social network at the behest of the ruling class, the schools-to-prisons pipeline, the critical lack of living wage jobs, or least of all the elimination of the Bill of Rights. To put it another way, American pride was once tied to accomplishment like going to the moon, developing a vaccine for polio, rooting out corruption in government and business, or protecting the rights and responsibilities of every American. Today murdering suspects and dumping their bodies into the ocean is celebrated as the pinnacle of Americanism. But any suggestion that the overreaction to the bombings was less a matter of keeping the public safe and more of a matter of legitimizing the surveillance state, normalizing military responses to domestic issues and the fact that the so-called 99% no longer have any significant rights is disdained or ignored, to paraphrase the writer Henry Giroux. We are extremely close to complete criminalization of dissent in this country and this may be a direct outgrowth of the fact that the vast majority of Americans have no idea what is in the dear departed Constitution, or else they might be more motivated to fight for it. Clearly a well informed, educated citizen is the current power structure's worst nightmare, and if you defund and segregate public education, you get a country full of gullible, frightened, easily led sheep devotedly worshiping the militaristic state and defending its abuses. Fear is the fraying fabric of our culture, fear of external threats real and imagined, along with an insecurity, a vaguely defined dread of the future and, increasingly, of the person next door. And yet, so little outrage when a heavily skewed system allows the most heinous crimes of the elite to go unpunished while ruthlessly stamping on the neck of the poor and powerless. Henry Giroux again: "American culture powers a massive disimagination machine in which historical memory is hijacked as struggles by the oppressed disappear, the state as the guardian of the public interest is erased, and the memory of institutions serving the public good vanishes." Indeed, America rewards soulless anti-intellectuals who have discovered the lucrative means by which one might be rewarded for being ignorant and keeping the status quo firmly in place, meekly travelling the only accepted paths to power and influence while not bothering with such hard things as reasoned thought and questioning authority, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out. True, there are some, mostly among the young, who question why they have been left out of 'democracy,' why the only answer to standing up to the tyranny of the market is to be struck down hard. But these questions generate reactions the opposite of what one would expect--suspicion of those who question or criticize the power structure, or even blaming those who say there are alternatives to laissez-faire corporate capitalism for upsetting people who are comfortable with victim-blaming or bigotry or the like. And we have seen more and more often the sickening spectacle of wealthy individuals comparing criticism of themselves or calls for fair tax policies to the victims of Nazi tyranny.
So where are we? Where is America in the second decade of the 21st century? It's no longer considered controversial or unusual to meet lawful, peaceful protest with ultra-violent reprisals on the part of the police and the military. The President says I will kill this or that American because terrorism, but it's a secret what we're doing because terrorism. The Attorney General comes right out and says the crooked banks are too big to prosecute. A US Senator, in a rare moment of honesty, says that Wall Street calls the shots on Capitol Hill. The murder of twenty six-year-olds leads to calls for more guns. Rights once taken for granted are routinely trampled, with not a murmur of protest, so long as it's the 'other' being targeted. What will be the reaction, I wonder, when the opposition to dissent is expanded to what YOU hold dear? Will it be a different story then, or will it be too late? Recall the old canard: I didn't protest when they rounded up the ______ because I wasn't one. Then, when they came for me, there was no one left to protest.
May 2013
So where are we? Where is America in the second decade of the 21st century? It's no longer considered controversial or unusual to meet lawful, peaceful protest with ultra-violent reprisals on the part of the police and the military. The President says I will kill this or that American because terrorism, but it's a secret what we're doing because terrorism. The Attorney General comes right out and says the crooked banks are too big to prosecute. A US Senator, in a rare moment of honesty, says that Wall Street calls the shots on Capitol Hill. The murder of twenty six-year-olds leads to calls for more guns. Rights once taken for granted are routinely trampled, with not a murmur of protest, so long as it's the 'other' being targeted. What will be the reaction, I wonder, when the opposition to dissent is expanded to what YOU hold dear? Will it be a different story then, or will it be too late? Recall the old canard: I didn't protest when they rounded up the ______ because I wasn't one. Then, when they came for me, there was no one left to protest.
May 2013
America, we hardly knew ye.
While America was enthralled by Wimbledon's upsets, the first half of the baseball season, celebrities naming their children basically at random, a relaxing of legislated discrimination of homosexual people, and whether Edward Snowden's 'crime' of exposing massive, illegal surveillance of millions of Americans by government agencies was worse than the crime of surveilling millions of Americans, the Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act by taking away the requirement that the federal government must monitor the voting laws and procedures of states with a history of discriminatory polling. In the real world this means more restrictive laws and less minority and working-class voter participation. In their infinite conservatism, the Roberts court also ruled that remaining silent, as was once Americans' right under the Fifth Amendment, can now be held against you. Remember, we must eliminate that pesky Bill of Rights, or the terrorists win! The conventional wisdom in the msm, which should of course be taken with a huge grain of salt, is that most Americans don't care about the elimination of privacy rights, either because they sincerely feel that these rights should be taken away in the name of security or because they are unaware of the extent of the surveillance, or because they just don't care. Similarly, the consensus is that younger generations are accepting of a world in which they are all but guaranteed to fare worse economically than did their parents' or grandparents' generations, and in which there are nowhere near enough jobs to go around. And what is the ruling elite's prescription for the fact that the American Dream is reserved only for those self same ruling elites? Why, austerity! Yes, that same policy that slashes or eliminates any government initiative that doesn't directly, and solely, benefit the folks at the top. Lately a fellow by the name of Kinsley wrote that, yes, austerity means that sometimes people can't eat or afford medicine or might lose their homes or can't find work, but SOMEBODY'S got to pay for this luxurious life those ungrateful workers have been living all these years, after all, such are the wages of sin! So on the one hand he admits that austerity means misery for the vast majority of people and on the other hand blames the victims! As if the economy hadn't been cooked by crooked bankers and their whores in government. As if there weren't a distinct plan of hostility against the working classes by the so-called one percent! Do these people ever think these things through?
We finished the run of my latest play Don't Wait Up last weekend, and in fine fashion too! Creatively it couldn't have been a better experience, for after nine years of rewrites, two abortive attempts at staging the piece, and the fear that very soon I will be too old to play the part convincingly, I couldn't have had better collaborators in Denise Ivanoff, my co-star who clearly knew the script better than I did, and Donald Ivanoff, who ran the lights and sound and made many excellent suggestions, as did Denise. It was so gratifying to see my characters and story come to life, and I got very good feedback and folks who did come were very complimentary about what we had done on that stage. Unfortunately financially it was a disaster, attendance was beyond skimpy and I am sad about that. I found out the hard way that most of the people I know can't be bothered to support my creative endeavors. In 2006 I portrayed Leo Tolstoy in a play for 24 performances and do you know how many people I know came to see it? None. Not one.
Many times I have gone to see stuff that people I know were in, both because I wanted to and because I felt that they might return the favor, but since not one of my eighty-two Facebook 'friends' showed up at any of the five performances of DWU, those days are gone. I invited the cast of my last play which went up in February and one promised to attend but did not and the other three did not even answer my invite. It's a sad thing to have lived so long and have so few friends. Used to be that expressing myself creatively was enough to satisfy my need for outlets and expression, but I don't know if that's true any more. I want to take a breather from staging my own shows as I am tired of knocking myself out to get people to come to no avail, so I will limit myself to auditioning for other people's stuff, if any, and playing music, at least for the time being. For the first time in about eight months I have no theater commitments so I plan to enjoy the summer and get out and about more. And try not to think of that soul-crushing loneliness...........................
July 2013
We finished the run of my latest play Don't Wait Up last weekend, and in fine fashion too! Creatively it couldn't have been a better experience, for after nine years of rewrites, two abortive attempts at staging the piece, and the fear that very soon I will be too old to play the part convincingly, I couldn't have had better collaborators in Denise Ivanoff, my co-star who clearly knew the script better than I did, and Donald Ivanoff, who ran the lights and sound and made many excellent suggestions, as did Denise. It was so gratifying to see my characters and story come to life, and I got very good feedback and folks who did come were very complimentary about what we had done on that stage. Unfortunately financially it was a disaster, attendance was beyond skimpy and I am sad about that. I found out the hard way that most of the people I know can't be bothered to support my creative endeavors. In 2006 I portrayed Leo Tolstoy in a play for 24 performances and do you know how many people I know came to see it? None. Not one.
Many times I have gone to see stuff that people I know were in, both because I wanted to and because I felt that they might return the favor, but since not one of my eighty-two Facebook 'friends' showed up at any of the five performances of DWU, those days are gone. I invited the cast of my last play which went up in February and one promised to attend but did not and the other three did not even answer my invite. It's a sad thing to have lived so long and have so few friends. Used to be that expressing myself creatively was enough to satisfy my need for outlets and expression, but I don't know if that's true any more. I want to take a breather from staging my own shows as I am tired of knocking myself out to get people to come to no avail, so I will limit myself to auditioning for other people's stuff, if any, and playing music, at least for the time being. For the first time in about eight months I have no theater commitments so I plan to enjoy the summer and get out and about more. And try not to think of that soul-crushing loneliness...........................
July 2013
Between the letters and the knees.
Between fifteen and twenty years ago, big league umpires unilaterally decided not to call strikes on any pitch above the belt, cutting the strike zone in half. No one knows why. But forcing pitchers to throw a ball through the eye of a needle to get a called strike means that in the interim, hitters have learned to take, take, take and as a result I see called third strikes in pressure situations where the batter simply MUST protect the plate and take a hack if it's close. But that's not what's happening. If fans want a faster, more exciting game, simply retrain or instruct the umps to call the strike zone the way it's written. More action, less dawdling, win-win. I would also discourage stepping out of the batter's box after every pitch and I would REALLY discourage granting time when the pitcher is ready to pitch, or in his windup. That shouldn't happen. I notice players don't wear jewelry on the field as much as they used to, so that's a good thing, and artificial turf is scarce today which is a really good thing. Too much of that pointing to the sky or crossing yourself nowadays, though, hopefully that will die out too. Memo to ballplayers: If G_d gets the credit for that sayonara home run, does s/he get the blame for that bases-loaded whiff? Now, if they want to do something for us traditionalists, they'll get rid of the loathesome dh, which bends the strategy of the game all out of shape in return for only a fraction of an extra run on average per game. It's very exciting to see a pitcher help himself with a hit, and while there are a lot of hurlers who couldn't hit the floor with their hat, at the very least a moundsman should be able to lay down a bunt on demand. (Note to women readers, if such there be: I'm using male constructs here because the big leagues specifically prohibit women from playing, unlike the old unwritten color line. I firmly believe that there are women in the world who could play along the lines of a speedy center fielder or maybe shortstop, although I have heard it said that there are physiological differences which make it difficult or impossible for women to hit for power at the big league level. But I could be wrong, I ain't no scientist!)
Records which will never ever be broken: Cy Young's 511 victories, Ty Cobb's .367 lifetime average (assuming a reasonably full career), John Vander Meer's two consecutive no-hitters (to break it, you'd need to pitch three straight, which seems unlikely), Harvey Haddix's twelve perfect innings, Walter Johnson's three shutouts (of the Yankees/Highlanders) in four days, Grover Alexander's 16 shutouts in one season, Rogers Hornsby's .424 average in 1924, and Jack Chesbro's 41 victories in the 1904 season. What are some others?
July 2013
Records which will never ever be broken: Cy Young's 511 victories, Ty Cobb's .367 lifetime average (assuming a reasonably full career), John Vander Meer's two consecutive no-hitters (to break it, you'd need to pitch three straight, which seems unlikely), Harvey Haddix's twelve perfect innings, Walter Johnson's three shutouts (of the Yankees/Highlanders) in four days, Grover Alexander's 16 shutouts in one season, Rogers Hornsby's .424 average in 1924, and Jack Chesbro's 41 victories in the 1904 season. What are some others?
July 2013
Mike meets the guitar.
When I was a young lad growing up in Stamford, my dad had his stereo in the hall closet, with a receiver and a turntable. The speakers were in the living room and as I recall it got a really nice sound. About 1970 or so, my brother, three years older than I, got bit by the Beatle bug and played their records incessantly, thereby inadvertently giving me a free education in rock and roll. These were the cheesy Capitol LPs, which were cobbled together from the Parlophone discs released in England. In the UK it was thought chintzy to put singles on albums, as one could and should have already bought the single, no need to pay twice! But in the US, where nothing is ever chintzy if it can turn a profit, singles were gathered with album tracks to form three LPs out of two, like Beatles '65 and Something New and so on. These were the records that I grew up on, although I risked punches if I played them for myself. Like a billion or so other kids, brother persuaded (or pestered) Dad to get him a guitar, which eventually he did, I think from Woolworth's.
Must have been Xmas '69 when he got Abbey Road as a gift and rushed to put it on the stereo. Me and Mom and Dad were still chatting and brother shushed us so we could hear the latest from the Fab 4. Then we heard Lennon's voice going....'Shh! Shh! Shh!' as Come Together began and we all laughed as Lennon was trying to keep us quiet too! I remember hearing the Hey Jude single eleventy billion times in a row but never the B-side, Revolution, despite appealing to Dad, who was probably relieved not to hear it, as he didn't like much of anything recorded after 1945 or so.
Fast forward about five years. I'm home after school, alone, which is a recipe for trouble! So I started rooting around in the closet and I find a best of Eric Clapton record, on Atco. But after years of sitting on top of that tube receiver which got really hot after being on awhile it is seriously warped, and only the last track on each side is playable. Which is good, because the last track on one side is Sunshine of Your Love. Oh, that riff! (I didn't know from Jack Bruce at the time.) The whole rest of the day it was going through my head and I thought it was about the coolest thing ever. Very soon after I liberated that old guitar from the closet where it was gathering dust and started to bang on it, not that I knew what I was doing. Here it is coming up on forty years later and I'm really getting the hang of it!
This is all on my mind today because last weekend I dusted off the old receiver and tried to get it to drive my turntable to no avail. I ended up with the receiver and two old reel-to-reel tape recorders both for nostalgia and as keepsakes of Dad's, the latter of which I recorded some stuff on before I got a 4-track in about '87.
After ascertaining that neither the receiver nor the reel-to-reels worked right any more, I listed them for sale and this morning, a fellow came in and took the receiver only for the price that I had asked for the lot! I still feel a little melancholy for selling a bit of my childhood, if you'll pardon the cliche, but the funny thing is that Dad would have long since abandoned those old relics for the latest thing. I still remember how happy he was around '92 or so when he got a surround sound system. Sounded pretty good too. So if he was around now he'd say, 'What the hell are you dragging those old relics around for?' And I still have his golf clubs. Anyone for eighteen holes and a good walk spoiled?
July 2013
Must have been Xmas '69 when he got Abbey Road as a gift and rushed to put it on the stereo. Me and Mom and Dad were still chatting and brother shushed us so we could hear the latest from the Fab 4. Then we heard Lennon's voice going....'Shh! Shh! Shh!' as Come Together began and we all laughed as Lennon was trying to keep us quiet too! I remember hearing the Hey Jude single eleventy billion times in a row but never the B-side, Revolution, despite appealing to Dad, who was probably relieved not to hear it, as he didn't like much of anything recorded after 1945 or so.
Fast forward about five years. I'm home after school, alone, which is a recipe for trouble! So I started rooting around in the closet and I find a best of Eric Clapton record, on Atco. But after years of sitting on top of that tube receiver which got really hot after being on awhile it is seriously warped, and only the last track on each side is playable. Which is good, because the last track on one side is Sunshine of Your Love. Oh, that riff! (I didn't know from Jack Bruce at the time.) The whole rest of the day it was going through my head and I thought it was about the coolest thing ever. Very soon after I liberated that old guitar from the closet where it was gathering dust and started to bang on it, not that I knew what I was doing. Here it is coming up on forty years later and I'm really getting the hang of it!
This is all on my mind today because last weekend I dusted off the old receiver and tried to get it to drive my turntable to no avail. I ended up with the receiver and two old reel-to-reel tape recorders both for nostalgia and as keepsakes of Dad's, the latter of which I recorded some stuff on before I got a 4-track in about '87.
After ascertaining that neither the receiver nor the reel-to-reels worked right any more, I listed them for sale and this morning, a fellow came in and took the receiver only for the price that I had asked for the lot! I still feel a little melancholy for selling a bit of my childhood, if you'll pardon the cliche, but the funny thing is that Dad would have long since abandoned those old relics for the latest thing. I still remember how happy he was around '92 or so when he got a surround sound system. Sounded pretty good too. So if he was around now he'd say, 'What the hell are you dragging those old relics around for?' And I still have his golf clubs. Anyone for eighteen holes and a good walk spoiled?
July 2013
Vampire squids sucking the life blood out of society, or benevolent money-lenders?
The time had come for my annual trip to Coney Island! Yes, a summer Saturday, hot and humid, the perfect time for a ride on the Wonder Wheel (ninety-three years and no fatalities!) and a stroll on the beach, and perhaps a snack along the Boardwalk. But I had better lay in a supply of cash so Friday night after I closed up shop, off to the bank and their ATM. Huh. Look at that, two old style twenties, with the smaller portrait. It's only been a few years since the change to the new style bills but they seem quite scarce in circulation nowadays. Before I went home I had to get some groceries so I spent one of them there, and even remarked to the fellow at the counter about the old style bill. Luckily he was old enough to remember them, for after the seventy five minute train ride to Coney, I bounded over to the ticket window for the Wonder Wheel and....'we can't take this, it's fake.' I pointed out that it was series 1950 and thus made of different kinds of fiber and that is why it didn't react right to their counterfeit pen. No go. So I thought I'd break it somewhere else, then come back to the Wheel. No go. Same thing happened when I tried to get a slice, down to my explanation and their continued refusal. Now, I don't want to see anyone get in trouble and anyway there's no point in arguing about it so I thought I'd take it back to the bank and exchange it. It's kind of a shame that the young people working at Coney were unaware that there were American bills that look different than the ones today and are still legal tender, but I blame management for the poor training they had received. So back I went to Manhattan and showed it to the teller and said that no one would take it at Coney. She said, 'You know, if this is phony, I can't give it back to you.' I said, 'If it's phony, then the bills coming out of your own ATMs can not be trusted and I will be back on Monday to close my accounts and bank elsewhere, and I will consider $20 a small price to pay for finding out before I REALLY got burned.' So she inspected it and frowned, then called over another teller who peered at it and pronounced it good. I asked if they could give me one that wasn't all marked up with the now obviously faulty counterfeit detecting pen which they did, and off I went home. All I had to show for my annual trip to Coney was two long train rides for nothing.
July 2013
July 2013
What is a 'crime?' What is not a 'crime?'
Let's have a rundown on crime in the USA of the second decade of the twenty-first century:
It is NOT a crime to gun somebody down if you don't like their looks. As yet we have not seen the results of a person of color murdering a white person. I think we can all imagine what would happen without much trouble.
It is NOT a crime for American military personnel to strafe an Afghan father walking his children to school.
It IS a crime to leak documents reporting crimes by the American military.
It is NOT a crime to mow down civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, et al., if you are doing so in service of the American empire.
It IS a crime to report mowing down of civilians in these various hot spots in the Middle East.
It is NOT a crime to collect and read and examine emails, texts, browsing history, and phone calls of Americans without probable cause or a warrant, despite this being expressly forbidden by the Constitution.
It is NOT a crime to lie about the spying program to Congress if you are the head of the spying program.
It IS a crime to blow the whistle on the spying program.
It IS a crime for a reporter to conceal his or her sources if those sources source a story embarrassing to the power structure.
It is NOT a crime for a reporter to print leaked information if that information is favorable/fawning to the power structure.
It is NOT a crime for politicians to lie repeatedly to justify torture, mass murder, and illegal occupation.
It IS a crime for politicians to have an affair and lie about it.
It is NOT a crime for military personnel to desecrate corpses after creating them.
It is NOT a crime for members of Congress to profit from inside financial information.
It IS a crime if you do so.
It is NOT a crime to lie, cheat, and steal in service of greater profit if you are a Wall Street executive.
It is NOT a crime to lie to Congress about your fraudulent practices if you are a Wall Street executive.
It IS a crime to lie to Congress if you do it.
All clear now? Splendid!
July 2013
It is NOT a crime to gun somebody down if you don't like their looks. As yet we have not seen the results of a person of color murdering a white person. I think we can all imagine what would happen without much trouble.
It is NOT a crime for American military personnel to strafe an Afghan father walking his children to school.
It IS a crime to leak documents reporting crimes by the American military.
It is NOT a crime to mow down civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, et al., if you are doing so in service of the American empire.
It IS a crime to report mowing down of civilians in these various hot spots in the Middle East.
It is NOT a crime to collect and read and examine emails, texts, browsing history, and phone calls of Americans without probable cause or a warrant, despite this being expressly forbidden by the Constitution.
It is NOT a crime to lie about the spying program to Congress if you are the head of the spying program.
It IS a crime to blow the whistle on the spying program.
It IS a crime for a reporter to conceal his or her sources if those sources source a story embarrassing to the power structure.
It is NOT a crime for a reporter to print leaked information if that information is favorable/fawning to the power structure.
It is NOT a crime for politicians to lie repeatedly to justify torture, mass murder, and illegal occupation.
It IS a crime for politicians to have an affair and lie about it.
It is NOT a crime for military personnel to desecrate corpses after creating them.
It is NOT a crime for members of Congress to profit from inside financial information.
It IS a crime if you do so.
It is NOT a crime to lie, cheat, and steal in service of greater profit if you are a Wall Street executive.
It is NOT a crime to lie to Congress about your fraudulent practices if you are a Wall Street executive.
It IS a crime to lie to Congress if you do it.
All clear now? Splendid!
July 2013
A Bride's Ten Commandments
From the Evening Bulletin, December 17, 1912:
1. Never begin a quarrel, but if there is a disagreement do not give way until the matter has been put right.
2. Never forget that you are the wife of a man and not of a god. Do not worry too much over his weaknesses.
3. Do not be always asking your husband for money.
4. If you discover that your husband has a big heart, remember also that he has a stomach. Look well after his stomach.
5. From time to time, but not too much, allow your husband to have the last word. That pleases him, and does not harm you.
6. Read all the newspapers, not merely the sensational bits. Your husband will willingly discuss with you politics and the day's happenings.
7. During a period of sulkiness do not vex your husband.
8. Pay your husband a compliment from time to time. At the same time let him understand that you yourself do not always steer clear of mistakes.
9. If your husband is good and active, be a comrade to him. If he is heavy and slow, be a friend and adviser.
10. Above all, show respect to your mother-in-law. Remember that your husband loved her before he loved you.
Printed verbatim and without comment by your friends at chocolate frosted bloggos.
August 2013
1. Never begin a quarrel, but if there is a disagreement do not give way until the matter has been put right.
2. Never forget that you are the wife of a man and not of a god. Do not worry too much over his weaknesses.
3. Do not be always asking your husband for money.
4. If you discover that your husband has a big heart, remember also that he has a stomach. Look well after his stomach.
5. From time to time, but not too much, allow your husband to have the last word. That pleases him, and does not harm you.
6. Read all the newspapers, not merely the sensational bits. Your husband will willingly discuss with you politics and the day's happenings.
7. During a period of sulkiness do not vex your husband.
8. Pay your husband a compliment from time to time. At the same time let him understand that you yourself do not always steer clear of mistakes.
9. If your husband is good and active, be a comrade to him. If he is heavy and slow, be a friend and adviser.
10. Above all, show respect to your mother-in-law. Remember that your husband loved her before he loved you.
Printed verbatim and without comment by your friends at chocolate frosted bloggos.
August 2013
When the Deep Purple Falls
I've seen the mighty Deep Purple (Mark II, the best in my view) in three of the world's major cities: San Francisco at the Cow Palace in 1984 or 1985, Brixton in London in 1993, one of Ritchie Blackmore's last shows with the band, by the way, and in 2007 at the smaller theater inside Madison Square Garden, the same place I saw Bob Plant and Alison Krauss (who were great).
I had gone on singer Ian Gillan's website and it was pretty interesting as he seemed to post relatively often and candidly, and so I emailed and asked if I sent my copy of his book with return postage, could he sign it and drop it in a mailbox. His office replied and said that they couldn't do that, being unable to guarantee the safe return of my book. I replied that I would take the chance but they wouldn't do it. But they did provide me with a backstage pass so I could get my book signed in person, which was nice of them. So they emailed the documents and off I went to the show, which was fine. They started the show with Fireball, always one of my faves. When the show ended I went to the holding area for backstage pass holders and waited with the other sycophants, book clutched in hand. Presently guitarist Steve Morse and bassist Roger Glover came out and were pleasantly chatting with everyone. I had seen Mr. Morse before when he was playing with the Dixie Dregs and shook his hand and said hello. Mr. Glover kindly signed my ticket and when I asked him if he knew where Ian Gillan was, he shook his head and said, 'no idea.' Eventually they left and I was still waiting. I saw a woman that I recognized as part of the crew and asked if Mr. Gillan was coming out. She replied that he was visiting with friends and would not be down. I asked if I could have my book signed anyway but she said no. I said, 'no chance then?' and she said no. This disappointed me, as I had thought that that was why they'd issued me a backstage pass in the first place. Certainly Mr. Gillan is under no obligation to me; all I did was buy his records, see his concerts, and buy his autobiography. It left kind of a bad taste, though. If only they'd let me mail the book! But I didn't want it in my collection any more and brought it into the store and put it up for sale. If he's too much of a big shot to say hello and sign an autograph (total elapsed time ten seconds) then I don't want his book in my house. Perhaps I am protesting too much, anyone can have an off day and perhaps he was visiting friends he hadn't seen in a long time. In any event, as I say, he doesn't owe me a thing. But I don't want his book any more. Still available at a very reasonable price!
August 2013
I had gone on singer Ian Gillan's website and it was pretty interesting as he seemed to post relatively often and candidly, and so I emailed and asked if I sent my copy of his book with return postage, could he sign it and drop it in a mailbox. His office replied and said that they couldn't do that, being unable to guarantee the safe return of my book. I replied that I would take the chance but they wouldn't do it. But they did provide me with a backstage pass so I could get my book signed in person, which was nice of them. So they emailed the documents and off I went to the show, which was fine. They started the show with Fireball, always one of my faves. When the show ended I went to the holding area for backstage pass holders and waited with the other sycophants, book clutched in hand. Presently guitarist Steve Morse and bassist Roger Glover came out and were pleasantly chatting with everyone. I had seen Mr. Morse before when he was playing with the Dixie Dregs and shook his hand and said hello. Mr. Glover kindly signed my ticket and when I asked him if he knew where Ian Gillan was, he shook his head and said, 'no idea.' Eventually they left and I was still waiting. I saw a woman that I recognized as part of the crew and asked if Mr. Gillan was coming out. She replied that he was visiting with friends and would not be down. I asked if I could have my book signed anyway but she said no. I said, 'no chance then?' and she said no. This disappointed me, as I had thought that that was why they'd issued me a backstage pass in the first place. Certainly Mr. Gillan is under no obligation to me; all I did was buy his records, see his concerts, and buy his autobiography. It left kind of a bad taste, though. If only they'd let me mail the book! But I didn't want it in my collection any more and brought it into the store and put it up for sale. If he's too much of a big shot to say hello and sign an autograph (total elapsed time ten seconds) then I don't want his book in my house. Perhaps I am protesting too much, anyone can have an off day and perhaps he was visiting friends he hadn't seen in a long time. In any event, as I say, he doesn't owe me a thing. But I don't want his book any more. Still available at a very reasonable price!
August 2013
Let's talk foreign policy!
Just a few questions for the American people and the foreign policy establishment:
1. Are we seriously arguing that we need to show killing people in Syria is wrong by bombing Syria and killing people?
2. If we believe that the use of chemical weapons is a reprehensible crime, will we renounce our own use and manufacture of napalm, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and cluster bombs in Southeast Asia, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, among other places?
3. Shouldn't the first order of business be to find out for sure what exactly happened, and who if anyone actually used chemical weapons and what kind? The USG says they are sure that the Assad regime did so but no evidence has been made public. Why not? If there is evidence, let's examine it. Some are saying it was the opponents of the regime that perpetrated the attack. No matter what happened, is it incumbent upon the US, or even wise, to intervene in another country's civil war? What if we are dragged in to another quagmire? What if the conflict spreads to neighboring countries? The line about how it's going to be surgical and quick reminds me that the same people saying that are some of the same people who told us the invasion of Iraq would be over in weeks, pay for itself with oil revenue, and that we would be greeted with open arms and not blazing guns. Why should we believe these people now, and how can pundits and policymakers be so wrong and still be employed?
4. Why are we all of a sudden concerned with Syrian lives? Why no official outrage when they were killing each other with guns and bombs? Is dead not dead however the method?
5. Have we learned nothing from the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan? Why the rush to kill? The same pell-mell hustle towards violence on flimsy evidence and dubious assertions. Is it true that, since we can no longer provide jobs for our citizens, access to quality medical treatment for all our people regardless of income or insurance status, or properly educate our children, we have a need to practice the only thing America can still do better than any other country; namely expose the gullibility of our population while bombing the bejesus out of non white non christian people?
6. At the very least, can we stop with the pious pronouncements of how wrong chemical weapons are when the US has used them as much or more than any other country? The rest of the world sees us as bullying hypocrites even if we do not.
September 2013
1. Are we seriously arguing that we need to show killing people in Syria is wrong by bombing Syria and killing people?
2. If we believe that the use of chemical weapons is a reprehensible crime, will we renounce our own use and manufacture of napalm, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and cluster bombs in Southeast Asia, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, among other places?
3. Shouldn't the first order of business be to find out for sure what exactly happened, and who if anyone actually used chemical weapons and what kind? The USG says they are sure that the Assad regime did so but no evidence has been made public. Why not? If there is evidence, let's examine it. Some are saying it was the opponents of the regime that perpetrated the attack. No matter what happened, is it incumbent upon the US, or even wise, to intervene in another country's civil war? What if we are dragged in to another quagmire? What if the conflict spreads to neighboring countries? The line about how it's going to be surgical and quick reminds me that the same people saying that are some of the same people who told us the invasion of Iraq would be over in weeks, pay for itself with oil revenue, and that we would be greeted with open arms and not blazing guns. Why should we believe these people now, and how can pundits and policymakers be so wrong and still be employed?
4. Why are we all of a sudden concerned with Syrian lives? Why no official outrage when they were killing each other with guns and bombs? Is dead not dead however the method?
5. Have we learned nothing from the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan? Why the rush to kill? The same pell-mell hustle towards violence on flimsy evidence and dubious assertions. Is it true that, since we can no longer provide jobs for our citizens, access to quality medical treatment for all our people regardless of income or insurance status, or properly educate our children, we have a need to practice the only thing America can still do better than any other country; namely expose the gullibility of our population while bombing the bejesus out of non white non christian people?
6. At the very least, can we stop with the pious pronouncements of how wrong chemical weapons are when the US has used them as much or more than any other country? The rest of the world sees us as bullying hypocrites even if we do not.
September 2013
What I did on my birthday.
I don't think anyone should ever work on their birthday. If I ran a business, I'd make it a point to give all my valued employees a paid holiday that day. Which means it's probably good that I don't run a business!
Anyway yesterday was my birthday and I did have the day off, coming as it did in the middle of my annual holiday. So what did I do? I went on an audition. My agent sent me out to read for a part in a musical theater company in Sarasota, Florida. Well, perhaps 'read' is the wrong term, actually what I did was sing for a part. The company is putting up a pop-rock musical in the vein of 1970s Top 40 and were seeking musicians/actors who could play an instrument, sing, and act. The show is in the style of Pump Boys and Dinettes, where the musicians are part of the cast, and vice versa. In my case they wanted a bass guitar player since they were overwhelmed by guitarists and pianists. I was told that I myself was the only bassist to show up and that they had very few women audition so far. I had decided to do a version of Maxwell's Silver Hammer on bass and prepare a song on acoustic guitar as well. The breakdown specified tunes like Seasons in the Sun and the like, and artists like Paul Simon, so I prepared Kodachrome. I really wanted to nail this one, although it would be tricky to get four months off from work to go and do the show in Florida. But you never know what kind of contacts you might make even if you don't get the part, am I right? So I practiced and practiced.....and I might have overdone it, might have gone stale. That rarely happens to me because I am a bear for rehearsal since I firmly believe that the more practice one puts in, the better the performance will be. So I arrived at the audition space and tuned up and went through my stuff while talking with the other auditioners, one of whom I knew from other stuff, and learned that it was recommended to have two contrasting pieces prepared, so I was glad I had done exactly that. So in I went and said hello and strapped on my Ampeg Big Stud bass guitar, bought new in 1978. There was no amplifier there, so I stood nice and close to the two representatives of the theater company and belted out Maxwell. Their eyes boring into me as I played didn't bother me, but I have to say I think I played good but not great. No egregious mistakes, anyway! When I finished one of the gentlemen said, I think that's all we need to hear today, and I said, oh, no guitar? I have a Paul Simon tune ready to go, how about it? and he said, okay, go ahead and play that, so I basically talked them into doubling the length of my audition, which is hard to do. So I got out my Ovation, bought new in 2001, and played Kodachrome, which I thought I played maybe a little better than I'd played Maxwell, still not great, but better than good, if that makes any sense. When I was done I said thanks and they said thanks and I expressed my appreciation for allowing me to play both of my prepared pieces and, being careful not to overstay my welcome, left. When I was out in the hall packing up my stuff and getting ready to return home, I felt the adrenalin draining out of me just like I'd pulled a plug. I'd thought about nothing else for a week since I got the notice and now that it was over, all the hopped up energy that I'd had just disappeared, and I was ready for a nap! Callbacks were to be the next day and as of now I haven't heard anything so it's not looking good but we shall see. But instead I went home and dropped off the two guitars and went back into Manhattan to see the exhibit of John Lennon's artwork at a gallery downtown. It was to benefit Meals on Wheels, or a similar organization, which is certainly worthy and was quite interesting. Then I went over to the dvd store to treat myself to a birthday present which was seasons of Highway Patrol and Bat Masterson, as classic teevee is my hobby. Cable is expensive and lousy and one day they are going to have to offer a menu of the channels I actually watch as opposed to paying a lot for dozens of channels I never see. Without intermediate cable I couldn't see game five between the Cinderella Pirates and the powerful Cardinals, and I went on to the mlb website and found that one could watch through them, and game five between Detroit and Oakland as well as the whole National League Championship Series for only $4.99 which I thought was a good deal. A good deal for something I want online? What's the world coming to? Anyway that's what I did on my birthday.
October 2013
Anyway yesterday was my birthday and I did have the day off, coming as it did in the middle of my annual holiday. So what did I do? I went on an audition. My agent sent me out to read for a part in a musical theater company in Sarasota, Florida. Well, perhaps 'read' is the wrong term, actually what I did was sing for a part. The company is putting up a pop-rock musical in the vein of 1970s Top 40 and were seeking musicians/actors who could play an instrument, sing, and act. The show is in the style of Pump Boys and Dinettes, where the musicians are part of the cast, and vice versa. In my case they wanted a bass guitar player since they were overwhelmed by guitarists and pianists. I was told that I myself was the only bassist to show up and that they had very few women audition so far. I had decided to do a version of Maxwell's Silver Hammer on bass and prepare a song on acoustic guitar as well. The breakdown specified tunes like Seasons in the Sun and the like, and artists like Paul Simon, so I prepared Kodachrome. I really wanted to nail this one, although it would be tricky to get four months off from work to go and do the show in Florida. But you never know what kind of contacts you might make even if you don't get the part, am I right? So I practiced and practiced.....and I might have overdone it, might have gone stale. That rarely happens to me because I am a bear for rehearsal since I firmly believe that the more practice one puts in, the better the performance will be. So I arrived at the audition space and tuned up and went through my stuff while talking with the other auditioners, one of whom I knew from other stuff, and learned that it was recommended to have two contrasting pieces prepared, so I was glad I had done exactly that. So in I went and said hello and strapped on my Ampeg Big Stud bass guitar, bought new in 1978. There was no amplifier there, so I stood nice and close to the two representatives of the theater company and belted out Maxwell. Their eyes boring into me as I played didn't bother me, but I have to say I think I played good but not great. No egregious mistakes, anyway! When I finished one of the gentlemen said, I think that's all we need to hear today, and I said, oh, no guitar? I have a Paul Simon tune ready to go, how about it? and he said, okay, go ahead and play that, so I basically talked them into doubling the length of my audition, which is hard to do. So I got out my Ovation, bought new in 2001, and played Kodachrome, which I thought I played maybe a little better than I'd played Maxwell, still not great, but better than good, if that makes any sense. When I was done I said thanks and they said thanks and I expressed my appreciation for allowing me to play both of my prepared pieces and, being careful not to overstay my welcome, left. When I was out in the hall packing up my stuff and getting ready to return home, I felt the adrenalin draining out of me just like I'd pulled a plug. I'd thought about nothing else for a week since I got the notice and now that it was over, all the hopped up energy that I'd had just disappeared, and I was ready for a nap! Callbacks were to be the next day and as of now I haven't heard anything so it's not looking good but we shall see. But instead I went home and dropped off the two guitars and went back into Manhattan to see the exhibit of John Lennon's artwork at a gallery downtown. It was to benefit Meals on Wheels, or a similar organization, which is certainly worthy and was quite interesting. Then I went over to the dvd store to treat myself to a birthday present which was seasons of Highway Patrol and Bat Masterson, as classic teevee is my hobby. Cable is expensive and lousy and one day they are going to have to offer a menu of the channels I actually watch as opposed to paying a lot for dozens of channels I never see. Without intermediate cable I couldn't see game five between the Cinderella Pirates and the powerful Cardinals, and I went on to the mlb website and found that one could watch through them, and game five between Detroit and Oakland as well as the whole National League Championship Series for only $4.99 which I thought was a good deal. A good deal for something I want online? What's the world coming to? Anyway that's what I did on my birthday.
October 2013
Pets.
Like many a boy of my time and place. I was fascinated by animals. Most animals, that is, insects being excepted. When I was very young we lived in Hamden, Connecticut and lived with a black and white cat my mother named Doodles, which I maintain to this day is an inspired name for a cat. I'm reliably informed that there were two Doodleses, the first of which passed on and was discovered by my brother, who was discovered by Dad petting the still warm body and crying, Doo-doo? What's the matter, Doo-doo?' which is pretty sad. Sadder still is the fate of the second Doodles, which happened about 1968. Folks weren't so paranoid then and Doodles II roamed freely. But one spring day was chilly and Doodles was cold. To get warm he climbed up into the warmest spot around---the engine of my mother's recently driven Ford Thunderbird. Inevitably my mother came out into the garage and fired up her ride (to go downtown to the grocery, more than likely what with two growing boys in the house) and went off down the street for half the block until the engine quit and then a tow truck arrived and got it going and things were calm until later that day a neighbor called our house on Forest Street and told Mom that our cat was lying on their back porch and was in a bad way. Mom rushed Doodles to the vet and patched him up as much as was possible but the poor kitty only lived a few months after being traumatized so grievously. Much later Mom told me that the vet bill was $800, which is a lotta glue now, never mind forty five years ago!
One of our family's friends gave us two kittens from their cat's litter and we named them Freddy and Fuzzy. Unfortunately Fuzzy wasn't quite all there and I can still remember seeing him run full speed across the back yard, only to stop abruptly when he went face first into the leg of the picnic table. Ouch. So, sadly, ol' Fuzz didn't last long. But Freddy was with us through most of the seventies but passed after the vet botched a declawing operation. I was strenuously opposed to this, believing then and now that declawing is a barbaric, unconscionable practice. If you are so concerned about your furniture or your socks or what have you, don't get a cat! Anyway the vet screwed it up and poor Freddy passed and I was so upset that I went down to the vet myself to give him a good piece of my mind but of course they wouldn't take me seriously since I was just a teenager. So nothing happened. Of course.
But we didn't just have cats--growing up when and where I did we had a fair amount of other animals around too. My brother at one point had gerbils and since I didn't want anything that he had I got a hamster and named it John after my cousin. One day he got out of his cage (the hamster, that is!) and we couldn't find him after looking everywhere. I found a mangled mess underneath one of the heat registers and freaked out, but it was only some bit of flotsam that got under there somehow. Eventually we found John the hamster safe and sound but I don't recall where. Another time we decided to paint some of the rooms in the house and my bedroom was to be bright yellow, at my request. (So what was I, like eleven?) Naturally we couldn't have JtheH breathing in all those paint fumes, so we moved his cage into the kitchen on the counter where he could breathe easy. Except that he couldn't---Fred the cat was up on the counter in like one second, hungrily eyeing what would have made a nice snack and poor John was cowering in the corner. We took mercy on both critters, the hungry and the cowering, and moved John to a nice safe closet.
Then there were the turtles. For some reason it was considered hep to have small turtles in a small aquarium and so I had two, Clarence and Oglethorpe. I can't remember where I got Clarence from but Oglethorpe was suggested by my cousin Elizabeth. That was pretty cool-they would eat crunchy lettuce and swim around but soon they got a turtle disease where their shells would get soft and then they'd get sicker and sicker and croak so we got a calcium thing, shaped like a turtle so it wouldn't scare them and stuck that in the water which was supposed to help but Clarence II and Oglethorpe II met the same fate and that was the end of the turtles.
On to the chameleon! Yep, next on the critter list was Otto the color-changer! He really did change colors, too, although I remember being slightly disappointed when he didn't turn fire engine red or sky blue, but just different shades of green or brown depending on what leaf he was perched on. Otto ate little grubby worms and to a twelve year old it was decidedly neat to watch him devour the little wall crawlers.
I never wanted fish, it always seemed like a lot of work and equipment and such, and you couldn't even pet them and anyway I always preferred cats, so when I got out of school and went into my own place I took the kitten with me from the pad in which I and some school chums shared over the summer and so Fluffy and I lived happily ever after in Bridgeport from 1985 until she passed in 1997 which was very sad. Her untimely demise coincided with the beginning of my acting career, if you can call it that, and I dedicated my performance to her memory, as corny as that sounds. But get this--out of ten people in the cast, I was the ONLY one who was word-perfect that first night. And I had never acted before, so I'm inordinately proud of that one. The vet that I took her to was down the street and when I lived in Bpt. I didn't always have a car, at least not a working one, so I used to stuff her in the carrier and walk over. I was too broke/cheap to spring for a proper carrier and had this crappy cardboard one and one day on the way home the bottom fell out of it, depositing Fluffy on the sidewalk. Frightened, she immediately took off into the street, where a delivery van was bearing down on her! Luckily it just missed her, I was sure she was about to be pulped but she ran to the building across the street which was surrounded by a wire fence. Kitty tried to dig her way under it and was still at it when I got there, scooped her up and walked the rest of the way home, leaving the crappy cardboard carrier on the sidewalk where it was. Shortly thereafter I was at Dad's place and related the incident, and he laughed and said he wished he'd been there just to see the stricken look on my face, which I didn't really appreciate, but anyway all's well that ends well.
I was very sad to lose Fluffy but I wanted to wait to get another furry pal and then in the summer of 2000 a friend asked me to kitty sit so I had Penny and Nickel from Memorial Day to Labor Day and that made me think I was ready to do so again, so at Xmastime I went to the animal shelter in Westport and scoped out their kitties and the one that caught my eye was a skinny calico who mewed at me and rubbed up against the cage door and just looked like she needed a good home so Simpkins came home with me in December 2000 and is still with me 13 years later and we are just about to make our fourth move together, from Bridgeport to Astoria to Jersey City to ?. When she adopted me she was about two so now she is about fifteen but still hanging in there pretty well, pretty frisky yet despite some wobbliness in her back legs. If she should go to her kitty reward before I go to my daddy reward I think I'll probably wait to get another pal, but I don't want to think about that now and anyway it's cold tonight and Simpkins wants to sit on Daddy's lap (since there's no warm car engines to crawl into) so we'll sign off for now and watch the rest of the World Series and read a bit.
October 2013
One of our family's friends gave us two kittens from their cat's litter and we named them Freddy and Fuzzy. Unfortunately Fuzzy wasn't quite all there and I can still remember seeing him run full speed across the back yard, only to stop abruptly when he went face first into the leg of the picnic table. Ouch. So, sadly, ol' Fuzz didn't last long. But Freddy was with us through most of the seventies but passed after the vet botched a declawing operation. I was strenuously opposed to this, believing then and now that declawing is a barbaric, unconscionable practice. If you are so concerned about your furniture or your socks or what have you, don't get a cat! Anyway the vet screwed it up and poor Freddy passed and I was so upset that I went down to the vet myself to give him a good piece of my mind but of course they wouldn't take me seriously since I was just a teenager. So nothing happened. Of course.
But we didn't just have cats--growing up when and where I did we had a fair amount of other animals around too. My brother at one point had gerbils and since I didn't want anything that he had I got a hamster and named it John after my cousin. One day he got out of his cage (the hamster, that is!) and we couldn't find him after looking everywhere. I found a mangled mess underneath one of the heat registers and freaked out, but it was only some bit of flotsam that got under there somehow. Eventually we found John the hamster safe and sound but I don't recall where. Another time we decided to paint some of the rooms in the house and my bedroom was to be bright yellow, at my request. (So what was I, like eleven?) Naturally we couldn't have JtheH breathing in all those paint fumes, so we moved his cage into the kitchen on the counter where he could breathe easy. Except that he couldn't---Fred the cat was up on the counter in like one second, hungrily eyeing what would have made a nice snack and poor John was cowering in the corner. We took mercy on both critters, the hungry and the cowering, and moved John to a nice safe closet.
Then there were the turtles. For some reason it was considered hep to have small turtles in a small aquarium and so I had two, Clarence and Oglethorpe. I can't remember where I got Clarence from but Oglethorpe was suggested by my cousin Elizabeth. That was pretty cool-they would eat crunchy lettuce and swim around but soon they got a turtle disease where their shells would get soft and then they'd get sicker and sicker and croak so we got a calcium thing, shaped like a turtle so it wouldn't scare them and stuck that in the water which was supposed to help but Clarence II and Oglethorpe II met the same fate and that was the end of the turtles.
On to the chameleon! Yep, next on the critter list was Otto the color-changer! He really did change colors, too, although I remember being slightly disappointed when he didn't turn fire engine red or sky blue, but just different shades of green or brown depending on what leaf he was perched on. Otto ate little grubby worms and to a twelve year old it was decidedly neat to watch him devour the little wall crawlers.
I never wanted fish, it always seemed like a lot of work and equipment and such, and you couldn't even pet them and anyway I always preferred cats, so when I got out of school and went into my own place I took the kitten with me from the pad in which I and some school chums shared over the summer and so Fluffy and I lived happily ever after in Bridgeport from 1985 until she passed in 1997 which was very sad. Her untimely demise coincided with the beginning of my acting career, if you can call it that, and I dedicated my performance to her memory, as corny as that sounds. But get this--out of ten people in the cast, I was the ONLY one who was word-perfect that first night. And I had never acted before, so I'm inordinately proud of that one. The vet that I took her to was down the street and when I lived in Bpt. I didn't always have a car, at least not a working one, so I used to stuff her in the carrier and walk over. I was too broke/cheap to spring for a proper carrier and had this crappy cardboard one and one day on the way home the bottom fell out of it, depositing Fluffy on the sidewalk. Frightened, she immediately took off into the street, where a delivery van was bearing down on her! Luckily it just missed her, I was sure she was about to be pulped but she ran to the building across the street which was surrounded by a wire fence. Kitty tried to dig her way under it and was still at it when I got there, scooped her up and walked the rest of the way home, leaving the crappy cardboard carrier on the sidewalk where it was. Shortly thereafter I was at Dad's place and related the incident, and he laughed and said he wished he'd been there just to see the stricken look on my face, which I didn't really appreciate, but anyway all's well that ends well.
I was very sad to lose Fluffy but I wanted to wait to get another furry pal and then in the summer of 2000 a friend asked me to kitty sit so I had Penny and Nickel from Memorial Day to Labor Day and that made me think I was ready to do so again, so at Xmastime I went to the animal shelter in Westport and scoped out their kitties and the one that caught my eye was a skinny calico who mewed at me and rubbed up against the cage door and just looked like she needed a good home so Simpkins came home with me in December 2000 and is still with me 13 years later and we are just about to make our fourth move together, from Bridgeport to Astoria to Jersey City to ?. When she adopted me she was about two so now she is about fifteen but still hanging in there pretty well, pretty frisky yet despite some wobbliness in her back legs. If she should go to her kitty reward before I go to my daddy reward I think I'll probably wait to get another pal, but I don't want to think about that now and anyway it's cold tonight and Simpkins wants to sit on Daddy's lap (since there's no warm car engines to crawl into) so we'll sign off for now and watch the rest of the World Series and read a bit.
October 2013
And I'll try not to sing out of key....
It's hard to believe it's almost eighteen years ago, but in January of 1996 I felt that I was ready to launch my latest project. A music project, as it would be another year and a half before I started acting. I'd been playing a group of my own songs and putting together a set, alone in my home, for awhile and what I planned to do was recruit a rhythm section and play them in public! How bold! So I did what you did away back then--I went to the classified section of the local alternative weekly and found an ad that said 'Bernie Seeking Elton' from a lyric writing bass player. I called him up and we met and jammed a bit, and while I usually lyricked my own songs, I had a couple of instrumentals and he had some clever turns of phrase so we decided to work on that while seeking a drummer. Which didn't actually take too long--a mutual friend introduced me to a fellow who he said was a good batteur and could also sing, both of which turned out to be true. And they're off! We worked on vocal arrangements and clattered around bringing my music to life, and my fondly remembered rhythm section also contributed some songs, as at my insistence we only did originals. This made it harder to get gigs sometimes but I wanted to put together a band to play my songs and that's what I did. Pretty soon we had a set of two to three hours, but problems arose when, after rehearsal, I would be hoarse and sore of throat. Clearly I wasn't doing it right, and while I was well aware that there was a proper technique for doing so, I just didn't know what it was! So I went down to the local music store that offered lessons in vocal technique and signed up for some sessions. Thus I started learning the right way to sing from Lana (name changed) even though she may have been frustrated with me at first. It took me quite a while to unlearn my bad habits and to make inroads into proper breathing methods. Eventually I got better at it and gradually my throat problems were alleviated and I could sing an entire set, which I arranged to give myself a breather while the other fellows sang lead for a tune or two. When fall rolled around, Lana asked me what I was doing for Thanksgiving and when I gave my usual answer of sleeping all day and enjoying the day off, she insisted that I come over for dinner with her family, and so I did. First rule of show business: never turn down free food! We had a pleasant time and a good feed. So imagine my surprise the next year. I got a card in the mail in November and I thought it was another kind invite, but to my dismay I was invited instead to her memorial service! I'd known she had kidney troubles and was on dialysis, and she had often expressed dismay with the FDA, which she felt were dragging their feet on an effective treatment due to its unpatentability and lack of profit potential. I myself believe that the agency is more concerned with protecting profits than protecting lives; look at teevee for more than thirty seconds and you will see an ad for a lawyer telling you that you can rake it in if you took focusyn and your ass fell off or something. And these were all pills that were duly approved! Maybe the agency shouldn't take the word of the drug manufacturer about the effectiveness of the meds. Just saying.
Anyway it was an awful shame that she passed away at a young age. At the memorial service, her husband decided to honor her memory by giving away her possessions; there was a table with sheet music and assorted mementos for the taking which frankly I found a bit morbid. I felt then, and do now, that the best thing I could take away was the ability to sing without getting sore or hoarse. Here it is some years later and I feel that I am a much better singer now than I have ever been, but I simply MUST be properly warmed up or I'll make your ears bleed. It took me a very long time to get comfy singing and that is key as well, a comfort zone. Confidence, too. Got to feel like I CAN hit the notes.
One thing about Lana (name changed) and her husband that I found hard to understand was their religiousosity. They were, I think, so-called born again Christians (do people still so designate themselves?) and thus, as I understand it, lived their lives according to the teachings of JC. In '96, legitimately elected President Clinton was making belligerent noises at Iraq and threatening to bomb them, knowing as he did that most Americans had no idea that we bombed the bejesus out of that country all through the Clinton years right up until the official lie-based invasion of 2003. The news was full of the usual hawkish propaganda and fearmongering designed to get Americans on board with the notion of protecting ourselves by attacking a nation of no threat to us whatsoever. One day I made a comment disparaging this kind of warmongering insanity and they said, 'Oh, we've got to get Saddam' (They were both at the music studio that day.) And I asked how support for further bombing of Iraq, which would surely cost many thousands of lives, could be compatible with Christianity, which I'd always held to be a non-violent faith. Both Lana and her husband were both adamant about the need to bomb Iraq right then. I must have been mistaken about Christianity, for nothing says peace and love toward your fellow human in 2013-14 like taking away food stamps and unemployment benefits so those lazy freeloaders will finally get off their asses and take all those nonexistent jobs! But I really don't get it---how can you claim to be a Christian and support bombing, killing, maiming, punishing the poor, and scapegoating the working classes? In fact some of your most pious politicians are some of your harshest in judging other people and working overtime to lower the standard of living of the 98%. So the question remains: Whatever happened to 'Judge not, lest ye be judged?'
And by all that's holy don't judge my singing!
Until next year, a Merry Xmas, Happy New Year, Happy Chanukah, and a Kwazy Kwanzaa from your friends at Chocolate Frosted Bloggos, the best blog on the web!
December 2013
Anyway it was an awful shame that she passed away at a young age. At the memorial service, her husband decided to honor her memory by giving away her possessions; there was a table with sheet music and assorted mementos for the taking which frankly I found a bit morbid. I felt then, and do now, that the best thing I could take away was the ability to sing without getting sore or hoarse. Here it is some years later and I feel that I am a much better singer now than I have ever been, but I simply MUST be properly warmed up or I'll make your ears bleed. It took me a very long time to get comfy singing and that is key as well, a comfort zone. Confidence, too. Got to feel like I CAN hit the notes.
One thing about Lana (name changed) and her husband that I found hard to understand was their religiousosity. They were, I think, so-called born again Christians (do people still so designate themselves?) and thus, as I understand it, lived their lives according to the teachings of JC. In '96, legitimately elected President Clinton was making belligerent noises at Iraq and threatening to bomb them, knowing as he did that most Americans had no idea that we bombed the bejesus out of that country all through the Clinton years right up until the official lie-based invasion of 2003. The news was full of the usual hawkish propaganda and fearmongering designed to get Americans on board with the notion of protecting ourselves by attacking a nation of no threat to us whatsoever. One day I made a comment disparaging this kind of warmongering insanity and they said, 'Oh, we've got to get Saddam' (They were both at the music studio that day.) And I asked how support for further bombing of Iraq, which would surely cost many thousands of lives, could be compatible with Christianity, which I'd always held to be a non-violent faith. Both Lana and her husband were both adamant about the need to bomb Iraq right then. I must have been mistaken about Christianity, for nothing says peace and love toward your fellow human in 2013-14 like taking away food stamps and unemployment benefits so those lazy freeloaders will finally get off their asses and take all those nonexistent jobs! But I really don't get it---how can you claim to be a Christian and support bombing, killing, maiming, punishing the poor, and scapegoating the working classes? In fact some of your most pious politicians are some of your harshest in judging other people and working overtime to lower the standard of living of the 98%. So the question remains: Whatever happened to 'Judge not, lest ye be judged?'
And by all that's holy don't judge my singing!
Until next year, a Merry Xmas, Happy New Year, Happy Chanukah, and a Kwazy Kwanzaa from your friends at Chocolate Frosted Bloggos, the best blog on the web!
December 2013
Is It 'Collectible' or 'Collectable?'
I'm one of those natural born collector types. You know the kind I mean--I might need this someday, so I'd better keep it around --or-- This is cool, I'll have to look for more --or-- I have to have all of these right now! Although I've streamlined a bit to raise some money and to save space (Actually so far not one single bid on anything I put up on ebay.) I still actively collect a few things. Some highlights of my collections:
I have every single issue of MAD magazine from 1962-1979, with some prior to '62. I have the first magazine version, #24, and I have one comic book version, #22. I have several specials with the inserts still bound in.
I have a modest amount of Beatles Stuff. A program from the '65 tour, and an unused ticket from the '66 tour. Some Beatlemania vintage magazines, some of the Topps trading cards from '64 (missing about twenty from the set of (I think) 165. Or is it 155? Some of the Beatles Monthly magazines published for members of the official fan club. Lots of books on the Fabs. A record signed by John Lennon's first wife Cynthia.
Baseball history is an interest of mine and I have several hundred books on the subject. I have a signed first edition of Ball Four, first editions of The Glory of Their Times, The Boys of Summer, A Summer Game, a Who's Who for 1937 with Lou Gehrig on the cover (the latter available for sale), Robert Smith's history signed by Lee Allen and Paul Derringer, among others. Signed cards of Jimmy Piersall, Hoyt Wilhelm, Enos Slaughter, Bob Gibson, Duke Snider, Jim 'Catfish' Hunter, Elmer Valo, Dick Williams, Tommie Agee, Ed Kranepool, Art Shamsky, Leo Durocher, Larry Dierker, Sam McDowell, Gordie Howe, Gump Worsley, and lots more.
Signed books by Arthur Miller, Marlee Matlin, Keith Richards, Stephen King, among others.
So every once in a while I like to go to book fairs and card/memorabilia shows and the like to see what's what and maybe even buy something. This past weekend there was one of the larger area sports shows in White Plains. I used to go to these all the time, as in the first half of the 90s I was in the business myself which is when I got most of my sports stuff. This time around I was attracted by free-with-admission autographs of Denny McLain, the last pitcher to win 30 or more in a season (31 in '68) which is unlikely to happen again since pitchers get fewer starts nowadays and fewer decisions due to the prevalence of relief pitching. Also former Mets slugger Dave Kingman was there. I saw him hit some into orbit at Shea, so while I am a little young to remember McLain's heyday, I well remember Dave Kingman, who won the NL home run title by smashing 37 in 1982 but who only hit .204 that year. Talk about all or nothing!
So up to White Plains on the metro-north and got there early (for me) on Sunday around 12.15-12.30, and figured I'd better get my free autographs first. But oh! those lines! There was a huge line for Kingman but eventually it started moving pretty well so I got my 1976 Topps card signed after about 45 minutes. Then they made us go right back in the other line for McLain and that was another 40 minutes but I persevered and got my 1970 All-Star card of McLain signed, so those are nice additions to my auto collection. Then to the shopping floor! I have most issues of Baseball Digest from 1976-1996 but there are some holes in the mid-80s. And, there was one dealer selling back issues and he had eleven that I didn't have, at one dollar apiece. So there were a few holes plugged, and good reading too! I don't read it nowadays for while my interest in the history of the national pastime is as strong as ever, I don't follow the current game as much because the greed turns me off, the memory capacity isn't there anymore to remember who plays where, and a lot of the articles are naturally of current players I have little interest in, or players from yesteryear who just grump about how everything was better in the old days--like the 1980s!
Then I wanted to check up on Mets yearbooks. There was a fellow who had some really nice early ones--my earliest is 1968--but they are very expensive. Another dealer had some more recent ones that I didn't have, we cut a deal on some 70s and 80s, and I now have every yearbook from '68 to '88, lacking only the 1971 which is my next target. Although I must admit that my 1969 yearbook is a facsimile. What the heck, the originals of course cost a fortune!
In ambling around the bourse, there were several booths with programs, scorecards, and magazines and one in particular caught my eye, everything 3 for one dollar. So I rooted through the boxes and found three things to blow one measly buck on: The presumably last media guide of the late, lamented Montreal Expos from 2004, the year before they were murdered and reincarnated in DC; a 1972 Mets scorecard (available for sale as I already have a couple but this one is unscored); and a sports illustrated from 1966 with then Pirates manager Harry Walker on the cover and an article about football coach Paul Bryant's battle to clear his name from fix allegations. That was an interesting read along with the memoirs of Frank Graham Jr. whose name was on the original article in the Saturday Evening Post. I may post about that incident at some point.
I spent another dollar on a copy of The World Series, a novel by John Tunis which will be good reading on the train. I make it a point to get at least one pack of something at these shows so that I can indulge the age-old ritual of pack opening when I get home. I usually get older packs because my! have you seen the prices on new packs of cards today? I don't think I saw a newer box of cards for less than $80 or so! Anyway I like the older stuff. Saw an '86 rack pack for $1 and got that. One hall of famer (Carew) and several future managers. Then there was a table that had older yearbooks from different teams (Of course in White Plains the emphasis is on Mets and Yanks stuff) and that was interesting. Last time I was at this show two years ago I picked up A's and Cards and Phils yearbooks from the early 70s for modest prices. I was tempted by a '74 Tigers yearbook but in the end opted for a 1960 Dodgers yearbook which was only $12 and an interesting read, coming the year after they won the Series from the White Sox. After I've read it I may take it into the shop to sell. There was one item I considered but didn't buy--a table had '86 World Series programs for $15 and it was the end of the day and so I asked the dealer if he would take ten but he said no which of course is his right. I don't think those programs are that scarce and I'll find one at some point.
There was a big coin show focusing on world issues two weeks ago at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. A customer in the shop asking about numismatic books mentioned it to me and I went online and found a coupon for $5 admission so I decided to go, having slightly rekindled my interest in numismatics. I looked at some stuff and picked up some complimentary trade papers and might check out some more shows. Unlikely that I'll buy anything; goodness knows my coin collection is very very modest and I'm not really looking to start actively collecting again, but I still check my change like I did forty years ago! I like to read the magazines and daydream about finding a wonderful treasure trove. The White Plains sports show had a coin show in the same building and I fully intended to look around there but the fact is I forgot all about it! Next one is in April and I will try again then. I was an avid numismatist as a kid, around 8th-9th grade but my collection was stolen and that made me lose interest for a while but I think I'll dip a toe back in the waters and see what happens. In any case it's enjoyable to read about coins and collecting and so off to the library!
So that's my thinking on collectibles. Or is it collectables? Either way, I have nice collections of a couple of things and modest collections of a couple of things and it doesn't look like my collecting tendencies will go away any time soon. I just have to make sure I really want something due to budget constraints and space issues. But my parting advice is simply this: Collect what you like, then you'll never be disappointed. Don't worry at all about the money end of things--too much greed in the world as it is. Just have fun!
January 2014
I have every single issue of MAD magazine from 1962-1979, with some prior to '62. I have the first magazine version, #24, and I have one comic book version, #22. I have several specials with the inserts still bound in.
I have a modest amount of Beatles Stuff. A program from the '65 tour, and an unused ticket from the '66 tour. Some Beatlemania vintage magazines, some of the Topps trading cards from '64 (missing about twenty from the set of (I think) 165. Or is it 155? Some of the Beatles Monthly magazines published for members of the official fan club. Lots of books on the Fabs. A record signed by John Lennon's first wife Cynthia.
Baseball history is an interest of mine and I have several hundred books on the subject. I have a signed first edition of Ball Four, first editions of The Glory of Their Times, The Boys of Summer, A Summer Game, a Who's Who for 1937 with Lou Gehrig on the cover (the latter available for sale), Robert Smith's history signed by Lee Allen and Paul Derringer, among others. Signed cards of Jimmy Piersall, Hoyt Wilhelm, Enos Slaughter, Bob Gibson, Duke Snider, Jim 'Catfish' Hunter, Elmer Valo, Dick Williams, Tommie Agee, Ed Kranepool, Art Shamsky, Leo Durocher, Larry Dierker, Sam McDowell, Gordie Howe, Gump Worsley, and lots more.
Signed books by Arthur Miller, Marlee Matlin, Keith Richards, Stephen King, among others.
So every once in a while I like to go to book fairs and card/memorabilia shows and the like to see what's what and maybe even buy something. This past weekend there was one of the larger area sports shows in White Plains. I used to go to these all the time, as in the first half of the 90s I was in the business myself which is when I got most of my sports stuff. This time around I was attracted by free-with-admission autographs of Denny McLain, the last pitcher to win 30 or more in a season (31 in '68) which is unlikely to happen again since pitchers get fewer starts nowadays and fewer decisions due to the prevalence of relief pitching. Also former Mets slugger Dave Kingman was there. I saw him hit some into orbit at Shea, so while I am a little young to remember McLain's heyday, I well remember Dave Kingman, who won the NL home run title by smashing 37 in 1982 but who only hit .204 that year. Talk about all or nothing!
So up to White Plains on the metro-north and got there early (for me) on Sunday around 12.15-12.30, and figured I'd better get my free autographs first. But oh! those lines! There was a huge line for Kingman but eventually it started moving pretty well so I got my 1976 Topps card signed after about 45 minutes. Then they made us go right back in the other line for McLain and that was another 40 minutes but I persevered and got my 1970 All-Star card of McLain signed, so those are nice additions to my auto collection. Then to the shopping floor! I have most issues of Baseball Digest from 1976-1996 but there are some holes in the mid-80s. And, there was one dealer selling back issues and he had eleven that I didn't have, at one dollar apiece. So there were a few holes plugged, and good reading too! I don't read it nowadays for while my interest in the history of the national pastime is as strong as ever, I don't follow the current game as much because the greed turns me off, the memory capacity isn't there anymore to remember who plays where, and a lot of the articles are naturally of current players I have little interest in, or players from yesteryear who just grump about how everything was better in the old days--like the 1980s!
Then I wanted to check up on Mets yearbooks. There was a fellow who had some really nice early ones--my earliest is 1968--but they are very expensive. Another dealer had some more recent ones that I didn't have, we cut a deal on some 70s and 80s, and I now have every yearbook from '68 to '88, lacking only the 1971 which is my next target. Although I must admit that my 1969 yearbook is a facsimile. What the heck, the originals of course cost a fortune!
In ambling around the bourse, there were several booths with programs, scorecards, and magazines and one in particular caught my eye, everything 3 for one dollar. So I rooted through the boxes and found three things to blow one measly buck on: The presumably last media guide of the late, lamented Montreal Expos from 2004, the year before they were murdered and reincarnated in DC; a 1972 Mets scorecard (available for sale as I already have a couple but this one is unscored); and a sports illustrated from 1966 with then Pirates manager Harry Walker on the cover and an article about football coach Paul Bryant's battle to clear his name from fix allegations. That was an interesting read along with the memoirs of Frank Graham Jr. whose name was on the original article in the Saturday Evening Post. I may post about that incident at some point.
I spent another dollar on a copy of The World Series, a novel by John Tunis which will be good reading on the train. I make it a point to get at least one pack of something at these shows so that I can indulge the age-old ritual of pack opening when I get home. I usually get older packs because my! have you seen the prices on new packs of cards today? I don't think I saw a newer box of cards for less than $80 or so! Anyway I like the older stuff. Saw an '86 rack pack for $1 and got that. One hall of famer (Carew) and several future managers. Then there was a table that had older yearbooks from different teams (Of course in White Plains the emphasis is on Mets and Yanks stuff) and that was interesting. Last time I was at this show two years ago I picked up A's and Cards and Phils yearbooks from the early 70s for modest prices. I was tempted by a '74 Tigers yearbook but in the end opted for a 1960 Dodgers yearbook which was only $12 and an interesting read, coming the year after they won the Series from the White Sox. After I've read it I may take it into the shop to sell. There was one item I considered but didn't buy--a table had '86 World Series programs for $15 and it was the end of the day and so I asked the dealer if he would take ten but he said no which of course is his right. I don't think those programs are that scarce and I'll find one at some point.
There was a big coin show focusing on world issues two weeks ago at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. A customer in the shop asking about numismatic books mentioned it to me and I went online and found a coupon for $5 admission so I decided to go, having slightly rekindled my interest in numismatics. I looked at some stuff and picked up some complimentary trade papers and might check out some more shows. Unlikely that I'll buy anything; goodness knows my coin collection is very very modest and I'm not really looking to start actively collecting again, but I still check my change like I did forty years ago! I like to read the magazines and daydream about finding a wonderful treasure trove. The White Plains sports show had a coin show in the same building and I fully intended to look around there but the fact is I forgot all about it! Next one is in April and I will try again then. I was an avid numismatist as a kid, around 8th-9th grade but my collection was stolen and that made me lose interest for a while but I think I'll dip a toe back in the waters and see what happens. In any case it's enjoyable to read about coins and collecting and so off to the library!
So that's my thinking on collectibles. Or is it collectables? Either way, I have nice collections of a couple of things and modest collections of a couple of things and it doesn't look like my collecting tendencies will go away any time soon. I just have to make sure I really want something due to budget constraints and space issues. But my parting advice is simply this: Collect what you like, then you'll never be disappointed. Don't worry at all about the money end of things--too much greed in the world as it is. Just have fun!
January 2014
Vinyl
I do not have an internet connection at my new apartment, which I have been occupying for three months now. I don't want to spend the money, for one thing, as I am saving up for a trip to Europe, new headshots, a better chair for reading and relaxing, and to save on the electric bill. Also the ever-present privacy concerns, as the telecom companies have proven themselves to be crooked. So I unplugged my computer and put it away for the time being. But by and large I don't miss it, except for one thing--it's handy to play music on. I put most of my cds and tapes on media player and it's easy to click and listen. And the shuffle function is very fine. But, I got gifted a receiver from my man Lawrence and connected my turntable for the first time in a long time. Most of the records I have now are ones I had as a young youth, and so it is quite a trip down memory lane! I've started off with
Derek and the Dominos in Concert, a Beatles interview/history record from the first flush of Beatlemania, a Chet Atkins/Doc Watson collaboration, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's Works volume one, from 1977. It's been a long time since I had a working turntable and an even longer time since I've heard most of these records, and I plan to celebrate the coming of spring and an end to this infernal cold weather by taking a listening tour down memory lane. I wonder if the present generations brought up without records feel that they are missing anything? Of course turntables are still used by DJs and audio aficionados, and the argument in favor of analog sound is well known. I myself prefer the warmer tones of vinyl, all else being equal, while recognizing the convenience of digital audio. For instance, it is easier to record at home with my digital system than it was with my old analog four-track. Which has the better sound? It's your call. I remember when Pink Floyd's Animals came out, there was a rumor about that said the first x amount of copies had an inflatable pig in them and I was disappointed when there wasn't one in my newly purchased copy, at Discount Records in Stamford. I recall it was #3 on the charts, behind (I think) Rumours and Saturday Night Fever. And how nice it was to open up a gatefold sleeve and see lyrics or photos of the band. Then you could unfold an insert in a cd if you were lucky and maybe get something similar. You're out of luck with downloads. Anyway, we'll revisit memory lane and see what other treasures the album collection yields.
February 2014
Derek and the Dominos in Concert, a Beatles interview/history record from the first flush of Beatlemania, a Chet Atkins/Doc Watson collaboration, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's Works volume one, from 1977. It's been a long time since I had a working turntable and an even longer time since I've heard most of these records, and I plan to celebrate the coming of spring and an end to this infernal cold weather by taking a listening tour down memory lane. I wonder if the present generations brought up without records feel that they are missing anything? Of course turntables are still used by DJs and audio aficionados, and the argument in favor of analog sound is well known. I myself prefer the warmer tones of vinyl, all else being equal, while recognizing the convenience of digital audio. For instance, it is easier to record at home with my digital system than it was with my old analog four-track. Which has the better sound? It's your call. I remember when Pink Floyd's Animals came out, there was a rumor about that said the first x amount of copies had an inflatable pig in them and I was disappointed when there wasn't one in my newly purchased copy, at Discount Records in Stamford. I recall it was #3 on the charts, behind (I think) Rumours and Saturday Night Fever. And how nice it was to open up a gatefold sleeve and see lyrics or photos of the band. Then you could unfold an insert in a cd if you were lucky and maybe get something similar. You're out of luck with downloads. Anyway, we'll revisit memory lane and see what other treasures the album collection yields.
February 2014
Plus ca change......
I have just finished reading A. Scott Berg's biography on Woodrow Wilson, and I was struck by the similarity between politics then and politics now. For a start, Wilson felt that the tripartite form of government as then practiced in the US fostered hostility between the branches and tended to obstruct progress, a sentiment which would no doubt be seconded by many a Congressperson today. Wilson's rise to prominence in politics was stunning in its alacrity, he was president of Princeton University as of October 1910; in November 1912 he was elected President of the United States! Of course this was well before the perpetual campaigning of today, but Wilson made it a point not to campaign or promote himself for the office, he let the Democratic party come to him. While the gop controlled both houses during his terms, his popularity and that of his programs led to several legislative successes early on. However, gop leader Henry Cabot Lodge was determined to undermine the Wilson administration by any means in order for the gop to take credit for his accomplishments, most notably peace with Germany. In fact, Wilson spent six months in Europe after WWI, brokering a peace treaty that set new boundaries for Austria, Hungary, and Poland, reiterated Belgium's sovereignty, and outlined provisions to maintain the future peace, including Wilson's dream of a League of Nations. Most Republicans opposed the peace treaty before it was even finalized. Yes, before it was released, before anyone stateside had even read it, the gop said, 'NO!' Sound familiar? What's more, with Wilson gone so long, Lodge realized that he, as leader of the opposition, had a golden opportunity to set the terms of the debate. Today, one hundred years later, we are apparently used to hard right theories as a starting point, but back then there was much less homogeneity of opinion and a much greater range of opinion from left to right. Lodge realized that he could agitate for changes in the treaty in order to claim credit for the peace for his party. However, Wilson was an idealist before that was a dirty word and he refused to compromise much, feeling that the US had gone in to WWI not to grab land or punish Germany, but to fight for the ideals for which America was known at the time, freedom of speech, assembly, religion, etc. His refusal to budge on much of the treaty may or may not have been wise in the long run, but it gave his enemies the opportunity to 'spin' the document as something compromising American sovereignty and inevitably entangling the US in European affairs, something anathema to many Americans then as now. But the chief obstacle to Wilson's enactment of his policies was his health. In October 1919, just after returning from Europe and while touring the western states to make his case for the Treaty, he suffered a grievous stroke which incapacitated him physically for the rest of his life. He no longer had the energy for the soaring orations that he enjoyed when young, and this hurt him a great deal, for his ability to take his case to the people was impaired. Opposition was very strong in the Senate, even among some Democrats. With Wilson a shadow of his former self and the White House not forthcoming with honest information about his health, the gop ruthlessly exploited his illness and rumors were rampant that the President was insane, dead, comatose, with any number of variations of these wild stories. Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the President's second wife (Ellen Wilson had died of kidney disease only months after Wilson took office) along with physician Grayson and chief of staff Tumulty were the only ones allowed into the presence of the Commander in Chief and ran things as best they could, but this incapacitation proved a golden opportunity for his political foes to make hay. The Treaty of Versailles went down to defeat in the Senate and the US never joined the League of Nations. While Woodrow Wilson's reputation as a President, scholar, and leader is relatively good, he never got over these defeats, nor did he ever recover from the effects of his stroke, and died in 1924 a broken man. He predicted that the terms of the Treaty guaranteed another war, and many of the others involved in the complex negotiations felt the same, including Marshal Ferdinand Foch. Each country fought for its own selfish interests and the idealistic views of Wilson and his supporters were lost.
But the current obstructionism of the Republican party has clear antecedents in the events of one hundred years ago. Then the gop opposed anything Wilson did on principle, no matter the merits of his proposals in terms of what might be best for the country and how best to address problems. The gop today opposes any initiative of Obama, no matter how mild, no matter how corporate friendly, because people suffering or the country hurting is a minor matter compared to the black guy in the White House maybe winning one. The more things change......
April 2014
But the current obstructionism of the Republican party has clear antecedents in the events of one hundred years ago. Then the gop opposed anything Wilson did on principle, no matter the merits of his proposals in terms of what might be best for the country and how best to address problems. The gop today opposes any initiative of Obama, no matter how mild, no matter how corporate friendly, because people suffering or the country hurting is a minor matter compared to the black guy in the White House maybe winning one. The more things change......
April 2014
Reading is Fun-Damental!
Ok, all you boomers out there, who remembers that slogan from back in the day? Me, I never needed any encouragement to read, as both of my parents did so I was a voracious reader as soon as I learned. I devoured the classics of kid lit like Stuart Little, Make Way For Ducklings, Tin Tin, the Hardy Boys, (no Nancy Drew, though--that would have been weird.) and a series for 'young adults,' as they say nowadays, starring a protagonist called Mark Tidd written by Clarence Budington Kelland between 1915 or so and 1928 or so. My father read them as a kid and I really liked them too. There are nine in the series plus two more that were published later on in magazines, and I have six of the nine in my collection currently. The copies we had when I was young are who knows where! So today as an adult in (very) late middle age, I usually have two or three books going, reading whichever one I am in the mood for at the moment. So what have I been reading lately?
Welp, after the above mentioned bio of Woodrow Wilson, I've delved into the diaries of Richard Burton, the noted Welsh actor. He has the image of a boozing, womanizing, larger than life kind of guy, but he is much more down to earth in these journals, of which there are snippets from his boyhood and early career, but the parts that are much more interesting start in 1965 and 1966 when he was married to Elizabeth Taylor and filming Taming of the Shrew, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Faustus. Particularly interesting to me was the revelation that he followed the National Pastime and was quite the baseball fan. Miss Taylor bet him $500 that the Dodgers would beat the Baltimore Orioles in the 1966 World Series, and as an American League fan, Burton took the bet. Which he won when Baltimore swept the former Brooklyns in four straight. I wonder if he ever collected on the wager? A few weeks back at the library I stumbled across a lavish book on the history of the paperback book which I only had time to skim but it looked interesting and I want to read it all but I haven't seen it since, someone must have it checked out. Although the binding was broken, perhaps the library removed it from circulation. I was perusing a book of cartoons killed and not run by newspapers, mostly because they weren't right-wing enough, which was interesting although there doesn't seem to be any such thing as 'too right-wing to print,' especially in these twenty-first century days of false balance. I was also looking through Michael Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon which collects evidence that the official narrative of the attacks in September 2001 were not accurate and I feel that he makes a good case with concrete evidence and sources while I, as posted above, feel that there are many unanswered questions and that the Commission did the same things that the Warren Commission did, which was determine the conclusion that they wanted and then tailor the evidence toward reaching that conclusion while simply ignoring anything that didn't jibe with it.
While I was sitting at the table reading these, I noticed a book someone had left behind called My Korean Deli, which was about a fellow who worked for George Plimpton at the Paris Review who was married to a Korean woman, and they decided to purchase and run a delicatessen in Brooklyn. So I checked it out and it was quite interesting, all about not only the tribulations of running a small business like that, but also the differences in cultures with his wife and in-laws, and about juggling his literary work with the nuts and bolts of selling cigarettes, lottery tickets, beer, and sandwiches. In that book, author Howe mentions Bernard Malamud's novel the Assistant, which is about an older Jewish man who owns a grocery in Brooklyn and ends up with an unnecessary and mostly unpaid assistant who had actually robbed the store and now is there as a form of personal penance. This sounded interesting and I checked that out too and read it in two nights. Very good if somewhat dark. Next to find a volume of Malamud's short stories which I hear are topnotch. The short story is a neglected and under appreciated art form. If you can find someone that can delineate characters and foment a coherent plot, you've really got an author! It's a form I've dabbled in a bit and even saw print once. Someday I'll post it. As I think I mentioned above, my interest in numismatics has been reignited a bit and I've read a few things on coin collecting, and I've been long interested in comics and comic art and have lately read all of the collected comic strips of Rip Kirby, written and drawn by Alex Raymond before his untimely passing in a motor wreck in 1956. Rip Kirby is a detective in the modern style of the television private eye, but was started in 1946 and so prefigured the slick Bondlike characters of tv and film but owes something to the noirish stylings of your James M. Cains and Raymond Chandlers, although Kirby is much more erudite and much less hardboiled than they, although as an ex-Marine, he's no one's patsy! Now in progress is a dual biography of the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and the 1666 volume of the diaries of Samuel Pepys. And please always remember and never forget, as our store motto says: Books are Good!
May 2014
Welp, after the above mentioned bio of Woodrow Wilson, I've delved into the diaries of Richard Burton, the noted Welsh actor. He has the image of a boozing, womanizing, larger than life kind of guy, but he is much more down to earth in these journals, of which there are snippets from his boyhood and early career, but the parts that are much more interesting start in 1965 and 1966 when he was married to Elizabeth Taylor and filming Taming of the Shrew, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Faustus. Particularly interesting to me was the revelation that he followed the National Pastime and was quite the baseball fan. Miss Taylor bet him $500 that the Dodgers would beat the Baltimore Orioles in the 1966 World Series, and as an American League fan, Burton took the bet. Which he won when Baltimore swept the former Brooklyns in four straight. I wonder if he ever collected on the wager? A few weeks back at the library I stumbled across a lavish book on the history of the paperback book which I only had time to skim but it looked interesting and I want to read it all but I haven't seen it since, someone must have it checked out. Although the binding was broken, perhaps the library removed it from circulation. I was perusing a book of cartoons killed and not run by newspapers, mostly because they weren't right-wing enough, which was interesting although there doesn't seem to be any such thing as 'too right-wing to print,' especially in these twenty-first century days of false balance. I was also looking through Michael Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon which collects evidence that the official narrative of the attacks in September 2001 were not accurate and I feel that he makes a good case with concrete evidence and sources while I, as posted above, feel that there are many unanswered questions and that the Commission did the same things that the Warren Commission did, which was determine the conclusion that they wanted and then tailor the evidence toward reaching that conclusion while simply ignoring anything that didn't jibe with it.
While I was sitting at the table reading these, I noticed a book someone had left behind called My Korean Deli, which was about a fellow who worked for George Plimpton at the Paris Review who was married to a Korean woman, and they decided to purchase and run a delicatessen in Brooklyn. So I checked it out and it was quite interesting, all about not only the tribulations of running a small business like that, but also the differences in cultures with his wife and in-laws, and about juggling his literary work with the nuts and bolts of selling cigarettes, lottery tickets, beer, and sandwiches. In that book, author Howe mentions Bernard Malamud's novel the Assistant, which is about an older Jewish man who owns a grocery in Brooklyn and ends up with an unnecessary and mostly unpaid assistant who had actually robbed the store and now is there as a form of personal penance. This sounded interesting and I checked that out too and read it in two nights. Very good if somewhat dark. Next to find a volume of Malamud's short stories which I hear are topnotch. The short story is a neglected and under appreciated art form. If you can find someone that can delineate characters and foment a coherent plot, you've really got an author! It's a form I've dabbled in a bit and even saw print once. Someday I'll post it. As I think I mentioned above, my interest in numismatics has been reignited a bit and I've read a few things on coin collecting, and I've been long interested in comics and comic art and have lately read all of the collected comic strips of Rip Kirby, written and drawn by Alex Raymond before his untimely passing in a motor wreck in 1956. Rip Kirby is a detective in the modern style of the television private eye, but was started in 1946 and so prefigured the slick Bondlike characters of tv and film but owes something to the noirish stylings of your James M. Cains and Raymond Chandlers, although Kirby is much more erudite and much less hardboiled than they, although as an ex-Marine, he's no one's patsy! Now in progress is a dual biography of the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and the 1666 volume of the diaries of Samuel Pepys. And please always remember and never forget, as our store motto says: Books are Good!
May 2014
Numismatists Check Change, World Reels
When I was in the seventh grade, there was an art teacher at my junior high who one day called my attention to the fact that there were two different designs to the reverse of the Lincoln Cent. I peered at the coins he was holding and sure enough, one had the Lincoln Memorial on it and one had two wheat stalks. The latter is called a wheatback, or 'wheatie' cent. (Around this time I got my first pair of contact lenses and the eye doctor was illustrating that one needed two fingers to put them in and two fingers to take them out. He made his point by taking a cent out of his pocket and showing me you couldn't get it off the table with just one finger. Typically I was more interested in the fact that it was a wheatie and when I pointed this out he incredulously replied, 'A wheatie,? possibly thinking of the breakfast cereal. In my usual long winded intense way of the time I explained what a wheatie was and I like to think I birthed another numismatist that day.)
The Lincoln cent replaced the venerable 'Indian head' in 1909, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the President's birth, and the reverse was changed in 1959, coinciding with the 150th. There have been various calls to replace the centavo in this country and round everything to the nearest $.05, and this calls to mind my introduction to numismatics. (Just to bug me, which worked every time, my father always used to call it 'nuministics' instead of 'numismatics.') Thanks to that long ago arts teacher who ignited my curiosity and started a lifelong habit of looking through my change to see if there is anything interesting/old/rare/silver. I haven't seen anything in quite a while in fact, but about ten years ago I found two Mercury dimes in circulation within a couple of weeks. The state quarters are a good way to collect inexpensively from circulation as well, in fact I did so for a while and then I suddenly got bored and used them all at the laundromat! Anyway in junior high I, with my usual obsessive focus from my youth, boy, when I was into something I was REALLY into it, I started reading everything I could get my hands on and dragging my poor mother to coin shows on weekends. Subscribed to the trade papers, corresponded with fellow collectors, and all this at the age of maybe twelve, all the while diligently collecting comics too. For a while I subscribed to Spider-Man and Superman both, but comic collecting will be the subject of a future post.
That summer when we took our usual trip to the Jersey Shore to visit Granny, naturally I couldn't shut up about my latest interest/obsession and Gran was kind enough (or was simply sick of my nonstop babbling!) to give me some old coins that she had. I can't remember at this far remove but two, a large cent from about 1803 and a quarter or half dollar from the Columbian Exposition from 1892-3. So all that started me off and pretty soon I had a collection of stuff that I scrounged up at shows or got from circulation. But right at the end of the school year in eighth grade (Summer '75?) I came home from school, through the garage as usual and apparently scared off some burglars. They were in the process of moving our new color tv and it was in the middle of the floor when it dawned on me what was going on I called the folks. Turns out they got away with some cash my father had stashed and....my coin collection, handily kept in a binder. I remember me and Dad going around to the local coin shops and 'innocently' asking for some of the coins that I'd had, to no avail. (Aside: note the historical anomalies here: More than one coin shop in a town of 125-150,000; actual art teachers and classes in a public middle school; several local coins shows most weekends, especially in fall and winter; not getting our first color teevee until 1975!)
So that took the wind out of my sales and anyway right around that same time my new obsession entered the picture: Rock and Roll music, one of the best things ever invented! So I didn't collect at all for about twenty years and then in the mid to late 1990s when I was working steady I started dabbling again. I'm a type collector, I like to have an example of each type of coin, for example I have an 1846 large cent, a '73 Eisenhower dollar, a Kennedy Half, a Franklin Half, the aforementioned Mercury dimes, etc. I even dabbled for a short time in stamps until the company I'd been getting approvals from cut me off for not buying enough. The hell with them.
I'd like to acquire a Morgan dollar, as well as some of the stranger denominations the US has minted over the years, including a half cent, a three cent piece, and a twenty cent piece. A twenty cent coin! What the heck were they thinking? (There seems to have been a short lived feeling that the coins should mirror the bills, a 20c to go with the $20 bill. No $25 bill, you see!) But while my long dormant interest in numismatics has been slightly reanimated I'm not the fanatic I once was. Still, it's a very interesting topic. If only those coins could talk, what tales they'd have to tell!
Next: Comics: reading and collecting them. Also: My upcoming vacation trip.
May 2014
The Lincoln cent replaced the venerable 'Indian head' in 1909, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the President's birth, and the reverse was changed in 1959, coinciding with the 150th. There have been various calls to replace the centavo in this country and round everything to the nearest $.05, and this calls to mind my introduction to numismatics. (Just to bug me, which worked every time, my father always used to call it 'nuministics' instead of 'numismatics.') Thanks to that long ago arts teacher who ignited my curiosity and started a lifelong habit of looking through my change to see if there is anything interesting/old/rare/silver. I haven't seen anything in quite a while in fact, but about ten years ago I found two Mercury dimes in circulation within a couple of weeks. The state quarters are a good way to collect inexpensively from circulation as well, in fact I did so for a while and then I suddenly got bored and used them all at the laundromat! Anyway in junior high I, with my usual obsessive focus from my youth, boy, when I was into something I was REALLY into it, I started reading everything I could get my hands on and dragging my poor mother to coin shows on weekends. Subscribed to the trade papers, corresponded with fellow collectors, and all this at the age of maybe twelve, all the while diligently collecting comics too. For a while I subscribed to Spider-Man and Superman both, but comic collecting will be the subject of a future post.
That summer when we took our usual trip to the Jersey Shore to visit Granny, naturally I couldn't shut up about my latest interest/obsession and Gran was kind enough (or was simply sick of my nonstop babbling!) to give me some old coins that she had. I can't remember at this far remove but two, a large cent from about 1803 and a quarter or half dollar from the Columbian Exposition from 1892-3. So all that started me off and pretty soon I had a collection of stuff that I scrounged up at shows or got from circulation. But right at the end of the school year in eighth grade (Summer '75?) I came home from school, through the garage as usual and apparently scared off some burglars. They were in the process of moving our new color tv and it was in the middle of the floor when it dawned on me what was going on I called the folks. Turns out they got away with some cash my father had stashed and....my coin collection, handily kept in a binder. I remember me and Dad going around to the local coin shops and 'innocently' asking for some of the coins that I'd had, to no avail. (Aside: note the historical anomalies here: More than one coin shop in a town of 125-150,000; actual art teachers and classes in a public middle school; several local coins shows most weekends, especially in fall and winter; not getting our first color teevee until 1975!)
So that took the wind out of my sales and anyway right around that same time my new obsession entered the picture: Rock and Roll music, one of the best things ever invented! So I didn't collect at all for about twenty years and then in the mid to late 1990s when I was working steady I started dabbling again. I'm a type collector, I like to have an example of each type of coin, for example I have an 1846 large cent, a '73 Eisenhower dollar, a Kennedy Half, a Franklin Half, the aforementioned Mercury dimes, etc. I even dabbled for a short time in stamps until the company I'd been getting approvals from cut me off for not buying enough. The hell with them.
I'd like to acquire a Morgan dollar, as well as some of the stranger denominations the US has minted over the years, including a half cent, a three cent piece, and a twenty cent piece. A twenty cent coin! What the heck were they thinking? (There seems to have been a short lived feeling that the coins should mirror the bills, a 20c to go with the $20 bill. No $25 bill, you see!) But while my long dormant interest in numismatics has been slightly reanimated I'm not the fanatic I once was. Still, it's a very interesting topic. If only those coins could talk, what tales they'd have to tell!
Next: Comics: reading and collecting them. Also: My upcoming vacation trip.
May 2014
Mike's Vacation Trip Part One, or, Misadventures in the ICU, or, Ich Bin Ein Dummkopf.
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I may as well start at the beginning. I left the house at 1 pm on Thursday, June 5, 2014 and took the Path train and shuttle to Newark airport uneventfully. I waited to board my 4.25 flight to Dusseldorf and checked my boarding pass for my seat assignment, being as I much prefer aisle seats. Then, as they called all rows to board I couldn't find it! There I was frantically searching for it, scattering things around from my bag and freaking out. I screeched that I'd just had it and where was it and could I look around the terminal for it and would they hold the plane for me and then a Lufthansa rep strolled over to me and said, calm as you please, 'May I see your passport?' and strolled back over to the counter, printed another boarding pass and said, 'You can board now.' Problem solved, freaked out for nothing as usual. At Dusseldorf airport I got lost as usual (and such a small airport too!) but eventually found my friend Ralf and off we went to Bochum, about half an hour's drive away. He had a business appointment so I and his wife Ela went shopping for food and various things after having a huge breakfast. My plane landed at 6 in the morning Friday 6/6 and was I hungry! I ate too much. After shopping, I tried to get ahold of Tmobile and/or Best Buy to find out why the unlocked cell phone that I had SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED SEVERAL TIMES to work in Europe would not in fact work but after being on hold thirty minutes with no end in sight I gave up. The neighbor Jan across the street was nice enough to invite Ralf & Ela & myself to a barbecue in his nice yard. It was a beautiful warm sunny evening so over we strolled. When our host offered me something to drink I, like an idiot, made a very poor decision and asked for wine which one of the other fellows there poured and kept pouring and I kept emptying. I've had blood sugar issues for three and a half years and it was probably the worst thing I could have done. They grilled vegetables for me on the wok and I had that over a spoonful of rice, which was v. good, and some corn on the cob, which I shouldn't have, and even a couple of pieces of roasted kartoffel (potatoes to you) which I also shouldn't have. Eventually the subject of music came up and Ralf volunteered me to play as his son had a Epiphone electric and an amplifier, so one extension cord later, it's all set up and I begin to play. I let fly with Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand (I Want to Hold Your Hand in German), The Story In Your Eyes, Hey Bulldog, Stairway to Heaven, Yesterday, Hide Your Love Away, Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite, and was just about to play It's For You, a Lennon-McCartney number sung by Cilla Black, segued with my song No Beach To Walk On, then I opened my eyes and there were several doctors and Ralf and Ela looking down at me and there I was in the Intensive Care Unit of the Bochum Hospital Klinik. I had and have absolutely no memory of anything that happened in between and it is not an experience I would care to go through again. I had overindulged in food and especially wine and with the jet lag, that made my blood sugar spike and caused me to lose consciousness for the next day. In the hospital the doctors gave me insulin and Metformin and several lectures about taking better care of myself, all of which I richly deserved now that my diabetes is much worse. I controlled it for a long time with strict diet and lots of exercise but now can no longer do so, and I must now take the pills and hit myself with insulin once a day. I feel much better than I did say two months ago but at the time I was lying there strapped to various machines, not allowed out of bed and feeling awful not only because I had royally screwed up my long awaited holiday but that I had brought it all on myself.
It seemed that I would be in the ICU for quite a while as I was quite ill when I arrived. It seems that the guests at the B-B-Q thought I was just drunk and passed out but when I was unresponsive after an hour it was decided to call an ambulance and a good thing too. I had planned to travel to Hamburg to visit another friend on Monday but the doctors forbade that as well as my subsequent journey to Berlin. How my heart sank! So I spent Saturday and Sunday in the ICU and doctor #2, a lady, said she wouldn't be in Monday which was a holiday in Germany but would talk to me Tuesday and I started thinking I would NEVER get out of there. So that didn't improve my disposition much but I remember thinking, I might just surprise you! It was very hard to sleep in the ICU as it was noisy in general all night long as you might imagine, and the fellow across from me had some sort of respiratory ailment and wheezed and hacked away, and the lady who had doctors in and out and talked in a slow dreamy voice most of the time which made me think she had OD'd on something but who knows? So with all the clattering and my own 'too much time to think' and being tied to machinery I don't think I got more than a couple of hours sleep any night. I felt all right but my glucose numbers were fluctuating wildly and I know why. They kept feeding me bread and pasta and kartoffel (potatoes to you) which I simply couldn't understand. Who could have thought it was a good idea to give all that carb heavy food to someone trying to LOWER blood sugar? When I protested they said, we'll just give you more insulin. I said, isn't it better to prevent spikes than deal with them after the fact, especially since we know they are going to happen with this diet? They said, well, we get what we get from the kitchen but you don't have to eat what you don't want so I requested/demanded vegetables and sometimes got them, sometimes not. So on top of everything else I was hungry as hell most of the time! So it seems that I can manage my diet as well or better than they can at the hospital!
At last on Monday afternoon they moved me to a regular room at last and I was allowed out of bed and even out on the balcony, which was nice. My 'roommate' was a portly gentleman who was having an operation on his shoulder but who for some reason wasn't allowed out of bed and spoke no English so we couldn't communicate. I let him control the remote since I couldn't understand the teevee anyway and spent most of my time on the balcony reading the books that I had intended to peruse on the plane ride home, short stories by Harlan Ellison, Arthur C. Clarke, and H.P. Lovecraft. Finally untethered from all those infernal machines and in a quieter room, it was much easier to sleep. There was a scale in there and when I weighed myself---61 kilos, less than 135 lbs. Yikes! I'm so scrawny I frighten small children. I must gain at least 15-25 pounds but I'm working on it.
Tuesday I started chatting up a sympathetic doctor, #3, and promised to be good & diligent and she started making noises like they'd actually let me out. Really Wednesday was the best I could hope for but when it became clear that there wasn't much more they could do for me (or to me) except feed me more carbs and run up the bill (by the way, not once in my four days there did anyone ever mention money except when I was discharged when they asked for my insurance card. I have only had one since March when I signed up under the ACA and now the matter is in the hands of the German health service and Amerihealth New Jersey, and they told me I should expect a letter in a few weeks detailing the situation. No one in Germany I talked to seemed to think that they would charge me much if anything, but we shall see. In some countries profits come first.) So do I dare hope......? If they let me go Wed. I can still salvage a day in Hamburg and make my scheduled flight to Vienna Thursday morning. If I can still have my three days in Vienna that would be stellar and also my last two days in Germany before flying back home so I would rescue half of my holiday and it sure could have been a hell of a lot worse. And it was more than I had expected a day or two before. So sympathetic nurse #3 said she would take it up with her boss. Of course my stupid phone wasn't working (What is so hard to understand about 'a phone that works in Europe?) so I couldn't call or text Ralf or Ela to ask them to bring my clothes and insurance card. I was clad in a stupid hospital gown and a stupid diaper and hadn't seen hide nor hair of my clothing since I arrived. Little did I know but should have expected that they had called the hospital to ascertain my situation and knew what was going on better than I did! While I was waiting for nurse #3 and/or Ralf and Ela and lying there stewing, my crappy cell phone actually rang! Was it Ralf? My mother? A doctor? No! It was gibberish. I couldn't understand a word. Finally the guy started speaking English. Yes, some genius at Best Buy gave me a number that was already being used by another customer, presumably a Chinese guy because he kept asking me if I was Chinese and if I were Wei Dong Chong or somebody and it took me quite a while to convince him that I was not Chinese, was in fact whiter than white and was in fact Herr Durell, as everyone in the hospital referred to me. Which was actually kind of cool. So I carried on waiting for information from sympathetic nurse #3, not that they could keep me against my will but still I kept thinking that something would go wrong and I would spend my entire 12-day holiday locked away albeit on the mend. But at last, at six o'clock or so on Tuesday, in waltzed in Ralf and Ela with my freshly washed clothes and my insurance card and what a relief that was! I couldn't tear off that damned gown and diaper fast enough and then boy was I ready to go. Four full days in hospital and it felt like ten years, I can tell you. They gave me pills and an insulin pen and after some practice and fumbling and spillage I can hit myself up with it reasonably well and so there will be no more incidents of that sort. Haven't had a drink since D-Day either. But first the hospital kitchen gave me one last supper--one pickle, one tomato, and......two pieces of bread! They're still trying to kill me! So I ate the tomato and the pickle and no wonder I was so hungry all the time! So back to Ralf and Ela's in Bochum and a much better supper! What a relief!
Pictured above: MD in Hamburg and the Blue Danube, which is actually a greenish color.
July 2014
It seemed that I would be in the ICU for quite a while as I was quite ill when I arrived. It seems that the guests at the B-B-Q thought I was just drunk and passed out but when I was unresponsive after an hour it was decided to call an ambulance and a good thing too. I had planned to travel to Hamburg to visit another friend on Monday but the doctors forbade that as well as my subsequent journey to Berlin. How my heart sank! So I spent Saturday and Sunday in the ICU and doctor #2, a lady, said she wouldn't be in Monday which was a holiday in Germany but would talk to me Tuesday and I started thinking I would NEVER get out of there. So that didn't improve my disposition much but I remember thinking, I might just surprise you! It was very hard to sleep in the ICU as it was noisy in general all night long as you might imagine, and the fellow across from me had some sort of respiratory ailment and wheezed and hacked away, and the lady who had doctors in and out and talked in a slow dreamy voice most of the time which made me think she had OD'd on something but who knows? So with all the clattering and my own 'too much time to think' and being tied to machinery I don't think I got more than a couple of hours sleep any night. I felt all right but my glucose numbers were fluctuating wildly and I know why. They kept feeding me bread and pasta and kartoffel (potatoes to you) which I simply couldn't understand. Who could have thought it was a good idea to give all that carb heavy food to someone trying to LOWER blood sugar? When I protested they said, we'll just give you more insulin. I said, isn't it better to prevent spikes than deal with them after the fact, especially since we know they are going to happen with this diet? They said, well, we get what we get from the kitchen but you don't have to eat what you don't want so I requested/demanded vegetables and sometimes got them, sometimes not. So on top of everything else I was hungry as hell most of the time! So it seems that I can manage my diet as well or better than they can at the hospital!
At last on Monday afternoon they moved me to a regular room at last and I was allowed out of bed and even out on the balcony, which was nice. My 'roommate' was a portly gentleman who was having an operation on his shoulder but who for some reason wasn't allowed out of bed and spoke no English so we couldn't communicate. I let him control the remote since I couldn't understand the teevee anyway and spent most of my time on the balcony reading the books that I had intended to peruse on the plane ride home, short stories by Harlan Ellison, Arthur C. Clarke, and H.P. Lovecraft. Finally untethered from all those infernal machines and in a quieter room, it was much easier to sleep. There was a scale in there and when I weighed myself---61 kilos, less than 135 lbs. Yikes! I'm so scrawny I frighten small children. I must gain at least 15-25 pounds but I'm working on it.
Tuesday I started chatting up a sympathetic doctor, #3, and promised to be good & diligent and she started making noises like they'd actually let me out. Really Wednesday was the best I could hope for but when it became clear that there wasn't much more they could do for me (or to me) except feed me more carbs and run up the bill (by the way, not once in my four days there did anyone ever mention money except when I was discharged when they asked for my insurance card. I have only had one since March when I signed up under the ACA and now the matter is in the hands of the German health service and Amerihealth New Jersey, and they told me I should expect a letter in a few weeks detailing the situation. No one in Germany I talked to seemed to think that they would charge me much if anything, but we shall see. In some countries profits come first.) So do I dare hope......? If they let me go Wed. I can still salvage a day in Hamburg and make my scheduled flight to Vienna Thursday morning. If I can still have my three days in Vienna that would be stellar and also my last two days in Germany before flying back home so I would rescue half of my holiday and it sure could have been a hell of a lot worse. And it was more than I had expected a day or two before. So sympathetic nurse #3 said she would take it up with her boss. Of course my stupid phone wasn't working (What is so hard to understand about 'a phone that works in Europe?) so I couldn't call or text Ralf or Ela to ask them to bring my clothes and insurance card. I was clad in a stupid hospital gown and a stupid diaper and hadn't seen hide nor hair of my clothing since I arrived. Little did I know but should have expected that they had called the hospital to ascertain my situation and knew what was going on better than I did! While I was waiting for nurse #3 and/or Ralf and Ela and lying there stewing, my crappy cell phone actually rang! Was it Ralf? My mother? A doctor? No! It was gibberish. I couldn't understand a word. Finally the guy started speaking English. Yes, some genius at Best Buy gave me a number that was already being used by another customer, presumably a Chinese guy because he kept asking me if I was Chinese and if I were Wei Dong Chong or somebody and it took me quite a while to convince him that I was not Chinese, was in fact whiter than white and was in fact Herr Durell, as everyone in the hospital referred to me. Which was actually kind of cool. So I carried on waiting for information from sympathetic nurse #3, not that they could keep me against my will but still I kept thinking that something would go wrong and I would spend my entire 12-day holiday locked away albeit on the mend. But at last, at six o'clock or so on Tuesday, in waltzed in Ralf and Ela with my freshly washed clothes and my insurance card and what a relief that was! I couldn't tear off that damned gown and diaper fast enough and then boy was I ready to go. Four full days in hospital and it felt like ten years, I can tell you. They gave me pills and an insulin pen and after some practice and fumbling and spillage I can hit myself up with it reasonably well and so there will be no more incidents of that sort. Haven't had a drink since D-Day either. But first the hospital kitchen gave me one last supper--one pickle, one tomato, and......two pieces of bread! They're still trying to kill me! So I ate the tomato and the pickle and no wonder I was so hungry all the time! So back to Ralf and Ela's in Bochum and a much better supper! What a relief!
Pictured above: MD in Hamburg and the Blue Danube, which is actually a greenish color.
July 2014
Mike's vacation trip part two-And now the fun begins!
(I know I wrote that I would write about comics and collecting them, and I will, but first--the rest of the holiday!
So, finally sprung from the ward reserved for dim-witted people who don't take proper care of themselves (me) I resolved to pick up the pieces and have a good rest of my vacation. Out Tuesday night and not flying back to Newark until Monday afternoon I had almost a week to enjoy myself and no one was more appreciative or thankful for the second chance I had, having nearly put the kibosh on the whole works.
On Monday night 6/8 as i was acclimating myself to being in a regular room and not in the ICU, there was a tremendous thunderstorm. There had been a milder one on Sunday night but this one was a real banger, later I found out that there were 100+ mph winds; not so unusual here but everyone freaked out in Germany, evidently it's a rare occurrence. I saw at least half a dozen squashed cars and sadly, six people died, three in Dusseldorf when they sought shelter in a courtyard and got hit by a falling tree, two in Cologne, and one somewhere else. I took some movies on the swell new camera that I got for the trip but have not looked at it as of this writing. I'll get around to it. Anyway I was glad they let me go outside by that point; having nothing to do I asked them for some paper and wrote a Star Trek story which I will eventually post.
Wednesday morning! After breakfast, the train to Hamburg to meet my friend Gisa, spend the day there then fly to Vienna first thing Thursday. It's only a couple of hours on the train from Bochum to Hamburg, but....yes, there's always a but on this trip! It seems the storm had done such extensive damage with trees falling everywhere that all trains from Bochum were halted. No train to Hamburg for me! Good gravy, what else can go wrong? So Ela and I decided to go to the hauptbanhof (main train station to you) and see for ourselves what was going on, as their website made no mention of my train being cancelled. Off we went and sure enough, no trains. But the information desk person said that we could catch the 9.57 out of Munster to Hamburg, and Ela insisted on driving me there. I'm telling you, these are the nicest, most hospitable people ever, over and above the whole saving my life thing, they really couldn't be kinder or more generous. We ran into some traffic on the autobahn however and missed the 9.57. But wait! It hadn't left yet! There was a delay as the conductor was himself stuck in traffic! So 9.57 came and went, as did 10.57 as did 11.57. Where the heck is it? German trains have a well-deserved reputation for being bang on time but brother, when they are late, they are LATE. Two and a half hours in this case. Finally the packed train left for Hamburg at 12.30 and I was on it. Gisa had long since stopped waiting for me at the station in Hamburg (I was originally due at 12.10 and one couldn't expect her to wait all that time) so when I got there I took a cab out to her place and we had a nice visit along with her two sons and an exchange student from (I think) Spain. Her younger son still had the Mets t-shirt I had brought him when I was there in 2008 and that made me smile. There were three things I wanted to do during my short stay in Hamburg--1) See again the Reeperbahn where the Beatles got their start as a real professional band:
So, finally sprung from the ward reserved for dim-witted people who don't take proper care of themselves (me) I resolved to pick up the pieces and have a good rest of my vacation. Out Tuesday night and not flying back to Newark until Monday afternoon I had almost a week to enjoy myself and no one was more appreciative or thankful for the second chance I had, having nearly put the kibosh on the whole works.
On Monday night 6/8 as i was acclimating myself to being in a regular room and not in the ICU, there was a tremendous thunderstorm. There had been a milder one on Sunday night but this one was a real banger, later I found out that there were 100+ mph winds; not so unusual here but everyone freaked out in Germany, evidently it's a rare occurrence. I saw at least half a dozen squashed cars and sadly, six people died, three in Dusseldorf when they sought shelter in a courtyard and got hit by a falling tree, two in Cologne, and one somewhere else. I took some movies on the swell new camera that I got for the trip but have not looked at it as of this writing. I'll get around to it. Anyway I was glad they let me go outside by that point; having nothing to do I asked them for some paper and wrote a Star Trek story which I will eventually post.
Wednesday morning! After breakfast, the train to Hamburg to meet my friend Gisa, spend the day there then fly to Vienna first thing Thursday. It's only a couple of hours on the train from Bochum to Hamburg, but....yes, there's always a but on this trip! It seems the storm had done such extensive damage with trees falling everywhere that all trains from Bochum were halted. No train to Hamburg for me! Good gravy, what else can go wrong? So Ela and I decided to go to the hauptbanhof (main train station to you) and see for ourselves what was going on, as their website made no mention of my train being cancelled. Off we went and sure enough, no trains. But the information desk person said that we could catch the 9.57 out of Munster to Hamburg, and Ela insisted on driving me there. I'm telling you, these are the nicest, most hospitable people ever, over and above the whole saving my life thing, they really couldn't be kinder or more generous. We ran into some traffic on the autobahn however and missed the 9.57. But wait! It hadn't left yet! There was a delay as the conductor was himself stuck in traffic! So 9.57 came and went, as did 10.57 as did 11.57. Where the heck is it? German trains have a well-deserved reputation for being bang on time but brother, when they are late, they are LATE. Two and a half hours in this case. Finally the packed train left for Hamburg at 12.30 and I was on it. Gisa had long since stopped waiting for me at the station in Hamburg (I was originally due at 12.10 and one couldn't expect her to wait all that time) so when I got there I took a cab out to her place and we had a nice visit along with her two sons and an exchange student from (I think) Spain. Her younger son still had the Mets t-shirt I had brought him when I was there in 2008 and that made me smile. There were three things I wanted to do during my short stay in Hamburg--1) See again the Reeperbahn where the Beatles got their start as a real professional band:
2) Take a stroll around the Lake Alster:
And 3) pick up a Hamburg Freezers t-shirt, after the local hockey team. I just think it's a cool name for a team but the Reeperbahn is a pretty heavy duty red light district and the t-shirts were all, shall we say, a bit vulgar for my taste, which is really saying something. Anyway two out of three ain't bad! So back to her apartment and across the street to the Turkish restaurant where I insisted on treating her to supper after all her hospitality it was the least I could do! and some tasty falafel and vegetables, then chat and check up on my flight the next morning. All systems go! Next: Vienna at last!
Pictured above, from the top: Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna, the courtyard thereof, the Kaiserkeller where the Fab 4 played, the Reeperbahn, and Lake Alster.
July 2014
Pictured above, from the top: Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna, the courtyard thereof, the Kaiserkeller where the Fab 4 played, the Reeperbahn, and Lake Alster.
July 2014
Mike's Vacation Trip Part Three, or, Strolling along the Danube
I caught my 6.30 am plane from Hamburg to Vienna without incident, thankfully, and arrived in the latter city at 8 am, bang on schedule. I was then in the Vienna airport thinking, how do I get out of here and into the city center so I can find my hotel? Aha! The U-bahn! Vienna has a fast, clean, and efficient subway system so I stood in the terminal and peered at the map for a while. Presently I noticed a station called St. Marks which was in the name of the Ibis budget hotel that I had enlisted. (41 Euro a night, beat that!) So I noted each terminus, I got on the train in the right direction and journeyed at least closer to my destination so that I could drop off my stuff, change my clothes and start exploring Vienna! Trouble was, when I got off the train in St. Marks I had no idea where to go! I snapped a couple of pics and noticed, of all things, an Irish pub so I strolled in but since I had been up so long I forgot it was still not even nine in the morning and of course it was closed. Soon a reasonable looking fellow came by and I said, for the zillionth time, Sprechen sie Inglisch? And he said, sure, mate, by a coincidence he was an Irish fellow and he was nice enough to call up a map on his phone and direct me to Franzgrabenstrasse on which my hotel was located and so there I alighted.
Only to have the clerk make a sad face and say there's a problem. I thought, oh, jeez, what else can happen? But all it was was that checkout time was noon and my room wouldn't be ready until then. No big deal, easy enough to kill a couple of hours! So he directed me to the nearest U-bahn station (no need to walk back to the St. Marks station!) and after a false start having not walked far enough down the street I found it ok and got an unlimited transportation pass for 24 hours for only 7.10, which was a pretty good deal since I went all over the place. My weakened physical condition did not allow for long walks unfortunately so I took full advantage of the trains! Detraining at the city centre I saw the magnificent St. Stephens cathedral:
Only to have the clerk make a sad face and say there's a problem. I thought, oh, jeez, what else can happen? But all it was was that checkout time was noon and my room wouldn't be ready until then. No big deal, easy enough to kill a couple of hours! So he directed me to the nearest U-bahn station (no need to walk back to the St. Marks station!) and after a false start having not walked far enough down the street I found it ok and got an unlimited transportation pass for 24 hours for only 7.10, which was a pretty good deal since I went all over the place. My weakened physical condition did not allow for long walks unfortunately so I took full advantage of the trains! Detraining at the city centre I saw the magnificent St. Stephens cathedral:
The cathedral is huge, as you can see, with millions of tourists milling about (Pardon me, I am not a 'tourist,' I am a 'visitor.' Or is that just in Germany?) Anyway, then I went back to the hotel to rest up a bit and change clothes and then back out to see what's what. If you like books, you should go to Vienna because there are antiquariats and bucheries all OVER the place. I spent some time browsing a few but generally there wasn't much of a selection in English. I wanted very much to try a famous Sacher torte (Jebus, don't tell my doctor!) and the helpful desk clerk told me where it was, on the Kartnerstrasse, which is a pedestrian only street with lots of shops and food places and wandering minstrels and such, where the famous chocolate treats originated at the Hotel Sacher with the confectionery around the corner. But first I stopped into Frick's book shop and got some ideas for a book or two to take on the plane since I had already used up my plane reading whilst flat on my back in hospital. Maybe Guns of August, or something about WWI, which I had been meaning to read up on? Maybe the first British edition of the new Stephen King? We'll see what I'm in the mood for and what I can afford on Saturday. So the Sacher tortes they had were HUGE, the size of a cheese wheel, which would surely put me right back in the hospital in a coma if I indulged. But then I noticed that they had smaller sample sized treats that cost, I think, 2.60 or 3.60, so I got one and had half on Thursday and half on Friday. And---chocolatey goodness personified, every bit as good as advertised.
I wasn't keen enough on classical music to want to spend fifty Euro on a Mozart concert, I wanted to see the haus that he lived in for three years when he composed some of his best known works like the Marriage of Figaro, among others. I was starting to drag by then but I soldiered on, paid my tenner and saw the house and all the stuff about how he & his family lived and all about Salieri and so on. They had a very interesting video display set to the Magic Flute which was quite enchanting (and which I video'ed before I saw the signs that it was verboten. An honest mistake. No, really.) Then back to the Ibis budget Wien to drop off stuff and recharge then off to the Prater to ride the giant ferris wheel which if I remember correctly is 160 feet high. It couldn't be 160 meters, could it? I don't have the brochure right handy so I forget exactly. Anyway it was huge and provides quite a view of the city.
I had asked at the desk if there was an English language theater in town and lo! there was. The friendly clerk checked into it while I was at the nearby grocery in search of lunch for myself (Fruit, macadamias, and cheese) and it seems there was a run of Much Ado About Nothing and they had one seat left for Thursday's performance. I didn't want to rush rush rush, also I preferred not to charge anything if I could avoid it, goodness knows my cc bill is high enough! So I went over to the box office and got a seat for Friday night. Strolling along the street en route to the theater, I was surprised to see a collectibles shop with some American coins in the window. Mostly Morgan dollars but they had some Barber quarters also so I went in to peruse. As readers of this blog know, I dabble just a bit in numismatics (and if you don't know that, scroll above and read the entry. I'll wait.) I thought I would go back on Friday before the show but it turned out that they were only open Monday through Thursday so it was then or never, as I was headed back to Germany on Saturday. Odd hours, but not as odd as the antiquariat which was open on Saturdays from 10 to noon! I don't think I'd even bother to open! I thought it would be very cool to have a coin in my collection purchased in Vienna and I did not have any Barber issues in my very modest collection so I got the 1908-O (minted in New Orleans) for 18 Euro which was too much for the condition it was in but, as Oscar Wilde used to say, I can resist anything except temptation. I still think it's cool.
Of course one of the main attractions of Vienna is that it's right on the Danube and that is one of the things that I really wanted to do, stroll along the river and see whether it's really blue like the song says:
I wasn't keen enough on classical music to want to spend fifty Euro on a Mozart concert, I wanted to see the haus that he lived in for three years when he composed some of his best known works like the Marriage of Figaro, among others. I was starting to drag by then but I soldiered on, paid my tenner and saw the house and all the stuff about how he & his family lived and all about Salieri and so on. They had a very interesting video display set to the Magic Flute which was quite enchanting (and which I video'ed before I saw the signs that it was verboten. An honest mistake. No, really.) Then back to the Ibis budget Wien to drop off stuff and recharge then off to the Prater to ride the giant ferris wheel which if I remember correctly is 160 feet high. It couldn't be 160 meters, could it? I don't have the brochure right handy so I forget exactly. Anyway it was huge and provides quite a view of the city.
I had asked at the desk if there was an English language theater in town and lo! there was. The friendly clerk checked into it while I was at the nearby grocery in search of lunch for myself (Fruit, macadamias, and cheese) and it seems there was a run of Much Ado About Nothing and they had one seat left for Thursday's performance. I didn't want to rush rush rush, also I preferred not to charge anything if I could avoid it, goodness knows my cc bill is high enough! So I went over to the box office and got a seat for Friday night. Strolling along the street en route to the theater, I was surprised to see a collectibles shop with some American coins in the window. Mostly Morgan dollars but they had some Barber quarters also so I went in to peruse. As readers of this blog know, I dabble just a bit in numismatics (and if you don't know that, scroll above and read the entry. I'll wait.) I thought I would go back on Friday before the show but it turned out that they were only open Monday through Thursday so it was then or never, as I was headed back to Germany on Saturday. Odd hours, but not as odd as the antiquariat which was open on Saturdays from 10 to noon! I don't think I'd even bother to open! I thought it would be very cool to have a coin in my collection purchased in Vienna and I did not have any Barber issues in my very modest collection so I got the 1908-O (minted in New Orleans) for 18 Euro which was too much for the condition it was in but, as Oscar Wilde used to say, I can resist anything except temptation. I still think it's cool.
Of course one of the main attractions of Vienna is that it's right on the Danube and that is one of the things that I really wanted to do, stroll along the river and see whether it's really blue like the song says:
It's really more of a greenish color. Other rivers I have strolled along: The Seine, The Thames, The Elbe, The Spree, The Hudson, The East, The Housatonic, and probably some others that I forget offhand. As I was strolling along the Danube, I saw something most unusual: a gaggle of trampolines right on the river! Where for 2.50 one could jump for ten minutes. So I thought, should I? Only two days out of hospital, you know.. And then I thought, what the hell, when am I going to be here again. (Soon, I hope, but you never know.) So I did it--and it was one of the most fun things I've done!
Every time I tried something fancy I ended up face down so I just went up & down and a few times tried to go as high as I could. Thence to the giant ferris wheel and back to the room to collapse.
Day two in Vienna, up betimes, and checking online on the hotel's desktop which was free to guests to see what order to do things that day, Friday the lucky thirteenth! The ring tour around the historic city centre didn't start until ten, and as it was only a little after eight, I went on the train to Schoenbrunn Palace, from where Emperor Franz Joseph ruled for an amazing 62 years! His blushing bride, Empress Elisabeth was rather reluctant to assume the role of the ridiculously lavish living head of state but she did as best she could until murdered in her early sixties by a knife wielding fanatic. I'll bet she was blushing, too, for she was married to the Emperor at the tender age of sixteen! I got a book about her life in Vienna on Saturday and it is most interesting, all about what it was like in the mid-nineteenth century in Vienna, all the court intrigues and historical events and even mundane daily life. Anyway the self guided tour of the castle was interesting if a bit one-note and it was super packed with pushy tourists. (Remember, I myself am a 'visitor.') So I finished about eleven and back to the city centre to take the ring tour. I thought it would be longer, but the actual distances aren't great and we saw the historic buildings and learned more about the storied history of Wien.
Day two in Vienna, up betimes, and checking online on the hotel's desktop which was free to guests to see what order to do things that day, Friday the lucky thirteenth! The ring tour around the historic city centre didn't start until ten, and as it was only a little after eight, I went on the train to Schoenbrunn Palace, from where Emperor Franz Joseph ruled for an amazing 62 years! His blushing bride, Empress Elisabeth was rather reluctant to assume the role of the ridiculously lavish living head of state but she did as best she could until murdered in her early sixties by a knife wielding fanatic. I'll bet she was blushing, too, for she was married to the Emperor at the tender age of sixteen! I got a book about her life in Vienna on Saturday and it is most interesting, all about what it was like in the mid-nineteenth century in Vienna, all the court intrigues and historical events and even mundane daily life. Anyway the self guided tour of the castle was interesting if a bit one-note and it was super packed with pushy tourists. (Remember, I myself am a 'visitor.') So I finished about eleven and back to the city centre to take the ring tour. I thought it would be longer, but the actual distances aren't great and we saw the historic buildings and learned more about the storied history of Wien.
Having some time after the ring tour I went over to the Stadtpark and relaxed a while and planned the rest of my day, over some delicious sugar-free ice cream, chocolate and hazelnut. Mmmmmmm.
Another of the things I wanted to do, over and above strolling along the Blue, I mean Green, Danube, was to take a boat ride thereon and when I found the ticket booth, the lady asked me if I was a senior and I semi-jokingly said, oh, yes, I am very old, and she laughed and gave ne the discount! Saved me seven euro.
It was a nice day and a nice tour boat but I was just a bit dismayed to find that a lot of our route down the river was alongside the freeway, which frankly took a bit of the charm out of it. I'd expected a genteel ride with the waltz playing gently in the background. See what happens when you have expectations? I snapped pics and took video (will post soon, once I figure out how to get the footage off the camera and onto the computer.) Also spoke to some other folks on the boat who were from nearby Slovakia. So we sailed along the mighty Danube and back and once we docked, I noted we were on the other bank so I found a U-bahn stop and hied back to the city centre where I went back to Frick's and picked up one of the books I'd had my eye on to read on the plane. (Little did I know that my hosts Ralf and Ela would generously give me several books to take along; enough for ten plane rides! Thanks, folks!) It was 1913 by Florian Illes, all about that fateful year in a series of short vignettes. Highly recommended. Also I really wanted a t-shirt to commemorate my visit to Wien and while I thought about a white one that had notation of one of Mozart's compositions on it, I eventually decided on a black one with a stamp design that was pretty keen. This eventually led to a discussion with Ralf and his brother Frank about their fantastic stamp collection and my much more modest dip into philately. Thence to the hotel to finish off the Sacher torte--Mmmmmmmm-- and to polish off the rest of the macadamias and havarti. I'd got some salad fixings for supper and the friendly clerk recommended the area around the theater as nice with parks and the old City Hall around it so I went over there early to sup and bask in the sun awhile and then took in Much Ado. It was an excellent performance, absolutely top notch! Mostly British actors, I think, well directed and well acted. They used a very clever device near and dear to my heart--to illustrate some of the plot points they used Beatles tunes mostly played on the mandolin, some of which were live & played by one of the actors. There were even two dance numbers, to I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You, that were charming. Very entertaining! Too bad they charged two or three euro for a program, I was too stingy to buy one and no one dropped one as far as I could see. Then back to my room to pack, meeting Ela and Ralf next morning to sightsee in a town called Modling, lunch there, then back to Vienna for shopping and supper, then back to Bochum for a day of rest on Sunday then back to NYC. How fortunate I was to be able to see Vienna! How lucky to still enjoy most of my vacation after my poor decision making at the start of the trip! How many people get to see the inside of a German ICU? How many get to enjoy an auto trip across goodly chunks of Austria and Germany?
I'll never forget it, auf wiedersehn, Wien!
July 2014
Another of the things I wanted to do, over and above strolling along the Blue, I mean Green, Danube, was to take a boat ride thereon and when I found the ticket booth, the lady asked me if I was a senior and I semi-jokingly said, oh, yes, I am very old, and she laughed and gave ne the discount! Saved me seven euro.
It was a nice day and a nice tour boat but I was just a bit dismayed to find that a lot of our route down the river was alongside the freeway, which frankly took a bit of the charm out of it. I'd expected a genteel ride with the waltz playing gently in the background. See what happens when you have expectations? I snapped pics and took video (will post soon, once I figure out how to get the footage off the camera and onto the computer.) Also spoke to some other folks on the boat who were from nearby Slovakia. So we sailed along the mighty Danube and back and once we docked, I noted we were on the other bank so I found a U-bahn stop and hied back to the city centre where I went back to Frick's and picked up one of the books I'd had my eye on to read on the plane. (Little did I know that my hosts Ralf and Ela would generously give me several books to take along; enough for ten plane rides! Thanks, folks!) It was 1913 by Florian Illes, all about that fateful year in a series of short vignettes. Highly recommended. Also I really wanted a t-shirt to commemorate my visit to Wien and while I thought about a white one that had notation of one of Mozart's compositions on it, I eventually decided on a black one with a stamp design that was pretty keen. This eventually led to a discussion with Ralf and his brother Frank about their fantastic stamp collection and my much more modest dip into philately. Thence to the hotel to finish off the Sacher torte--Mmmmmmmm-- and to polish off the rest of the macadamias and havarti. I'd got some salad fixings for supper and the friendly clerk recommended the area around the theater as nice with parks and the old City Hall around it so I went over there early to sup and bask in the sun awhile and then took in Much Ado. It was an excellent performance, absolutely top notch! Mostly British actors, I think, well directed and well acted. They used a very clever device near and dear to my heart--to illustrate some of the plot points they used Beatles tunes mostly played on the mandolin, some of which were live & played by one of the actors. There were even two dance numbers, to I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You, that were charming. Very entertaining! Too bad they charged two or three euro for a program, I was too stingy to buy one and no one dropped one as far as I could see. Then back to my room to pack, meeting Ela and Ralf next morning to sightsee in a town called Modling, lunch there, then back to Vienna for shopping and supper, then back to Bochum for a day of rest on Sunday then back to NYC. How fortunate I was to be able to see Vienna! How lucky to still enjoy most of my vacation after my poor decision making at the start of the trip! How many people get to see the inside of a German ICU? How many get to enjoy an auto trip across goodly chunks of Austria and Germany?
I'll never forget it, auf wiedersehn, Wien!
July 2014
All in color for a dime, then twelve cents, then fifteen, then twenty, then twenty-five, then I discovered rock and roll.
One jungle looking character is holding Spider-Man while a flying person is belting him right in the kisser!
Yikes! What's going on here? Spider-Man #49, June 1967. Typically at that time comics had a three month lead time, so this issue would have been on the stands along about March 1967, when your correspondent was about five and one half years old. Mom bought it for me and read the parts I couldn't figure. What was interesting to me then as now was that ol' Spidey was just a regular teenager, and even though teens seemed pretty old to me then, it was cool to think that one of the high schoolers populating the new Burger King in Hamden, CT, where we lived at the time could be a superhero in disguise. Also that Spider-Man was weakened by a cold! That never happened to Superman. So Kraven the Hunter and the Vulture teamed up to try to beat the web-slinger, to no avail, naturally. That is my first memory of comics. Then a hiatus for a few years, then along about the seventh grade I got the collector's urge again, bigtime. Back around '73-'74 my faves were the aforementioned Amazing Spider-Man (don't forget the hyphen!) and Superman, to which I subscribed. I recall that the latter was shipped folded in half and wrapped in brown paper, and it may have been shortly afterwards that subscribers complained about having their copies creased and eventually comics were mailed flat. I had lots o'comics and traded and discussed them with my classmates. I liked Batman too and usually got that and Detective Comics, as well as Superman and Action. Liked the various Archies as well. Didn't get into the Fantastic Four until way later and never was much for romance or war books, although as a kid I liked DC's Unexpected and House of Mystery. Today those don't look as good although most of the superhero stuff from my halcyon days holds up relatively well. It was then possible to go into many different kinds of stores and find piles of old books on the cheap, carelessly thrown in a corner. This was way before anyone put their comics into bags and boards and well prior to the takeover of greed in every aspect of society. Imagine--wanting or not wanting a book based on whether or not you liked the art and the story and not what some price guide or website said it was 'worth.' Revolutionary! No comic specialty stores as yet, either. I got most of my comics at a drug store in the Ridgeway Shopping Center in Stamford, Ct. which was called Paper Palace when I was in high school but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called before that. They had a little lunch counter where you could get a sandwich or a milkshake, opposite to which was the comic rack which I riffled through zillions of times. When I started collecting in earnest they were twenty cents then twenty five. By the time they hit thirty centavos I had moved on for the most part, but I still get a rush of nostalgia when I see a twenty- or twenty-five-center. Eventually, being a weird, cerebral kid, I started seeking out older stuff. You know, all the way back to the twelve and fifteen cent price points! I had some early Marvels and DCs in my collection, and had gotten Flash #104 from 1949 which was my oldest comic and one that I really liked having, not because of any perceived value but because I enjoyed having the last issue of Flash comics before the renaissance of the character in different form in 1956. Having said that, I note that in one online guide that issue is listed at $10,000! I think that figure is well exaggerated in the sense that it would be very difficult to actually realize that price from a sale, but it irks me nonetheless that my collection was stolen in the early 80s when I was living in California. Although my copy was quite worn as I recall and quite a ways from mint condition. Anyway that was thirty five years ago and there's not much I can do about it now!
So there I was at the age of thirteen or fourteen collecting away, with tons of superheroes and Archie, commiserating with the other comic 'geeks' (before that term was coined) and expressing youthful disdain for the art of Jack Kirby (I was young, what can I say? I like Kirby and Simon much more now.) and liking Curt Swan, John Romita Sr., Steve Ditko, and the like. I particularly enjoyed the DC 100 page Super-Spectaculars which had a minimum of ads and reprinted a lot of stuff from the 40s and 50s; even as a clueless kid I had a pretty well developed sense of history and I really liked reading the old stuff. The new stories were pretty good too, which made it a win-win.
When we fast forward fifteen years, I found myself managing a shop that sold sports cards and memorabilia and a few new comic titles, which rekindled my interest to an extent, and I get a huge kick out of seeing and reading a story that I had owned back in the day, especially the 100 pagers. I was surprised to learn that there were ninety-something different ones, of which I currently have about two dozen. I never pay much; I don't care about condition so much, I usually just want reading copies. And I think that slabbing coins or comics (hermetically sealing them to preserve the condition or grade) is nonsense, they were made to be read and enjoyed, not traded like stock certificates. People in the card shop would ask me if the way to collect wasn't to buy a box of wax packs and then leave it in the closet, to which I always answered, 1) What fun is that? and 2) if you want to invest, do so in real estate for there will never be MORE land, there can only be less, and anyway millions of people have the same idea you have so there will be a significant oversupply and not enough demand. It's sad that I have to explain supply and demand over and over again. But I digress.
Memory is a funny thing. I can remember a panel from a comic that I read forty years ago. I hope tomorrow night when I am on stage performing in Shakespeare's Cymbeline, that I can remember my lines that I went over just before I went on!
I devoured books about comics, what few there were then, including Jules Feiffer's classic The Great Comic Book Heroes, which my father gave my mother for Xmas in the late 60s. Years later I asked Mum why he gifted it to her, as she had never expressed any desire to read comics or learn about their history and she casually replied, 'Because he wanted to read it.' Pop never read a comic in his life so far as I know and expressed infinite disdain for my usual habit in those years of blowing every cent I had on comics each and every week, so the beneficiary of that gift was---me! Read it many times and was happy to get a reprint edition a few years ago in NYC. There was also All In Color For a Dime, with essays about various titles and characters and genres and a second volume of the same called the Comic Book Book. Just the other day I remembered the Menomonee Falls Gazette, which from 1971 to 1978 reprinted newspaper strips of such stalwarts as Dick Tracy, Batman, Rip Kirby, and other adventurers in a weekly paper. I couldn't afford to subscribe but I found the odd individual issue and liked them. Nowadays a lot of the old newspaper strips are collected in hardcover or trade paper editions which is a fine way to read them and I enjoy my copies of various strips like Peanuts, Dick Tracy, Rip Kirby (very underrated!) Superman & Batman, and others. If I were running a newspaper I would enlarge the funnies, not shrink them, and use a big color supplement as a selling point. It's a mystery to me why more editors don't do that, no doubt it has to do with filthy lucre. I'd collect back numbers of the M. Falls Gazette if I could find them for sale inexpensively but they seem to be $15-20 per issue on the open market which is rather more than I am willing to pay. I'd like to see more comic shows just concentrating on comics as opposed to artists & writers & actors signing stuff and people in costumes and that sort of thing which is why it's so expensive to get in to these things. Just have comic dealers and charge just a couple of bucks to get in and you'd see me!
About 1976 I got bit by the rock and roll bug and spent most waking hours listening and trying to play and--should I say outgrew?--gradually sloughed off my comics habit and when I went off to university in the fall of 1979 I sold all my comics and baseball cards at a flea market for $125 as I recall. Not a bad deal!
But starting in the late 80s I occasionally picked up a book or a pack of cards. I was working at the Bridgeport Post in 1986 and a store near their printing plant downtown had packs of '86 Fleer cards for like 50c or something so I started getting those and assembling a set. Then I started working at the card shop through which I learned a lot about older series of cards and while the new comics did not impress me I started to dabble a bit in vintage comics again, along with a lot of other baby boomers in their thirties. What turned me off of that and what made it a relief to get out of that business was that by that time greed had superseded everything else and very few people collected anything for fun or for its own sake any more, everything was 'monetized,' so to speak, and after the billionth time I was asked 'what's it worth?' and the billionth time I replied, 'What someone is willing to pay, I think (X) is a fair price,' I really got disgruntled. Me, I just didn't care about stuff like that, I just wanted to read the things that I enjoyed. Even as late as the mid-90s it was easy to get stuff like Marvel Tales and Marvel's Greatest Comics which reprinted Spidey and the FF, respectively, for less than a dollar so eventually I had a collection of several hundred comics. Unfortunately about three quarters of my collection was lost in a flood in 2008 because the basement apartment I lived in had a very poorly designed & maintained drainage for when it rained and this time water came in to ankle depth and soaked everything. I was surprised at my lack of anger at the situation, partly because, after all, it's just 'stuff,' and partly because my really topnotch stuff I had elevated in another part of the apt, and partly because I didn't much care any more. So now I have maybe two hundred comics, some of which I will keep and some of which I am looking to sell but today I will still buy a comic if I can afford it and if I want it badly enough and am on the lookout for a good deal in a bound version too. Once a comic book guy, always a comic book guy, I guess!
July 2014
Yikes! What's going on here? Spider-Man #49, June 1967. Typically at that time comics had a three month lead time, so this issue would have been on the stands along about March 1967, when your correspondent was about five and one half years old. Mom bought it for me and read the parts I couldn't figure. What was interesting to me then as now was that ol' Spidey was just a regular teenager, and even though teens seemed pretty old to me then, it was cool to think that one of the high schoolers populating the new Burger King in Hamden, CT, where we lived at the time could be a superhero in disguise. Also that Spider-Man was weakened by a cold! That never happened to Superman. So Kraven the Hunter and the Vulture teamed up to try to beat the web-slinger, to no avail, naturally. That is my first memory of comics. Then a hiatus for a few years, then along about the seventh grade I got the collector's urge again, bigtime. Back around '73-'74 my faves were the aforementioned Amazing Spider-Man (don't forget the hyphen!) and Superman, to which I subscribed. I recall that the latter was shipped folded in half and wrapped in brown paper, and it may have been shortly afterwards that subscribers complained about having their copies creased and eventually comics were mailed flat. I had lots o'comics and traded and discussed them with my classmates. I liked Batman too and usually got that and Detective Comics, as well as Superman and Action. Liked the various Archies as well. Didn't get into the Fantastic Four until way later and never was much for romance or war books, although as a kid I liked DC's Unexpected and House of Mystery. Today those don't look as good although most of the superhero stuff from my halcyon days holds up relatively well. It was then possible to go into many different kinds of stores and find piles of old books on the cheap, carelessly thrown in a corner. This was way before anyone put their comics into bags and boards and well prior to the takeover of greed in every aspect of society. Imagine--wanting or not wanting a book based on whether or not you liked the art and the story and not what some price guide or website said it was 'worth.' Revolutionary! No comic specialty stores as yet, either. I got most of my comics at a drug store in the Ridgeway Shopping Center in Stamford, Ct. which was called Paper Palace when I was in high school but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called before that. They had a little lunch counter where you could get a sandwich or a milkshake, opposite to which was the comic rack which I riffled through zillions of times. When I started collecting in earnest they were twenty cents then twenty five. By the time they hit thirty centavos I had moved on for the most part, but I still get a rush of nostalgia when I see a twenty- or twenty-five-center. Eventually, being a weird, cerebral kid, I started seeking out older stuff. You know, all the way back to the twelve and fifteen cent price points! I had some early Marvels and DCs in my collection, and had gotten Flash #104 from 1949 which was my oldest comic and one that I really liked having, not because of any perceived value but because I enjoyed having the last issue of Flash comics before the renaissance of the character in different form in 1956. Having said that, I note that in one online guide that issue is listed at $10,000! I think that figure is well exaggerated in the sense that it would be very difficult to actually realize that price from a sale, but it irks me nonetheless that my collection was stolen in the early 80s when I was living in California. Although my copy was quite worn as I recall and quite a ways from mint condition. Anyway that was thirty five years ago and there's not much I can do about it now!
So there I was at the age of thirteen or fourteen collecting away, with tons of superheroes and Archie, commiserating with the other comic 'geeks' (before that term was coined) and expressing youthful disdain for the art of Jack Kirby (I was young, what can I say? I like Kirby and Simon much more now.) and liking Curt Swan, John Romita Sr., Steve Ditko, and the like. I particularly enjoyed the DC 100 page Super-Spectaculars which had a minimum of ads and reprinted a lot of stuff from the 40s and 50s; even as a clueless kid I had a pretty well developed sense of history and I really liked reading the old stuff. The new stories were pretty good too, which made it a win-win.
When we fast forward fifteen years, I found myself managing a shop that sold sports cards and memorabilia and a few new comic titles, which rekindled my interest to an extent, and I get a huge kick out of seeing and reading a story that I had owned back in the day, especially the 100 pagers. I was surprised to learn that there were ninety-something different ones, of which I currently have about two dozen. I never pay much; I don't care about condition so much, I usually just want reading copies. And I think that slabbing coins or comics (hermetically sealing them to preserve the condition or grade) is nonsense, they were made to be read and enjoyed, not traded like stock certificates. People in the card shop would ask me if the way to collect wasn't to buy a box of wax packs and then leave it in the closet, to which I always answered, 1) What fun is that? and 2) if you want to invest, do so in real estate for there will never be MORE land, there can only be less, and anyway millions of people have the same idea you have so there will be a significant oversupply and not enough demand. It's sad that I have to explain supply and demand over and over again. But I digress.
Memory is a funny thing. I can remember a panel from a comic that I read forty years ago. I hope tomorrow night when I am on stage performing in Shakespeare's Cymbeline, that I can remember my lines that I went over just before I went on!
I devoured books about comics, what few there were then, including Jules Feiffer's classic The Great Comic Book Heroes, which my father gave my mother for Xmas in the late 60s. Years later I asked Mum why he gifted it to her, as she had never expressed any desire to read comics or learn about their history and she casually replied, 'Because he wanted to read it.' Pop never read a comic in his life so far as I know and expressed infinite disdain for my usual habit in those years of blowing every cent I had on comics each and every week, so the beneficiary of that gift was---me! Read it many times and was happy to get a reprint edition a few years ago in NYC. There was also All In Color For a Dime, with essays about various titles and characters and genres and a second volume of the same called the Comic Book Book. Just the other day I remembered the Menomonee Falls Gazette, which from 1971 to 1978 reprinted newspaper strips of such stalwarts as Dick Tracy, Batman, Rip Kirby, and other adventurers in a weekly paper. I couldn't afford to subscribe but I found the odd individual issue and liked them. Nowadays a lot of the old newspaper strips are collected in hardcover or trade paper editions which is a fine way to read them and I enjoy my copies of various strips like Peanuts, Dick Tracy, Rip Kirby (very underrated!) Superman & Batman, and others. If I were running a newspaper I would enlarge the funnies, not shrink them, and use a big color supplement as a selling point. It's a mystery to me why more editors don't do that, no doubt it has to do with filthy lucre. I'd collect back numbers of the M. Falls Gazette if I could find them for sale inexpensively but they seem to be $15-20 per issue on the open market which is rather more than I am willing to pay. I'd like to see more comic shows just concentrating on comics as opposed to artists & writers & actors signing stuff and people in costumes and that sort of thing which is why it's so expensive to get in to these things. Just have comic dealers and charge just a couple of bucks to get in and you'd see me!
About 1976 I got bit by the rock and roll bug and spent most waking hours listening and trying to play and--should I say outgrew?--gradually sloughed off my comics habit and when I went off to university in the fall of 1979 I sold all my comics and baseball cards at a flea market for $125 as I recall. Not a bad deal!
But starting in the late 80s I occasionally picked up a book or a pack of cards. I was working at the Bridgeport Post in 1986 and a store near their printing plant downtown had packs of '86 Fleer cards for like 50c or something so I started getting those and assembling a set. Then I started working at the card shop through which I learned a lot about older series of cards and while the new comics did not impress me I started to dabble a bit in vintage comics again, along with a lot of other baby boomers in their thirties. What turned me off of that and what made it a relief to get out of that business was that by that time greed had superseded everything else and very few people collected anything for fun or for its own sake any more, everything was 'monetized,' so to speak, and after the billionth time I was asked 'what's it worth?' and the billionth time I replied, 'What someone is willing to pay, I think (X) is a fair price,' I really got disgruntled. Me, I just didn't care about stuff like that, I just wanted to read the things that I enjoyed. Even as late as the mid-90s it was easy to get stuff like Marvel Tales and Marvel's Greatest Comics which reprinted Spidey and the FF, respectively, for less than a dollar so eventually I had a collection of several hundred comics. Unfortunately about three quarters of my collection was lost in a flood in 2008 because the basement apartment I lived in had a very poorly designed & maintained drainage for when it rained and this time water came in to ankle depth and soaked everything. I was surprised at my lack of anger at the situation, partly because, after all, it's just 'stuff,' and partly because my really topnotch stuff I had elevated in another part of the apt, and partly because I didn't much care any more. So now I have maybe two hundred comics, some of which I will keep and some of which I am looking to sell but today I will still buy a comic if I can afford it and if I want it badly enough and am on the lookout for a good deal in a bound version too. Once a comic book guy, always a comic book guy, I guess!
July 2014
When a cat meows, it means.....
I'm hungry.
Put some food in the kitty dish.
Why aren't you putting food in the kitty dish?
I'll just wait here while you put food in the kitty dish.
If you can't feed me, pet me.
If you can't pet me, keep quiet so I can nap.
You are in my nap place.
Kindly remove yourself from my nap place.
Here comes a hairball!
No one sleeps while I'm awake.
Let's play!
Please kill the dog next door.
I want to go out.
I want to come in.
I wanted to see if you'd open the door.
For crying out loud, change the kitty box.
Remain motionless for six or eight hours while I nap on you.
I'm just about to start tearing around the house for no apparent reason.
Make it warmer.
Make it cooler.
The next person who pulls my tail is going to get a face full of claws.
As a hunter, you suck.
I'm not eating this crap.
You are trying to poison me with this foul-tasting medicine, aren't you?
Do not stroke my fur in the wrong direction.
Let me have a bite of that.
Just wanted to let you know I'm ignoring you.
Another public service brought to you by your friends at Chocolate Frosted Bloggos, the best blog on the web!
August 2014
Mike's Reading Room
At home the other night, I noticed that my usual pile of Books To Read was rather larger than usual, so I thought I'd take an inventory and see just what my Summer List o'Reading consisted of:
A biography of animation and film pioneer Walt Disney
Street and Smith's Spring Baseball Preview Issue for 1957
Mr. Wrigley's Ball Club, about Chicago and the Cubs in the 1930s
How to play golf better by Bobby Jones, although I haven't played lately it couldn't hurt!
Rock Lives by Timothy White, bio sketches of first, second, and third generation rockers
The Beach Boys and the Southern California Scene
A collection of three Zane Grey novels
1913 by Florian Illes
A collection of noteworthy articles on American History from American Heritage magazine
Three volumes of the work of Henry James
French history 1830-1860
The Ox-Bow Incident by Clark
Slide, Kelly, Slide, biography of 19th century Hall of Famer Mike 'King' Kelly
Small Back Room, WWII novel
The Wonderful World of Books, all about reading and books from the 1940s
Chief Bender's Burden, the life and times of the Native American pitcher and Hall of Famer
Anthology of sportswriting from the first hundred years of the Chicago Tribune
One of radio announcer Larry Kane's books on the Beatles
Cynthia Lennon's book about ex-husband John
Science fiction stories by Philip Jose Farmer
Anthology of the best science fiction stories of 1955 edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg
Short stories by Harlan Ellison
The Elements of Style by Strunk and White
Biography of Lyndon Johnson
The Bad Guys Won!--History of the 1986 World's Champion Mets
Autobiography of sportscaster Sal Marciano
Spock Must Die by James Blish
Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria
Profiles in Courage by JFK
Life of Babe Ruth in pictures
Anthology of robot themed science fiction stories
Official Guide to the 1964 World's Fair
That's quite a list, isn't it? Bigger than usual like I said. Some of the above I've finished, some I'm in the middle of, and some I haven't yet started. As you can see I like biographies, books on MLB, rock and roll, especially the British Invasion and the Fab 4, and lately science fiction and westerns. I hadn't read much science fiction (don't call it 'sci-fi' unless you want to start an argument) for a long time but lately started again after finding a couple of mass market paperbacks on the cheap, and my newfangled interest in westerns was ignited by my fondness for tv westerns, so I wanted to read the Virginian since I like the 1962-71 show and the Ox-Bow Incident is supposed to be a good film although I haven't seen it and the book looks good although I haven't started it yet.
Coming to the List: Mercedes, the new Stephen King, the autobiography of the late James Garner, the memoirs of rock and roll journalist Lisa Robinson, and a bio of Hollywood's lawyer to the stars Greg Bautzer.
Who knows what else will cross my field of literacy? Always something new and interesting coming down the pike. Long live print!
August 2014
A biography of animation and film pioneer Walt Disney
Street and Smith's Spring Baseball Preview Issue for 1957
Mr. Wrigley's Ball Club, about Chicago and the Cubs in the 1930s
How to play golf better by Bobby Jones, although I haven't played lately it couldn't hurt!
Rock Lives by Timothy White, bio sketches of first, second, and third generation rockers
The Beach Boys and the Southern California Scene
A collection of three Zane Grey novels
1913 by Florian Illes
A collection of noteworthy articles on American History from American Heritage magazine
Three volumes of the work of Henry James
French history 1830-1860
The Ox-Bow Incident by Clark
Slide, Kelly, Slide, biography of 19th century Hall of Famer Mike 'King' Kelly
Small Back Room, WWII novel
The Wonderful World of Books, all about reading and books from the 1940s
Chief Bender's Burden, the life and times of the Native American pitcher and Hall of Famer
Anthology of sportswriting from the first hundred years of the Chicago Tribune
One of radio announcer Larry Kane's books on the Beatles
Cynthia Lennon's book about ex-husband John
Science fiction stories by Philip Jose Farmer
Anthology of the best science fiction stories of 1955 edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg
Short stories by Harlan Ellison
The Elements of Style by Strunk and White
Biography of Lyndon Johnson
The Bad Guys Won!--History of the 1986 World's Champion Mets
Autobiography of sportscaster Sal Marciano
Spock Must Die by James Blish
Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria
Profiles in Courage by JFK
Life of Babe Ruth in pictures
Anthology of robot themed science fiction stories
Official Guide to the 1964 World's Fair
That's quite a list, isn't it? Bigger than usual like I said. Some of the above I've finished, some I'm in the middle of, and some I haven't yet started. As you can see I like biographies, books on MLB, rock and roll, especially the British Invasion and the Fab 4, and lately science fiction and westerns. I hadn't read much science fiction (don't call it 'sci-fi' unless you want to start an argument) for a long time but lately started again after finding a couple of mass market paperbacks on the cheap, and my newfangled interest in westerns was ignited by my fondness for tv westerns, so I wanted to read the Virginian since I like the 1962-71 show and the Ox-Bow Incident is supposed to be a good film although I haven't seen it and the book looks good although I haven't started it yet.
Coming to the List: Mercedes, the new Stephen King, the autobiography of the late James Garner, the memoirs of rock and roll journalist Lisa Robinson, and a bio of Hollywood's lawyer to the stars Greg Bautzer.
Who knows what else will cross my field of literacy? Always something new and interesting coming down the pike. Long live print!
August 2014
New Feature! Mike's thumbnail film review!
Volume one-The Giver
I was chosen (at random, it's not because of any of my special qualities, believe it or not) by SAG-AFTRA to view films and vote for presentation of the prestigious SAG awards, which air in January. I wasn't able to make the screening of the new film about James Brown but I did go last evening to see The Giver, based on Lois Lowry's YA book, which in fact I've not read.
At the start, everything is monochromatic grey and seemingly bleak. It seems that all emotion has, for good and for ill, been squeezed or bred out of people and no one knows that in the distant past, there were things like violence and love and human imperfection in the world. Three teen friends are about to graduate to adulthood and be assigned work which eliminates choice but also eliminates unemployment, a good example
of the tradeoffs in this 'perfect' society. Our protagonist, Jonas, is chosen out of all the 'graduates' to be the memory keeper. There is one person in society entrusted with the knowledge of yesteryear and how it used to be, and that person then transfers the memories to his or her replacement, sometimes with disastrous results.
The strength here is that the filmmakers didn't spend a lot of time on boring exposition; we learn all this from the settings and the dialogue, along with splashes of color in the greyness, which was a very effective way to get the nature of this world across to the audience, especially those of us unfamiliar with the source novel.
Eventually Jonas finds the mess that was and is human society with all its foibles too much to take and strives to escape beyond the safe boundaries of the city into the elsewhere where there are vivid colors and the all too human blessings and curses with which we live. Expertly shot with colors that explode and high definition imagery, the look of the film meshes well with the theme. Similarly, while the acting is occasionally wooden, it might be said that this too lends itself well to the subject of the picture, for in a world without emotion, where everything is preplanned and rigidly controlled, mightn't a monochromatic approach to life be a natural reaction? While there are some futuristic world cliches on board here, notably in the 'Love? What is Love?' routines, as well as the overweening influence of machines, computers, and surveillance cameras, again these are part and parcel of the story and can hardly be discounted completely as cliches. There are, intentionally or not, some similarities with 21st century America as well. The widespread surveillance and rigid control of the less priveliged citizenry is well known to us, and it is not a stretch of the imagination by any means to envision further encroachment of individuality by the state as the ruling elite feels more and more threatened. What an interesting concept that society would designate one or more individuals to hold the accumulated knowledge of human history! Well done here. This film gets Mike's rating of: go ahead and see it, it will entertain you.
August 2014
At the start, everything is monochromatic grey and seemingly bleak. It seems that all emotion has, for good and for ill, been squeezed or bred out of people and no one knows that in the distant past, there were things like violence and love and human imperfection in the world. Three teen friends are about to graduate to adulthood and be assigned work which eliminates choice but also eliminates unemployment, a good example
of the tradeoffs in this 'perfect' society. Our protagonist, Jonas, is chosen out of all the 'graduates' to be the memory keeper. There is one person in society entrusted with the knowledge of yesteryear and how it used to be, and that person then transfers the memories to his or her replacement, sometimes with disastrous results.
The strength here is that the filmmakers didn't spend a lot of time on boring exposition; we learn all this from the settings and the dialogue, along with splashes of color in the greyness, which was a very effective way to get the nature of this world across to the audience, especially those of us unfamiliar with the source novel.
Eventually Jonas finds the mess that was and is human society with all its foibles too much to take and strives to escape beyond the safe boundaries of the city into the elsewhere where there are vivid colors and the all too human blessings and curses with which we live. Expertly shot with colors that explode and high definition imagery, the look of the film meshes well with the theme. Similarly, while the acting is occasionally wooden, it might be said that this too lends itself well to the subject of the picture, for in a world without emotion, where everything is preplanned and rigidly controlled, mightn't a monochromatic approach to life be a natural reaction? While there are some futuristic world cliches on board here, notably in the 'Love? What is Love?' routines, as well as the overweening influence of machines, computers, and surveillance cameras, again these are part and parcel of the story and can hardly be discounted completely as cliches. There are, intentionally or not, some similarities with 21st century America as well. The widespread surveillance and rigid control of the less priveliged citizenry is well known to us, and it is not a stretch of the imagination by any means to envision further encroachment of individuality by the state as the ruling elite feels more and more threatened. What an interesting concept that society would designate one or more individuals to hold the accumulated knowledge of human history! Well done here. This film gets Mike's rating of: go ahead and see it, it will entertain you.
August 2014
Mike's Reading Room update
Frankly I thought The Virginian, by Owen Wister, was kind of meh. I think I've been spoiled by the action-packed TV show! There's really not much action and we (I) have been conditioned by television and film to expect shootouts and lynchings and brawls in saloons and the like. The book sold very well upon its release in 1902 and basically jump started the Western genre as we know it today, but it reads quite differently than the sort of thing we are accustomed to nowadays. Again that is not the author's fault, just my observations.
We are carrying on with the Western theme with the Ox-Bow Incident and will start the late James Garner's memoir tonight, along with those of noted rock and roll journalist Lisa Robinson. Stay tuned for the next Reading Room update!
August 2014
We are carrying on with the Western theme with the Ox-Bow Incident and will start the late James Garner's memoir tonight, along with those of noted rock and roll journalist Lisa Robinson. Stay tuned for the next Reading Room update!
August 2014
Mike's Thumbnail film reviews!
Volume two--The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby
First world problems. That's what I kept thinking as I watched the cobbled-together version of what was originally two separate films, one for each viewpoint of the couple. The titular character has left her husband and attempted suicide after the death of their young son and eventually ends up at the Westport home of her parents, a college professor and a musician. The folks, played by Isabelle Huppert and William Hurt, are great, as is Viola Davis as a teacher when leading lady Jessica Chastain as Eleanor decides to take a class, just for something to do. This was my main problem with the film--how many people have an option to sit in on college courses because they don't have anything else to do? Talk about the problems of the priveliged classes! I just couldn't sympathize or care. While there were some good bits, I also found the dialogue, as usual in pictures about contemporary affairs, excruciatiningly unrealistic. People just don't talk that way! It would be interesting to see the 'His' version and the 'Hers' version, especially since as a sometime actor, I would be interested in seeing the results of what for me would be an interesting creative challenge, that of doing a scene from one point of view and then doing the same scene from the perspective of the other pov. I would think that would be difficult but how interesting to try! Still, for some reason the studio or the director or someone decided to use parts of both and I wonder if the resulting he-and-she stew hurt both characters by diluting them. I did rather like the way that the trauma that split them was revealed very slowly and painfully; it was one of the few things that rang true in the picture. At least that was one topic in the film that didn't come with long speeches of exposition. While all concerned in the cast are fantastic actors I didn't feel they were well served by the material so pending the release of the two source films we'll have to give this one a miss.
September 2014
September 2014
The Bull Moose, The Reluctant President, and the Professor. A
I've just finished The Bully Pulpit, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about the relationship between President Theodore Roosevelt and President/Chief Justice William Howard Taft, which went from warm to cold to warm again. I enjoyed the history of it, and as readers of my blog on my website mikedurell.com/chocolatefrostedbloggos know, I was struck by the similarities between the political and social situations of today and those of one hundred years ago. If anyone actually reads these things (Hi, Mom!) you will recall that in 1914, there was a groundswell of support for the breakup of corporate monopolies which were harmful not only to the macroeconomies of the country, but also contributed greatly to the sharp rise in the cost of living and the decline in the standard of living for the working folks.
In fact both TR and Taft favored legislation to regulate out of control corporate malfeasance, an estate tax, a progressive income tax, direct election of senators as opposed to appointments by party machinery, conservation of natural resources, government oversight of the railroad and food & drug industries, transparency in political donations, a shift away from laissez-faire business policy and towards greater government intervention when necessary to promote the common good and the rights of individuals as opposed to the rights of property, development for the benefit of small scale landowners rather than corporate interests or speculators---and these men were staunch Republicans! A platform like that wouldn't even be considered by the Democrats nowadays! Roosevelt seemingly wanted to run for a third term, but finally decided not to break with precedent--that would wait for another Roosevelt thirty years later--and threw his support behind the reluctant candidate Taft, who wanted to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which office he would attain at last, under the Harding administration. Taft's brother Charles was extremely wealthy and his support enabled brother Will to embark on a political career in the first place. When elected to the Presidency in 1908, Taft made sure to thank both his brother and TR; this rankled the former President who apparently felt that he alone should have been singled out for praise for his herculean effort to make his friend and protege the Prez. This rather petty reaction to a minor issue was the beginning of a series of wedge issues that drove the men inexorably apart, along with a perhaps inevitable disenchantment with Taft's administration after the initial flush of support. Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana summed up Taft's first year by saying, 'The people at first received the President with good expectations, then with tolerance, then with faint distrust, then with silent opposition, and now with open and settled hostility,' which also serves as a fair summation of the trajectory of the Obama administration, with a big helping hand from the gop obstructionists and the conservative media. Believing that the Republicans supporting Taft for renomination had fraudulently sat delegates at the convention, Roosevelt broke ranks and ran in 1912 as a third party candidate, stating that he felt as strong as a bull moose, while Taft, who never really wanted to be President at all, campaigned little and seemed resigned to the fact that he and TR would split the vote and open the door to a Wilson presidency, which is exactly what happened. Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton University in the fall of 1910. In the fall of 1912 he was elected President of the United States. How's that for a fast rise?
Wilson won forty states; Roosevelt six, and Taft only two. The popular vote was much closer: over six million for Wilson, 4 million for TR, and 3.5 million for Taft, while Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs polled nearly one million votes. If those numbers seem small, remember women would not be allowed to vote for eight more years.
Frankly I was troubled in learning, halfway through the book, of the allegations of plagiarism surrounding Ms. Goodwin, and I must admit it colored my perceptions but it is still an enjoyable read and is recommended.
Speaking of enjoyable reads that I really hadn't expected, I came across a copy of A Writer's Notebook by Somerset Maugham and while it took time to get into, found it quite interesting. Mostly consisting of bits & sketches from his notes taken while preparing his books, it provides great insight into the writing process as well as the author's views on many different philosophical issues and those of that day. While I disagreed with his assertions sometimes I was struck by his astuteness much more often. For example: 'I wonder that the people who are concerned with the survival of democracy are not anxious at the inordinate power it gives to oratory. A man may be possessed of a disinterested desire to serve his country, he may have wisdom, he may have wisdom and prudence, courage and a knowledge of affairs, he will never achieve a political position in which he can exercise his powers unless he has also the gift of the gab.....the appeal of oratory is not to reason, but to emotion; one would have thought that when measures that may decide the fate of a nation are under consideration it was pure madness to allow opinion to be swayed by emotion rather than guided by reason.' Those words were never truer than they are right now, although I would argue that for high political office, there is also a de facto religious litmus test requiring at least lip service to Christianity (although 'thou shalt not kill' seems to be conveniently ignored as does 'thou shalt not steal') and debate is even more restricted than it was in Maugham's day. And how about this: 'Democracy seldom had a ruder shock than when a phrase--you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold--nearly put an ignorant and conceited fool in the White House.' Why mince words, Somerset? Tell us how you really feel about William Jennings Bryan! Anyway there is much about Maugham's travels to many different places, the South Seas, India, various points in America and the UK and Europe, which are notable for their brevity and wit. Well worth a read if you can tear yourself away from Of Human Bondage.
September 2014
In fact both TR and Taft favored legislation to regulate out of control corporate malfeasance, an estate tax, a progressive income tax, direct election of senators as opposed to appointments by party machinery, conservation of natural resources, government oversight of the railroad and food & drug industries, transparency in political donations, a shift away from laissez-faire business policy and towards greater government intervention when necessary to promote the common good and the rights of individuals as opposed to the rights of property, development for the benefit of small scale landowners rather than corporate interests or speculators---and these men were staunch Republicans! A platform like that wouldn't even be considered by the Democrats nowadays! Roosevelt seemingly wanted to run for a third term, but finally decided not to break with precedent--that would wait for another Roosevelt thirty years later--and threw his support behind the reluctant candidate Taft, who wanted to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which office he would attain at last, under the Harding administration. Taft's brother Charles was extremely wealthy and his support enabled brother Will to embark on a political career in the first place. When elected to the Presidency in 1908, Taft made sure to thank both his brother and TR; this rankled the former President who apparently felt that he alone should have been singled out for praise for his herculean effort to make his friend and protege the Prez. This rather petty reaction to a minor issue was the beginning of a series of wedge issues that drove the men inexorably apart, along with a perhaps inevitable disenchantment with Taft's administration after the initial flush of support. Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana summed up Taft's first year by saying, 'The people at first received the President with good expectations, then with tolerance, then with faint distrust, then with silent opposition, and now with open and settled hostility,' which also serves as a fair summation of the trajectory of the Obama administration, with a big helping hand from the gop obstructionists and the conservative media. Believing that the Republicans supporting Taft for renomination had fraudulently sat delegates at the convention, Roosevelt broke ranks and ran in 1912 as a third party candidate, stating that he felt as strong as a bull moose, while Taft, who never really wanted to be President at all, campaigned little and seemed resigned to the fact that he and TR would split the vote and open the door to a Wilson presidency, which is exactly what happened. Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton University in the fall of 1910. In the fall of 1912 he was elected President of the United States. How's that for a fast rise?
Wilson won forty states; Roosevelt six, and Taft only two. The popular vote was much closer: over six million for Wilson, 4 million for TR, and 3.5 million for Taft, while Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs polled nearly one million votes. If those numbers seem small, remember women would not be allowed to vote for eight more years.
Frankly I was troubled in learning, halfway through the book, of the allegations of plagiarism surrounding Ms. Goodwin, and I must admit it colored my perceptions but it is still an enjoyable read and is recommended.
Speaking of enjoyable reads that I really hadn't expected, I came across a copy of A Writer's Notebook by Somerset Maugham and while it took time to get into, found it quite interesting. Mostly consisting of bits & sketches from his notes taken while preparing his books, it provides great insight into the writing process as well as the author's views on many different philosophical issues and those of that day. While I disagreed with his assertions sometimes I was struck by his astuteness much more often. For example: 'I wonder that the people who are concerned with the survival of democracy are not anxious at the inordinate power it gives to oratory. A man may be possessed of a disinterested desire to serve his country, he may have wisdom, he may have wisdom and prudence, courage and a knowledge of affairs, he will never achieve a political position in which he can exercise his powers unless he has also the gift of the gab.....the appeal of oratory is not to reason, but to emotion; one would have thought that when measures that may decide the fate of a nation are under consideration it was pure madness to allow opinion to be swayed by emotion rather than guided by reason.' Those words were never truer than they are right now, although I would argue that for high political office, there is also a de facto religious litmus test requiring at least lip service to Christianity (although 'thou shalt not kill' seems to be conveniently ignored as does 'thou shalt not steal') and debate is even more restricted than it was in Maugham's day. And how about this: 'Democracy seldom had a ruder shock than when a phrase--you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold--nearly put an ignorant and conceited fool in the White House.' Why mince words, Somerset? Tell us how you really feel about William Jennings Bryan! Anyway there is much about Maugham's travels to many different places, the South Seas, India, various points in America and the UK and Europe, which are notable for their brevity and wit. Well worth a read if you can tear yourself away from Of Human Bondage.
September 2014
Mike's thumbnail film reviews! Volume three--Harlem Street Singer
Fans of country blues music are no doubt well familiar with Hot Tuna and Old and In the Way, as well as Leadbelly and Pete Seeger and the like. One of the pioneers of the genre who may not have gotten his due is the Reverend Gary Davis, the subject of the new documentary Harlem Street Singer. Your reviewer caught the last showing of the run at the IFC on Sixth Avenue and, being a fan of the stuff, greatly enjoyed the show!
Six years in the making, filmmakers Trevor Laurence and Simeon Hutner were nearly finished when they got wind of some footage of Davis from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival which had never been publicly aired, and happily they were able to acquire it and fit it into the narrative, to great effect.
Gary Davis was born in South Carolina, and was blind from birth although he was prone to telling tales it is known that he migrated to Durham, North Carolina as a young man and proceeded to make his living busking, sometimes on the street and sometimes at one of the numerous tobacco warehouses in the area, where tobacco farmers took their product at harvest time. This provided Davis with a ready made audience for his music, which even in its nascent stage was absolutely unique. At the age of around seven, he made his first guitar out of a pie plate and imitated the itinerant musicians of the region, developing a unique, percussive style of fingerpicking to go along with a more traditional vocal blues shout, and as a young teen was already playing in bands. Any busker worth their salt must adapt to the particular audience for whom they are playing, so it behooves such a musician to be able to play in a multitude of styles. For example, if Davis was playing in a church setting, spirituals would be the order of the day. If on the street, the current hit parade would be most likely to catch and hold an audience. For the tobacco farmers, country and blues. So Gary Davis absorbed every style of music that he could possibly hear, including blues, pop, gospel, ragtime, jazz, and country. The film makes clear that this eclecticism was not only an essential part of Davis' milieu, but shows how the various styles shone through in his playing. While in North Carolina, he met and married his life partner Annie, and departed the south for the greener pastures of New York City, where they felt there would be more opportunities to play his music. While he gained great acclaim from the musicians community in Manhattan, there were few regular gigs and his next few years were spent mostly on the street, hence his nickname and that of the film, for if you heard a man playing music on the street, you were unlikely to know his name and so Davis was referred to as the 'Harlem Street Singer.' As noted he had come to the attention of the movers and shakers on the scene and frequently jammed with Leadbelly, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, and Woody Guthrie (who is gently castigated in the film by Leadbelly's niece, who explains that it was very difficult to get Guthrie to ever leave the house, constantly overstaying his welcome! A hilarious aside.) but this respect did not translate into gigs or, needless to say, income. This state of affairs wouldn't change until the folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the genre became roaringly popular among suburban whites, which at last drove sales to the point to where some of its more fortunate practitioners could actually make a living. But the major turning point in Davis' career came when Peter, Paul, and Mary covered Davis' song Samson and Delilah on their first LP. To their great credit, they insisted that Davis be properly credited and that he was entitled to his fair share of his royalties. To this end, the group brought him a contract stating that he had written the song and outlining the schedule of royalty payments, but at first Davis declined to sign! He protested that he hadn't written the song, but that it was 'revealed' to him! He had become immersed in religion while still in the South, and in 1937 became an ordained minister and for several years thereafter played solely spiritual music, eventually moving back and forth between the sacred and the profane, echoing a dilemma faced by numerous musicians brought up in a religious tradition which held that playing popular music and especially the blues, was wicked and would lead straight to hell. Perhaps the best illustration of the pull of both sides is the career of Little Richard, who gave it all up at his career's height in the late 1950s to preach and play hymns. At any rate, Reverend Gary Davis did go back to the blues to the eternal gratitude of legions of blues fans everywhere, even while giving the Lord credit for his music and his songwriting. The royalties from Samson and Delilah among other songs finally allowed him to buy a house in Queens and get off the streets, and his burgeoning popularity enabled him to get better paying gigs along the folk circuit, making his later life happier. He was generous enough in spirit to give one-on-one lessons to some of the neighborhood's aspiring musicians including several who went on to have notable careers in music in their own right, including David Bromberg, Stefan Grossman, and for a couple of lessons, Bob Weir. The couple had no children, but as Gary Davis said, 'I have no children, but I have sons.'
In addition to the wonderful vintage footage of Davis' playing, there are numerous interviews with contemporaries and fellow musicians along with interpretations of his songs by others including short snippets from Hot Tuna and the Grateful Dead. Particularly noteworthy are selections performed by the band of co-producer Woody Mann on guitar, Bill Sims Jr. on wonderfully expressive vocals, Dave Keyes on piano (and what a great name for a pianist!) and Brian Glassman on standup bass. In a q & a period after the showing, Messrs. Laurence and Hutner discussed some of the issues that came up during the production; the house in Queens is still in the family, apparently a step-granddaughter was uninterested in the project and denied access to the home while the neighbors remembered Gary and Annie as a nice older couple but had little inkling of the Reverend's place in the music world. The film is shot very crisply and clearly; in fact the high definition picture shows nose hairs and the like in crystal clarity, which is decidedly a mixed blessing! And I wondered at the fact that every single person interviewed for the doc had some form of unkempt facial hair. Why is that? Is it a musician thing? (For the record, your correspondent does too.)
The co-directors also mentioned that the dvd release will have more music as bonus features, so this reviewer says go see it, and if you can't find a showing, get the dvd! A fine film for not only the fan of the country blues, but of music and the New York folk scene in general.
October 2014
Six years in the making, filmmakers Trevor Laurence and Simeon Hutner were nearly finished when they got wind of some footage of Davis from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival which had never been publicly aired, and happily they were able to acquire it and fit it into the narrative, to great effect.
Gary Davis was born in South Carolina, and was blind from birth although he was prone to telling tales it is known that he migrated to Durham, North Carolina as a young man and proceeded to make his living busking, sometimes on the street and sometimes at one of the numerous tobacco warehouses in the area, where tobacco farmers took their product at harvest time. This provided Davis with a ready made audience for his music, which even in its nascent stage was absolutely unique. At the age of around seven, he made his first guitar out of a pie plate and imitated the itinerant musicians of the region, developing a unique, percussive style of fingerpicking to go along with a more traditional vocal blues shout, and as a young teen was already playing in bands. Any busker worth their salt must adapt to the particular audience for whom they are playing, so it behooves such a musician to be able to play in a multitude of styles. For example, if Davis was playing in a church setting, spirituals would be the order of the day. If on the street, the current hit parade would be most likely to catch and hold an audience. For the tobacco farmers, country and blues. So Gary Davis absorbed every style of music that he could possibly hear, including blues, pop, gospel, ragtime, jazz, and country. The film makes clear that this eclecticism was not only an essential part of Davis' milieu, but shows how the various styles shone through in his playing. While in North Carolina, he met and married his life partner Annie, and departed the south for the greener pastures of New York City, where they felt there would be more opportunities to play his music. While he gained great acclaim from the musicians community in Manhattan, there were few regular gigs and his next few years were spent mostly on the street, hence his nickname and that of the film, for if you heard a man playing music on the street, you were unlikely to know his name and so Davis was referred to as the 'Harlem Street Singer.' As noted he had come to the attention of the movers and shakers on the scene and frequently jammed with Leadbelly, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, and Woody Guthrie (who is gently castigated in the film by Leadbelly's niece, who explains that it was very difficult to get Guthrie to ever leave the house, constantly overstaying his welcome! A hilarious aside.) but this respect did not translate into gigs or, needless to say, income. This state of affairs wouldn't change until the folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the genre became roaringly popular among suburban whites, which at last drove sales to the point to where some of its more fortunate practitioners could actually make a living. But the major turning point in Davis' career came when Peter, Paul, and Mary covered Davis' song Samson and Delilah on their first LP. To their great credit, they insisted that Davis be properly credited and that he was entitled to his fair share of his royalties. To this end, the group brought him a contract stating that he had written the song and outlining the schedule of royalty payments, but at first Davis declined to sign! He protested that he hadn't written the song, but that it was 'revealed' to him! He had become immersed in religion while still in the South, and in 1937 became an ordained minister and for several years thereafter played solely spiritual music, eventually moving back and forth between the sacred and the profane, echoing a dilemma faced by numerous musicians brought up in a religious tradition which held that playing popular music and especially the blues, was wicked and would lead straight to hell. Perhaps the best illustration of the pull of both sides is the career of Little Richard, who gave it all up at his career's height in the late 1950s to preach and play hymns. At any rate, Reverend Gary Davis did go back to the blues to the eternal gratitude of legions of blues fans everywhere, even while giving the Lord credit for his music and his songwriting. The royalties from Samson and Delilah among other songs finally allowed him to buy a house in Queens and get off the streets, and his burgeoning popularity enabled him to get better paying gigs along the folk circuit, making his later life happier. He was generous enough in spirit to give one-on-one lessons to some of the neighborhood's aspiring musicians including several who went on to have notable careers in music in their own right, including David Bromberg, Stefan Grossman, and for a couple of lessons, Bob Weir. The couple had no children, but as Gary Davis said, 'I have no children, but I have sons.'
In addition to the wonderful vintage footage of Davis' playing, there are numerous interviews with contemporaries and fellow musicians along with interpretations of his songs by others including short snippets from Hot Tuna and the Grateful Dead. Particularly noteworthy are selections performed by the band of co-producer Woody Mann on guitar, Bill Sims Jr. on wonderfully expressive vocals, Dave Keyes on piano (and what a great name for a pianist!) and Brian Glassman on standup bass. In a q & a period after the showing, Messrs. Laurence and Hutner discussed some of the issues that came up during the production; the house in Queens is still in the family, apparently a step-granddaughter was uninterested in the project and denied access to the home while the neighbors remembered Gary and Annie as a nice older couple but had little inkling of the Reverend's place in the music world. The film is shot very crisply and clearly; in fact the high definition picture shows nose hairs and the like in crystal clarity, which is decidedly a mixed blessing! And I wondered at the fact that every single person interviewed for the doc had some form of unkempt facial hair. Why is that? Is it a musician thing? (For the record, your correspondent does too.)
The co-directors also mentioned that the dvd release will have more music as bonus features, so this reviewer says go see it, and if you can't find a showing, get the dvd! A fine film for not only the fan of the country blues, but of music and the New York folk scene in general.
October 2014
Mike's thumbnail film reviews!
Volume four--Wild.
Cheryl Strayed had a fucked-up life. Partly of her own making, partly due to circumstances. When she couldn't take it any more, she resolved to 'find herself,' if you'll pardon the cliche, and hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexican border all the way up to Portland, Oregon. Now, this might make an interesting read, but is it possible to make an entertaining film about hiking? Yes it is. While a tad repetitious in spots there is indeed a story to be told here and Reese Witherspoon does a good job playing the author on her quest to complete a long, long walk and come out the other end in one piece. While the first shot of Strayed/Witherspoon is off-putting, revealing bloody feet and sprung toenails, the question comes to mind of how many people will see this, or read the book, and be inspired to take a similar hike to find oneself, or escape from something in life, or the like. Your reviewer succumbed for about one second before reason prevailed and the fact that your correspondent is not physically capable of hiking 1100 miles, or even 110 miles, or even 110 feet, in any way, shape, or form. Anyway, director Jean-Marc Vallee has chosen very effective techniques to tell the story, beginning with voice-overs in the present tense as opposed to a 'that happened, then this happened' kind of approach. The soundtrack is used very effectively as well in that there are no sounds other than ambient, natural noises. When we hear songs, they are either 'live' in the scene, or softly overlaying the visuals as if the viewer had the same tune in their head that the character did. The music of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in 'Homeward Bound' is a particularly good use in this way, as is the late Stevie Ray Vaughan's work. The Grateful Dead and Leonard Cohen are used in song to good effect as well. Perhaps the best, and possibly most thought provoking, is the use of flashbacks. We are not hit over the head with exposition here, and that is a merciful decision. In fact it isn't until halfway through the story that we find that Strayed's mother died young of cancer and that of course was a particularly painful episode, contributing mightily to the author's slide into addiction and promiscuity. Some of the scenes regarding mother Bobbi's illness are quite jarring, but life isn't all beer and skittles, is it? While it is a pleasant surprise that a film about a long walk can be entertaining there were a few jarring notes as well. While in the Oregon woods, Strayed/Witherspoon comes across a grandmotherly type and a little boy walking along with what appears to be a llama and they converse for a moment and then the impossibly polite kid sings 'Red River Valley' in his piping high kid's voice. Strayed then breaks down and comes partially to terms with her mother's passing. A tug at the heartstrings, to be sure, but a rather unseemly push to advance the plot. (According to the director, they auditioned the singing kid with the Nirvana song All Apologies as well as Red River Valley. I sure hope they put that on the DVD!) Great pains are taken to show the marks and cuts and scrapes on Ms. Witherspoon's body that result from carrying a big heavy pack, but both pairs of boots sure looked pristine for having walked hundreds of hard miles, as did the actress herself. Hollywood, you know! Still, those are relatively minor quibbles, this one is worth a look.
October 2014
October 2014
Mike's thumbnail film reviews!
Volume five-Birdman.
Long cuts. Really long scenes allowed to play out instead of cutcutcutcut every two seconds as has been
the filmic norm for the last thirty odd years. That creative decision might well be the first thing that you notice about this (very) dark comedy about a television/film actor trying to make a go of a Raymond Carver revival on Broadway after having made his name playing a superhero many years previously. Most of the action takes place in the St. James theater in Manhattan during rehearsals and previews of the play that Riggan (Michael Keaton, great) is staging. The actors spent a couple of weeks on a sound stage in LA mocked up to look like the St. James where they blocked the action. This was a relatively complex process, as each scene was played & shot like a theatrical production, not cut up and edited together like usual, but shot continuously. This makes for more naturalistic performances but also increases the risk, for if something goes wrong, then it's back to the drawing board! So an interesting combination, for the performer, of stage and film discipline.
For this film at least, the effect is riveting and one can't help but follow the action wherever it may occur, but it is not without its drawbacks. The musical score is all, innovatively, percussion, which was a bold choice but did drown out the dialogue sometimes and made it hard for these old ears to pick up at other times. Plotwise, the character of Riggan is not only trying to escape from the image of and typecasting as Birdman, but juggling the multiple real life dramas of his fresh-out-of-rehab daughter, his mixed feelings for his ex-wife, the injury and subsequent lawsuit by his recently fired cast member, who was replaced by super annoying, ultra method actor Mike, played so well by Edward Norton, all the while trying to keep the show on track for a successful opening.
An effective anomaly is Riggan's telekinetic power with which he can move things around by pointing at them but less successful are his rather pointless destruction of his dressing room and the casual hookulp between Mike the Method Man and Riggan's daughter Sam, which felt lamely predictable. But the scene where Riggan accidentally locks himself out of the theater in the midst of a performance and the knowing comments on the Social Media generation are spot on and hilarious, as is the 'voice' of Birdman that echoes in Riggan's head and sometimes coaxes him to unfortunate choices. In a change of pace, Zach Galifianakis is pretty much the straight man for the actors' antics as the put-upon producer/stage manager, and Ms's Adams, Watts, and Ryan all shine as Riggan's ex-wife and castmates. Also the ending may surprise you, so no more spoilers. Out of the five films I've posted about lately, this one was the most entertaining, so go ahead and see it.
October 2014
the filmic norm for the last thirty odd years. That creative decision might well be the first thing that you notice about this (very) dark comedy about a television/film actor trying to make a go of a Raymond Carver revival on Broadway after having made his name playing a superhero many years previously. Most of the action takes place in the St. James theater in Manhattan during rehearsals and previews of the play that Riggan (Michael Keaton, great) is staging. The actors spent a couple of weeks on a sound stage in LA mocked up to look like the St. James where they blocked the action. This was a relatively complex process, as each scene was played & shot like a theatrical production, not cut up and edited together like usual, but shot continuously. This makes for more naturalistic performances but also increases the risk, for if something goes wrong, then it's back to the drawing board! So an interesting combination, for the performer, of stage and film discipline.
For this film at least, the effect is riveting and one can't help but follow the action wherever it may occur, but it is not without its drawbacks. The musical score is all, innovatively, percussion, which was a bold choice but did drown out the dialogue sometimes and made it hard for these old ears to pick up at other times. Plotwise, the character of Riggan is not only trying to escape from the image of and typecasting as Birdman, but juggling the multiple real life dramas of his fresh-out-of-rehab daughter, his mixed feelings for his ex-wife, the injury and subsequent lawsuit by his recently fired cast member, who was replaced by super annoying, ultra method actor Mike, played so well by Edward Norton, all the while trying to keep the show on track for a successful opening.
An effective anomaly is Riggan's telekinetic power with which he can move things around by pointing at them but less successful are his rather pointless destruction of his dressing room and the casual hookulp between Mike the Method Man and Riggan's daughter Sam, which felt lamely predictable. But the scene where Riggan accidentally locks himself out of the theater in the midst of a performance and the knowing comments on the Social Media generation are spot on and hilarious, as is the 'voice' of Birdman that echoes in Riggan's head and sometimes coaxes him to unfortunate choices. In a change of pace, Zach Galifianakis is pretty much the straight man for the actors' antics as the put-upon producer/stage manager, and Ms's Adams, Watts, and Ryan all shine as Riggan's ex-wife and castmates. Also the ending may surprise you, so no more spoilers. Out of the five films I've posted about lately, this one was the most entertaining, so go ahead and see it.
October 2014
Mike's thumbnail film reviews!
Volume six--The Homesman.
Expectations are a funny thing. If you set them too high, you're bound to be disappointed. Set them too low, and you'll be sorry you hadn't demanded more of yourself or the thing you are doing or watching. Upon reading about the new film 'The Homesman,' of which your reviewer attended a recent screening, it sounded a bit dull or cliched, especially given Hollywood's current obsession with computer-generated acting and explosions and the like. How wrong I was! That'll teach me. In fact the actors, producers, and crew did a fine job telling an interesting story. One wouldn't think it compelling reading a synopsis of the plot: In the plains of the Nebraska Territory, three married women have grevious mental problems and are thus no longer valuable to their families or to the community and will be shunted off to a pastor and his wife in Iowa, to be taken from their further east to their own families. Since none of the menfolk of the Nebraska community is willing to undertake the journey to Iowa with their charges, spinster woman Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank, great) volunteers simply because it's the right thing to do. A strange concept in twenty-first century America,
to be sure, doing something solely because it's the right thing to do, inconvenience and expense notwithstanding, but people thought differently in those days. Imagine actually living up to the pieties of one's religious beliefs instead of trotting them out when convenient and ignoring them the rest of the time! In any event, Hilary Swank gives a fine performance as does Tommy Lee Jones, as a would be claim jumper whose enemies are about to hang him in abstentia (tying a noose around his neck and setting him upon a horse, then leaving to let events take their course.) and the supporting players are spot on, particularly the three actors playing the mute women, (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, and Sonja Richter) who must delineate their characters without the advantage of dialogue. A very daunting task pulled off well! Many times in period films, especially those set in recent eras like the 60s, 70s, or 80s, there is too much emphasis on hindsight, so to speak, and you can be sure there will be cheap laughs, like emphasizing outdated fashions that appear silly today (and believe me, pierced faces and blue hair will look just as ridiculous thirty years from now as puffy hair, platform shoes, and foot-wide lapels in baby blue look today, just you wait!) or having someone say, 'What do you want me to do, pull a phone out of my pocket?,' or some such. But this picture does a fine job of re-creating the scenery, appearances, and atmosphere of what must have been a very difficult, hardscrabble existence for subsistence farmers. By the same token, at the end of the film when Iowa is at last reached, the more prosperous small town is seen in an equally reaslistic, well done way. Director/co-writer/co-producer Jones is said to have been a stickler for sticking to the script as he wanted to preserve its unique rhythm, and this attention to detail pays off on the screen as far as realism and entertainment value co-existing side by side. Make no mistake, this is a grim story about a grim situation, but there are many moments which lighten the tension and inject some much needed humor into the picture. Not for kids, but well worth a look, especially for those who'd like a rather different take on traditional, not to say timeworn, stories of the Old West.
October 2014
to be sure, doing something solely because it's the right thing to do, inconvenience and expense notwithstanding, but people thought differently in those days. Imagine actually living up to the pieties of one's religious beliefs instead of trotting them out when convenient and ignoring them the rest of the time! In any event, Hilary Swank gives a fine performance as does Tommy Lee Jones, as a would be claim jumper whose enemies are about to hang him in abstentia (tying a noose around his neck and setting him upon a horse, then leaving to let events take their course.) and the supporting players are spot on, particularly the three actors playing the mute women, (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, and Sonja Richter) who must delineate their characters without the advantage of dialogue. A very daunting task pulled off well! Many times in period films, especially those set in recent eras like the 60s, 70s, or 80s, there is too much emphasis on hindsight, so to speak, and you can be sure there will be cheap laughs, like emphasizing outdated fashions that appear silly today (and believe me, pierced faces and blue hair will look just as ridiculous thirty years from now as puffy hair, platform shoes, and foot-wide lapels in baby blue look today, just you wait!) or having someone say, 'What do you want me to do, pull a phone out of my pocket?,' or some such. But this picture does a fine job of re-creating the scenery, appearances, and atmosphere of what must have been a very difficult, hardscrabble existence for subsistence farmers. By the same token, at the end of the film when Iowa is at last reached, the more prosperous small town is seen in an equally reaslistic, well done way. Director/co-writer/co-producer Jones is said to have been a stickler for sticking to the script as he wanted to preserve its unique rhythm, and this attention to detail pays off on the screen as far as realism and entertainment value co-existing side by side. Make no mistake, this is a grim story about a grim situation, but there are many moments which lighten the tension and inject some much needed humor into the picture. Not for kids, but well worth a look, especially for those who'd like a rather different take on traditional, not to say timeworn, stories of the Old West.
October 2014
Mike's thumbnail film reviews!
Volume seven--Gone Girl.
Gone Girl, from Gillian Flynn's novel of the same name, is an intensely disturbing film. Yet it is also entertaining and quite compelling in its way. It's an overused reviewing trope, but it's the kind of film that reminds one of the aftermath of a wreck on the freeway. You don't want to look, but you can't help yourself. Plot twist after plot twist, layer after layer of devious motivation revealed, and some topnotch acting from the stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike and the supporting players (Tyler Perry and Caroline Coon are the best of a fine lot) make for a compelling picture. Most of these people are so unpleasant, perhaps they ought to be in a reality television program! Too, there are some very trenchant comments about the bottom-feeding tabloid media bubbling under the surface, and occasionally roaring to the top of it. Similar to The Homesman, this is a very very grim picture, but unlike the Western, these Missourians are basically unlikeable people who have little sense of their vast privilege and assume as givens their entitlement and place in the world. When Nick Dunne (Affleck, really good at playing a jerk, with his easy smile and fake charm on the surface, but his unpleasantness never far away) comes home to find his wife gone amid evidence of foul play, he calls in the cops and quickly finds himself under suspicion by tenacious detective Boney, (Kim Dickens, excellent) but we are then quickly made to see that all is not what it seems. At first we are drawn into a typical crime drama of the type we have all seen many times before, but that changes pretty quickly as layer after layer of devious motivations and unexpected plot twists unravel before us. Particularly unnerving are the scenes with the 'trailer trash twosome,' although your reviewer does not want to generate any spoilers, just you wait! Overall the casting was good although I was not entirely convinced by N.P. Harris' character of Amy's mistreated ex who insinuates himself back into her life at a crucial juncture of the story. However I tend to be reluctant to be overly harsh in criticizing acting or casting as I've done both and they are very difficult things to do. I therefore challenge viewers critical of either to go ahead and do better---if they can. And this film has the hallmark of a good one--it's long but doesn't feel long, no checking of the watch during it! While there are some implausibilities in the plot, this is the cinema, after all, and we do go see these films to escape, don't we? Well, you shall certainly find yourself lost in the myriad twists and turns of the story, especially if you haven't read the book. An unusual mystery/thriller which held the interest of even this jaded old man.
October 2014
October 2014
Mike's thumbnail film reviews!
Volume eight--The Nightcrawler.
What was it that Alfred Hitchcock said? That, if you were watching a film and saw a bomb planted under a table, that is suspense, since you knew it would go off at some point, giving the opportunity to hope that whoever is at the table will either be blown to kingdom come, or miraculously saved at the last moment.
Whereas, if we DON'T know the bomb is there, it's surprise, since when it does go off, it will come as a complete shock.
None of this is really relevant in the new Jake Gyllenhaal thriller, The Nightcrawler, as the only semi-suspenseful part draws out and hits the viewer over the head with What Might Happen, where two miscreants are in a Chinese restaurant and confront cops with gunfire. You can see what's coming next thundering down the interstate! It's an obvious moment in a film full of them, where Gyllenhaal's Lou is an
unpleasant character in between jobs who stumbles into the nightcrawler game, where folks with video cameras monitor police radio calls so that they can be quick on the scene and take film footage of various disasters which is then sold to the highest bidder amongst local television stations. Lou's early attempts at cashing in on this bottom-feeding industry are predictably inept, but he is a quick study and soon gets the hang of it, not being above manipulating scenery or dead bodies to get the shot he thinks will sell for the highest price.
The basic unlikeability of the character is not helped by his penchant for speaking in a monotone and quoting pithy business expressions gleaned from the internet, but this is only a small implausibility in a film rife with them. For starters, Lou just waltzes into the studio of a local tv station which apparently has no security whatsoever and he finds it ridiculously easy to charm the film buyer into purchasing the footage of such a rank amateur. Speaking of rank amateurism, your correspondent has never been a nightcrawler, but if engaged in such an undertaking, one might expect discretion as part of the territory, but Lou, once he has started selling film regularly, upgrades his jalopy to a shiny, bright red sports car. Sure, it goes fast and he can get to the scene of the crime that much faster, but it's also much easier to identify. Doesn't this fellow ever watch crime shows on tv? Lou even hires an assistant, whom he browbeats with regularity, although not so much that we ever forget that Lou himself is a loser of very recent vintage, finding cheap validity in those pithy quotes.
The point the filmmakers are trying to get across is apparently a comment on the glib, soulless nature of tabloid media, a point made much more effectively, and entertainingly, by Gone Girl. In the Nightcrawler, the viewer is struck repeatedly over the head with the malfeasance of everyone involved well past the point where the issue becomes tiresome. There is a home invasion in which three wealthy white folks are gunned down in their plush manse, predictably, Lou has heard the first 911 call and beats the cops there. He strolls right into the house and gets graphic footage of the corpses as well as the murderers. He quickly makes a deal with his
completely compromised liaison at the tv station for the body shots, but withholds the shots of the crooks
in hopes of negotiating an even better deal. Naturally this brings him to the attention of the LAPD, which
frowns on tampering with the scene of a crime. Surely police in the real world would see through Lou's
rationalizations and not be so easily swayed, nor give up on what ought to be a slam-dunk prosecution.
Beyond the ludicrously simple time Lou has in waltzing into the television station, the ease with which he
deflects the police investigation adds another layer of unreality to a situation that already strains credulity past
the breaking point. Give this one a miss.
October 2014
Whereas, if we DON'T know the bomb is there, it's surprise, since when it does go off, it will come as a complete shock.
None of this is really relevant in the new Jake Gyllenhaal thriller, The Nightcrawler, as the only semi-suspenseful part draws out and hits the viewer over the head with What Might Happen, where two miscreants are in a Chinese restaurant and confront cops with gunfire. You can see what's coming next thundering down the interstate! It's an obvious moment in a film full of them, where Gyllenhaal's Lou is an
unpleasant character in between jobs who stumbles into the nightcrawler game, where folks with video cameras monitor police radio calls so that they can be quick on the scene and take film footage of various disasters which is then sold to the highest bidder amongst local television stations. Lou's early attempts at cashing in on this bottom-feeding industry are predictably inept, but he is a quick study and soon gets the hang of it, not being above manipulating scenery or dead bodies to get the shot he thinks will sell for the highest price.
The basic unlikeability of the character is not helped by his penchant for speaking in a monotone and quoting pithy business expressions gleaned from the internet, but this is only a small implausibility in a film rife with them. For starters, Lou just waltzes into the studio of a local tv station which apparently has no security whatsoever and he finds it ridiculously easy to charm the film buyer into purchasing the footage of such a rank amateur. Speaking of rank amateurism, your correspondent has never been a nightcrawler, but if engaged in such an undertaking, one might expect discretion as part of the territory, but Lou, once he has started selling film regularly, upgrades his jalopy to a shiny, bright red sports car. Sure, it goes fast and he can get to the scene of the crime that much faster, but it's also much easier to identify. Doesn't this fellow ever watch crime shows on tv? Lou even hires an assistant, whom he browbeats with regularity, although not so much that we ever forget that Lou himself is a loser of very recent vintage, finding cheap validity in those pithy quotes.
The point the filmmakers are trying to get across is apparently a comment on the glib, soulless nature of tabloid media, a point made much more effectively, and entertainingly, by Gone Girl. In the Nightcrawler, the viewer is struck repeatedly over the head with the malfeasance of everyone involved well past the point where the issue becomes tiresome. There is a home invasion in which three wealthy white folks are gunned down in their plush manse, predictably, Lou has heard the first 911 call and beats the cops there. He strolls right into the house and gets graphic footage of the corpses as well as the murderers. He quickly makes a deal with his
completely compromised liaison at the tv station for the body shots, but withholds the shots of the crooks
in hopes of negotiating an even better deal. Naturally this brings him to the attention of the LAPD, which
frowns on tampering with the scene of a crime. Surely police in the real world would see through Lou's
rationalizations and not be so easily swayed, nor give up on what ought to be a slam-dunk prosecution.
Beyond the ludicrously simple time Lou has in waltzing into the television station, the ease with which he
deflects the police investigation adds another layer of unreality to a situation that already strains credulity past
the breaking point. Give this one a miss.
October 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume nine-The Judge
Folks, what we have here is a Movie. We've seen it all before--every film cliche is on display here, from the mundane (any time a leading character is driving somewhere, there is always a free, open parking space right in front of where they want to go) to the tired (Sappy music underscoring the Big Emotional Scene, usually between men who Can't Express Their Emotions) to the overdone like the Thanksgiving turkey that's been in the oven for sixteen hours (the Hidden History that comes out at the top of the characters' lungs about three quarters of the way through the film). Robert Downey is a smarmy lawyer (there's no other kind in LA or NYC in the movies) who goes home to Indiana to attend the memorial service for his mother who has died suddenly. He plans to leave immediately, for his father and he do not get along. All the backstory will come out as we go, of course. (Drunken teenage car crash, possibly derailing brother's promising pitching career)
We also learn that everyone in Indiana is a dumb hick, especially the lawyers and cops, except the women, who are sluts. But then, just as Downey is about to go back home and is on the plane, Dad gets busted for vehicular manslaughter and back goes the reluctant son. The rank incompetence of the local lawyer, who barfs before each and every court appearance, is so obvious that Dad finally asks sonny to defend him with all the sharkiness of the big city. Meanwhile, he shags the daughter of an old flame, makes out with said old flame, then old flame walks away, then returns.....I swear this was written like an old Mad Lib. I'm telling you, we've seen all these scenes before. And when the trial comes to an end, the big emotional baggage scenes mean that you can recite a soliliquy from the witness stand, and the attorney can respond in kind. Add a REALLY sappy ending and you've got corn that would make Frank Capra blush. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with the performances here. Robert Duvall is fine as the Judge, Downey is good as the dick laywer, but I thought that the best of the lot was the young girl who played Downey's daughter. Very good indeed. This is a film that is perfectly good to pass an evening's entertainment if you don't expect profundity, but don't look for anything new or innovative. Just settle in and escape into a cliched courtroom drama, if that's your bag.
November 2014
We also learn that everyone in Indiana is a dumb hick, especially the lawyers and cops, except the women, who are sluts. But then, just as Downey is about to go back home and is on the plane, Dad gets busted for vehicular manslaughter and back goes the reluctant son. The rank incompetence of the local lawyer, who barfs before each and every court appearance, is so obvious that Dad finally asks sonny to defend him with all the sharkiness of the big city. Meanwhile, he shags the daughter of an old flame, makes out with said old flame, then old flame walks away, then returns.....I swear this was written like an old Mad Lib. I'm telling you, we've seen all these scenes before. And when the trial comes to an end, the big emotional baggage scenes mean that you can recite a soliliquy from the witness stand, and the attorney can respond in kind. Add a REALLY sappy ending and you've got corn that would make Frank Capra blush. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with the performances here. Robert Duvall is fine as the Judge, Downey is good as the dick laywer, but I thought that the best of the lot was the young girl who played Downey's daughter. Very good indeed. This is a film that is perfectly good to pass an evening's entertainment if you don't expect profundity, but don't look for anything new or innovative. Just settle in and escape into a cliched courtroom drama, if that's your bag.
November 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Ten-Chef
This film contains two things. One is many, many shots of preparing food. It's almost like food porn. Many, many loving closeups of slicing, dicing, cooking, eating, and rolling in food. The other theme here is that everyonetalksreallyreallyfastovereachotheratbreakneckspeedonandonandonwhichishthewaypeoplesometimestalk
inreallifebut doesn't make for entertaining filmmaking or cogent story telling. Anyway, Jon Favreau brought this baby to the screen and learned himself how to prepare and cook food but since all it consists of is lots of food shots, reallyfasttalking, oh, and the now-obligatory child of ten-going-on-forty stealing half the scenes, you might want to give this one a miss. Unless you really like pictures of food.
November 2014
inreallifebut doesn't make for entertaining filmmaking or cogent story telling. Anyway, Jon Favreau brought this baby to the screen and learned himself how to prepare and cook food but since all it consists of is lots of food shots, reallyfasttalking, oh, and the now-obligatory child of ten-going-on-forty stealing half the scenes, you might want to give this one a miss. Unless you really like pictures of food.
November 2014
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Volume Eleven-Interstellar
I take it as a personal challenge to make this review as short as the film was long. I thought the premise was pretty interesting and all too possible. There are many ways in which humankind might screw up the planet enough to make it unlivable, although I confess that I hadn't thought of dust. More being underwater or cooked by ultraviolet rays, that kind of thing. At any rate, the story was good; one of the hallmarks of a good film is the absence of any sense of time passing. This film is very long, nearly three hours, but it really didn't feel so long, which is good. And I understand that director Nolan wanted to keep computer effects to a minimum which is also good. As it happens, I thought the acting less so. McConaughey's thick drawl and tendency to mumble made his dialogue sometimes unintelligible and all the time affected. In fact several times during this one, especially toward the beginning, I thought, 'Acting Class!' which is not the best recommendation one might hope for. Further, despite the accolades heaped on the performance of Ms. Foy as the young daughter, I felt it was a bit one-note, as the actor wasn't asked to do much other than be petulant and put-upon. Some of the other folks were good, and overall it was ok, but I would give it a middling rating, not great, not terrible, not a bad way to spend an afternoon for the science fiction aficionado.
November 2014
November 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Twelve-Belle
Here we have a pretty standard 'forbidden romance' piece set in the slave days of, I think, the 1760s. I watched this one at home on a screener and the titles that set the time and place were so small no one could read them except maybe the Ant-Man or the Atom. An English gentleman, to his credit, acknowledges the daughter of his slave lover as his own and has her in his home as part of the household, although she, being the color of cafe au lait, is not permitted to participate in many of the societal functions so as not to offend 'proper' people. As is shown over and over, people at that time (and this time too?) were very concerned with What Others Might Think, and so any hint of familial equality for Dido the mulatto is thoroughly suppressed.
But then, the complication: She falls for a white man! And he for her! The town vicar's son, and an abolitionist to boot, there are all sorts of trumped-up society reasons that their romance Should Not Be.
But don't worry, it all turns out right in the end. The acting is generally pretty good although the dialogue is somewhat cliched at times, the story is certainly one we've seen before as well. The crew did a good job in recreating the period, always more problematical from a more recent standpoint where errors might still be remembered. Here it's so long ago that most viewers wouldn't know if there were period mistakes anyway. But to these inexpert eyes it looked good for film. Go on and see it if you like period pieces, or if you like anti-slavery plots (and who doesn't?) but not if you're expecting something offbeat or cutting edge. Although if you're seeking those things, what are you doing going to the movies anyway?
November 2014
But then, the complication: She falls for a white man! And he for her! The town vicar's son, and an abolitionist to boot, there are all sorts of trumped-up society reasons that their romance Should Not Be.
But don't worry, it all turns out right in the end. The acting is generally pretty good although the dialogue is somewhat cliched at times, the story is certainly one we've seen before as well. The crew did a good job in recreating the period, always more problematical from a more recent standpoint where errors might still be remembered. Here it's so long ago that most viewers wouldn't know if there were period mistakes anyway. But to these inexpert eyes it looked good for film. Go on and see it if you like period pieces, or if you like anti-slavery plots (and who doesn't?) but not if you're expecting something offbeat or cutting edge. Although if you're seeking those things, what are you doing going to the movies anyway?
November 2014
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Volume TwelveA-The Grand Budapest Hotel
What can I say, I have a mild case of triskaidekaphobia. Back in the Dark Ages, when most folks had an attention span that lasted for more than five seconds, this is the type of film that would have been made, about the characters at a large hotel that was popular with the kind of characters you might still see today--rich old ladies with way too much makeup and carrying a little dog. For today's market most films are two second cut after cut with attendant explosions, ironic references, and computers instead of actual actors and plot. In this way is Grand Budapest Hotel a bit of a throwback, although in the main it isn't about the hotel at all, but about the people within. It is the story of the owner of the hotel and How He Came To Be, and it is a rousing good time! Very entertaining and lively, your writer enjoyed it quite a bit. Old Gustave is the mysterious owner of the GBH, who visits every now and then, but instead of taking a lavish suite, he holes up in a room the size of a closet or a $3000 Manhattan apartment. A curious patron asks him how he got to be the owner and thus ensues the story of Gustave H. and Zero, the lobby boy who accompanies him on his adventures. And what adventures they are! Gustave is willed a priceless painting but must overcome the strenuous objections of the family of the deceased, gets thrown in jail, escapes, dodges imminent war, all the while being pursued by agents of the aforementioned family. It's a wild ride, and a riot. Also amazingly cast: Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Adrien Brody, Ralph Fiennes, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, my gosh! The hallmark of a good film is if it draws the viewer into the story so as to forget the outside world and this picture did that in spades. Go ahead and see it.
November 2014
November 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Fourteen-The Humbling
Try as your writer might, I can not get into Philip Roth's novels. Lord knows I've tried. So it was with a relatively low bar that I saw 'The Humbling' which is based on one of Roth's books. At first I was admittedly unimpressed; the first thirty or forty percent of the film I couldn't shake the feeling that it WAS a film, that the actors were acting and unconvincing in creating characters. Yes, even Al Pacino. The plot was clever and the dialogue decent, perhaps it was me? But then I noted a turnaround--I lost the feeling of movieness and started to enjoy the story. Al Pacino is a stage actor whose best days are behind him. During a production of As You Like It, he takes a header off the stage, possibly intentionally, and as his actorly insecurities roar to the front ('Was that real? Did you believe what I just said?') he decides to retire as he has lost his mojo to carry on. His reluctance is compounded by the fact that his subsequent offers are limited to a hair restoring product and a production of King Lear, and the only reason the latter is offered is because everyone wants to see if and when he will take a swan dive off the stage again. Meanwhile a daughter of a family friend shows up at his door one day, being a neighbor and a teacher at the local women's college. The two start hanging out, despite a significant age difference, and while they are tentatively trysting the daughter's transgender lover starts coming around trying to reignite that relationship. Meanwhile the daughter Pegeen's parents are strenuously opposed to the match even though everyone involved is an adult. If that wasn't enough, Pacino's character is stalked by a woman who has accused her husband of molesting her child(ren) and wants the actor to help murder the man. This is yet another film of recent vintage that makes a comment on the bottom feeding nature of our tabloid and scandal soaked media, although in this case it is more tangential to the story.
With all this going on it is no wonder that your writer found himself immersed in the story and despite the misgivings at the beginning the acting really is quite good. There is a disturbing shouting match at the end between Pacino and Greta Gerwig, playing his younger paramour, and that scene was filmed on the very first day of Gerwig's attendance on the set. An astonishing commentary on her professional prowess. Another anomaly in the world of 2014 film is that it was a 20-day shoot over several months and brought in for a budget of $2 million, which wouldn't cover the craft services for Interstellar. So your writer stuck with it and was glad of it because in the end it was entertaining, the ending was unexpected, the acting was good and all in all worth a viewing. They did change the novel quite a bit, though, from what I understand, so Philip Roth won't be on the reading pile for a while yet.
November 2014
With all this going on it is no wonder that your writer found himself immersed in the story and despite the misgivings at the beginning the acting really is quite good. There is a disturbing shouting match at the end between Pacino and Greta Gerwig, playing his younger paramour, and that scene was filmed on the very first day of Gerwig's attendance on the set. An astonishing commentary on her professional prowess. Another anomaly in the world of 2014 film is that it was a 20-day shoot over several months and brought in for a budget of $2 million, which wouldn't cover the craft services for Interstellar. So your writer stuck with it and was glad of it because in the end it was entertaining, the ending was unexpected, the acting was good and all in all worth a viewing. They did change the novel quite a bit, though, from what I understand, so Philip Roth won't be on the reading pile for a while yet.
November 2014
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Volume Fifteen-Still Alice
It is not the easiest thing in the world to write film reviews. Over and above the work of the writing itself, your writer for one sometimes finds it difficult to overcome the feeling of, 'Who am I to be judging these people? Where have I gotten in show business?' (Answer: Approximately nowhere.) I know how difficult it is to get everything together, financing, cast, crew, etc. for a film and how much of a longshot it is to actually see your work on a screen, so how can I fairly criticize? Your correspondent got that feeling when watching Still Alice, which deals with college professor Julianne Moore dealing with the onset of early Alzheimer's, which is about the worst disease ever. But films about illness tend to take a familiar path, and this one is no exception. First of all, they are very very depressing. I mean, who can really enjoy a story about someone getting sick and the attendant consequences? In this case that point is particularly noteworthy, since Alzheimer's robs one of one's memory, and not only does that not make for a very interesting film, it is downright cringeworthy. So Ms. Moore forgets more and more and weeps about it and is devestated that she may well pass the condition on to her children. Feeling uplifted yet? The acting is all right, but your reviewer was at no time taken out of the story and into the world of the film, which as mentioned is the hallmark of a well-told cinematic tale. It felt like the points of conflict were dropped in at random, shoehorned to fit as it were, as with Husband's job offer at the Mayo Clinic (I'd have thought they'd be grateful for the chance, what with the world class medical facilites and all. And money doesn't seem like a major concern here, in contrast to how the other 99% lives.) or the daughter's moving back to NYC from Los Angeles, temorarily abandoning her career in show business. One thing that did ring true is Mom's constant refrain to said daughter about, 'You need a backup, acting isn't a real career,' and the like. What show biz aspirant hasn't heard that? Whereupon Daughter replies, 'Mom, you can't use your illness to tell me what to do!' (What with daughter being an adult and all.) And Mom says, 'Sure I can!' That part seemed like it could really happen, while much of the rest of the story felt like something off of a Hallmark sympathy card. And frankly there is something unnerving about the character learning of this diagnosis shortly after her 50th birthday. Your correspondent is older than that and all the while I wondered, 'What little bit of medical hell is in store for ME?' This does not lend itself well to an enjoyable evening at the theater. Still, it's not like a filmmaker can ever write solely about happyhappy stuff, it's just that this one seemed more concerned with pushing buttons and generating a calculated reaction than anything else. It is difficult to make a film on this or similar topics without cliches, and they are here in droves. The swelling catastrophe music, the middle-of-the-night tears, the family argument which shouldn't happen because Mom Is Sick, the Big Family Meeting, the Deep Discussion With Spouse, The (Un)Sympathetic Boss, it's all here.
The acting is all right, especially the daughters, so go and see this one if you are feeling too upbeat and want to bring yourself down to the level of the manically depressed.
November 2014
The acting is all right, especially the daughters, so go and see this one if you are feeling too upbeat and want to bring yourself down to the level of the manically depressed.
November 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Sixteen-Mr. Turner
J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) was known for his landscape paintings, primarily in watercolor. He was alternately controversial and revered, well travelled, prolific, eccentric, and addicted to snuff. All of these characteristics would make for an interesting biopic, the more so if the filmmakers were attentive to historical detail. Mr. Turner, with Timothy Spall excellent in the title role, does a fine job of recreating the late 18th and early 19th centuries in England, with attention paid to costume and dialogue, not always the case with period pieces. There is much reliance on natural light, through windows or with lots of candles and the like. A good way to evoke an era! The acting in the picture is generally good, the cast immersing themselves in the world of two hundred years ago. The film is well shot, suggesting the watercolors of Turner's early work and the bold, vivid abstract patterns, sometimes to the point of objects in the painting being scarecely recognizable. He apparently used unconventional pigments in his paintings and it is said that he deliberately used pigments that would not last, preferring colors that looked good in the moment without consideration for the longer term.
So we've got a fertile period of time for storytelling; filmmaking true to the time; good acting; care taken with costumes and sets; so what could go wrong? Nothing happens, unfortunately. It is scene after scene of Spall painting, renting a room incommunicado at the seaside with several similar scenes with his new landlady, painting, acquiring material and media, discussing or arguing with the fellows at the Royal Academy of Arts, but somehow it never comes together as a coherent, linear story. There is no, as it were, beginning, middle, and end that this reviewer could see, just consecutive scenes of Turner doing this and that. It could be that it's a study of the fact that artists have daily lives like everyone else, that even creative souls must deal with the mundane, but it doesn't make for compelling filmmaking or storytelling. So, good try but we need more drama and conflict in the telling of the tale!
December 2014
So we've got a fertile period of time for storytelling; filmmaking true to the time; good acting; care taken with costumes and sets; so what could go wrong? Nothing happens, unfortunately. It is scene after scene of Spall painting, renting a room incommunicado at the seaside with several similar scenes with his new landlady, painting, acquiring material and media, discussing or arguing with the fellows at the Royal Academy of Arts, but somehow it never comes together as a coherent, linear story. There is no, as it were, beginning, middle, and end that this reviewer could see, just consecutive scenes of Turner doing this and that. It could be that it's a study of the fact that artists have daily lives like everyone else, that even creative souls must deal with the mundane, but it doesn't make for compelling filmmaking or storytelling. So, good try but we need more drama and conflict in the telling of the tale!
December 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Seventeen-Inherent Vice
It is, as noted previously in this space, difficult for filmmakers to accurately portray an earlier time, just as it is difficult for a viewer who wasn't around at that particular time to discern whether or not the setting and information is accurate. Inherent Vice is set in 1970 Los Angeles. Your reviewer was around then, although young and on the other side of the country. Period pieces that are set in the relatively recent past usually follow one of two courses: Silly jokes about things unimaginable then that are commonplace now (Of COURSE anyone that uses torture will go to jail! Of COURSE Social Security will be around for you!) or film it as current and simply pretend to be set in the past and hope no one notices. Happily, IV does a pretty good job of placing us, the viewers, in 1970, although I don't recall anyone having highlighted hair as Mr. Phoenix does in the leading role. But then, I wasn't in LA. For an era defined by the generation gap, there is a lot of hippie bashing going on here, possibly even not enough, as I understand/vaguely recall that it was basically a sport on the part of the Powers That Be to rough up and generally mistreat 'hippies' at the time. Nowadays, of course, you have to be a teenager of color to achieve such resoundingly second-class status. But for an era also defined by its music, particularly for the baby boomers then just coming of age, a period soundtrack is mostly absent, excepting Sam Cooke doing 'Wonderful World' and some Neil Young. Bet the producers couldn't/wouldn't get the rights to other pop tunes of the day. There is a rather pleasing incoherence to the film, making the story confusing but heck, no one who sees this one is going to be expecting a straightforward police procedural. It's from a Pynchon novel, for gosh sakes! Parenthetically I wonder how director P. M. Anderson convinced Pynchon to release this particular novel for filming, the first time ever. The story is probably out there somewhere, if only I wasn't so lazy! Of course all the dope smoked throughout this film contributes to the incoherence in general and the existential quality of the dialogue in particular, and perhaps even to the spaghetti like tangle of the plot. Trying to figure out who was who, even halfway through, was a daunting task indeed. It's like trying to do a connect the dots puzzle with half the numbers missing. However, I freely admit that it could just be me. Might be one of those that must be viewed more than once, stay tuned; there may be a follow-up. Still, it is good escapism and all in the cast are well invested in their roles, even those born twenty-five years after the fact. Give it a watch and don't be too perturbed if you lost the thread of the plot somewhere along the line. Happens to the best of us! (And if the cast and crew are being honest, well........)
December 2014
December 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Eighteen-The Face of Love
Are there any new plots under the sun? Is everything a remake or an ironic reference? The Face Of Love concerns a woman (Annette Bening) whose husband drowns while the happy couple is vacationing in Mexico. Five years later she meets another fellow who is absolutely a double for departed hubby. They meet awkward when she can't resist the impulse to do a mild stalk and thank goodness the screenwriter(s) avoided the temptation to have them 'meet cute.' That would have been unbearable. In fact there are a lot of things this film thankfully avoids that must have been awfully tempting. Were this a film from the 40s there would have been a whole lot of shucking and jiving to get them together without their being married and the college age daughter probably wouldn't have been in the picture at all. And they sure as hell wouldn't have done more than hold hands. On the other hand were this film made in the 80s or 90s, Ms. Bening and Ed Harris, who plays the New Guy, would be doing all kinds of silly stuff to show how young at heart they are, like skateboarding or computers or wacky clothes or some such. In this film, thank goodness, the characters ACT THEIR AGE. What a thrill! Age appropriate story, actors, and acting all in one handy package! There are elements we can relate to: how soon is too soon? when to attempt that first kiss? more? how to introduce the new person to the kids (In this film, there is no introduction and boy does that backfire.). The conflict here, a bit thin though it is, is that new gentleman is the exact double for dead hubby, but Ms. Bening cannot bring herself to simply tell her new beau that's he is in fact an exact double for dead hubby. Or even that's he's dead. Since he is, the first time daughter gets a look at the new guy she freaks out in the loudest, and it's one of the best scenes in the whole picture. Seriously, what would you do if your mom was keeping company with a guy who at first look, you thought was your five-years-deceased papa? Freak out, I'll bet.
On the other hand, this film is not free of cliches. Some of the dialogue made me wince: 'I could take a bath in the way you look at me.' and Q:(reading a menu) 'Do you know what you like?' A: 'I like you.' Ouch. And the old 'makeout in the car/cut to shower & bed the next morning' routine. And there is at least one incident of 'movie coincidence' when, while our two turtle doves return to Mexico at Bening's insistence, Mr. Harris goes to the bar to get some tequila and notices a picture of Annette and Dead Hubby from five years ago on the picture board which is how he finds out that he had a doppleganger. Not bloody likely. Still, these are minor missteps and for the most part the story and characters are very effective in their ruminations about aging and change. For his part, Ed Harris can't come clean about his bad heart which eventually comes back to haunt him, shall we say. If it's true that there is a dearth of good roles for older actors, particularly female, then hopefully this show, in which the ElderActing (tm) is quite good, will herald the beginning of a new, positive trend for older performers. And since your reviewer is one himself, so much the better! Don't bring the kiddies, they will be bored. Bring your partner, be glad it's not you, and make it a date night.
December 2014
On the other hand, this film is not free of cliches. Some of the dialogue made me wince: 'I could take a bath in the way you look at me.' and Q:(reading a menu) 'Do you know what you like?' A: 'I like you.' Ouch. And the old 'makeout in the car/cut to shower & bed the next morning' routine. And there is at least one incident of 'movie coincidence' when, while our two turtle doves return to Mexico at Bening's insistence, Mr. Harris goes to the bar to get some tequila and notices a picture of Annette and Dead Hubby from five years ago on the picture board which is how he finds out that he had a doppleganger. Not bloody likely. Still, these are minor missteps and for the most part the story and characters are very effective in their ruminations about aging and change. For his part, Ed Harris can't come clean about his bad heart which eventually comes back to haunt him, shall we say. If it's true that there is a dearth of good roles for older actors, particularly female, then hopefully this show, in which the ElderActing (tm) is quite good, will herald the beginning of a new, positive trend for older performers. And since your reviewer is one himself, so much the better! Don't bring the kiddies, they will be bored. Bring your partner, be glad it's not you, and make it a date night.
December 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Nineteen-Whiplash
A new entry in the mentor/student genre! We all know how this is going to turn out, don't we? And in truth, all the tropes are here in the 21st century version of the hard-assed teacher giving tough love to the Student With Hidden Talent. Mind you, the 21st century part of it is in the swearing, yelling, and screaming that the principals do regularly. Well, what did you expect? Polite discourse or especially calm discussion of meaningful or delicate topics is out the window these days, yelling and screaming and invoking Hitler is the norm. Anyway, we've got the browbeating, meanspirited teacher (J.K. Simmons) teaching at a well regarded music academy and the aspiring drummer (Miles Teller) is shy and retiring (as much as a drummer can be, anyway!). Drummer's family is sort of supportive but rather more interested in the other sibling's budding football career. The angst is palpable on the screen and only gets more so as our Drummer fumblingly asks the cute girl at the movie theater counter for a date, they go for pizza, but soon he ditches her for apparently honorable reasons, as he feels that the singleminedness he needs to bring to his art precludes any interpersonal relationship, so it's dumpsville. It's all so predictable; of course he repents once he is humiliated in class and calls her to try and rekindle it, she is keeping company with someone else and there he is with egg on his face.
Yes, we've even got some tragedy bubbling way below the surface when the teacher mentions, as a motivational tool, a brilliant former student who Wanted It Badly Enough to become first chair but who died in a car wreck. (Later it turns out that he hanged himself, possibly due to the Browbeating Teacher.) So Teller, who has meantime won and lost and won and lost the drummer's chair in the core choir, is racing to make the start of a performance and---wrecks his car. He crawls out from under the flipped vehicle and races to the show but is too banged up to perform properly. All this comes to a head when he freaks out, kicks over his drums, and attacks the teacher, there is a successful movement to get the teacher booted from the school, and--can you see this coming?--the two then meet cute in a bar and our intrepid drummer gets another shot with a band administered by the teacher. Just as he is awaiting his cue to start hitting the skins, teacher hisses that he knows it was drummer who ratted him out (which it was). This rattles him, but not as much as teacher calling a tune that drummer doesn't know and--Surprise!--the music isn't on the stand! So he wings it, with predictable results. But it wouldn't be a mentor/student film without a final resolution and so, in the grand tradition of this film where playing at a lightning fast tempo is apparently equated with ability, starts playing super fast and cues the other musicians to come in behind him and then does a really long, fast solo and--Surprise!--wins the approval of the browbeating teacher, who has learned his lesson, sort of, and is humbled, sort of, and all is well in the end.
Nothing new here, this genre was done better in the forties, I think, but the acting is pretty good. Teller can really play the drums, and while Simmons is a bit one-note, he deserves the accolades that he is getting.
The musicians in the family will probably relate and enjoy it, teachers maybe too, but not if the viewer is expecting something groundbreaking.
December 2014
Yes, we've even got some tragedy bubbling way below the surface when the teacher mentions, as a motivational tool, a brilliant former student who Wanted It Badly Enough to become first chair but who died in a car wreck. (Later it turns out that he hanged himself, possibly due to the Browbeating Teacher.) So Teller, who has meantime won and lost and won and lost the drummer's chair in the core choir, is racing to make the start of a performance and---wrecks his car. He crawls out from under the flipped vehicle and races to the show but is too banged up to perform properly. All this comes to a head when he freaks out, kicks over his drums, and attacks the teacher, there is a successful movement to get the teacher booted from the school, and--can you see this coming?--the two then meet cute in a bar and our intrepid drummer gets another shot with a band administered by the teacher. Just as he is awaiting his cue to start hitting the skins, teacher hisses that he knows it was drummer who ratted him out (which it was). This rattles him, but not as much as teacher calling a tune that drummer doesn't know and--Surprise!--the music isn't on the stand! So he wings it, with predictable results. But it wouldn't be a mentor/student film without a final resolution and so, in the grand tradition of this film where playing at a lightning fast tempo is apparently equated with ability, starts playing super fast and cues the other musicians to come in behind him and then does a really long, fast solo and--Surprise!--wins the approval of the browbeating teacher, who has learned his lesson, sort of, and is humbled, sort of, and all is well in the end.
Nothing new here, this genre was done better in the forties, I think, but the acting is pretty good. Teller can really play the drums, and while Simmons is a bit one-note, he deserves the accolades that he is getting.
The musicians in the family will probably relate and enjoy it, teachers maybe too, but not if the viewer is expecting something groundbreaking.
December 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Twenty-Selma
Selma is a sad film. Not because of any flaws in the film itself, you understand, but because of the criminal lack of progress in the realm of race relations in the USA. How topical, the prevention of people of color from exercising their right to vote via poll taxes and historical questions fifty years ago! How unpleasant the transparent ploy of denying people of color their right to vote through restrictive ID laws today!
It is difficult, I think, to make a film about Martin Luther King simply because he is so familiar to most folks through history lessons and archival footage. Star David Oyelowo doesn't look much like Dr. King, in fact I thought he more resembled Jesse Jackson, but he wisely avoids rote imitations to suggest the character through vocal inflections. Initially I was skeptical but I came to see the wisdom of this approach to the character as the film progressed. Again it is so difficult to do a historical piece of the recent past, not only because many still remember the events but because these issues are well familiar through repetition of what we now call sound bites. One can forgive a young person if he or she thought that all Mr. King ever did was make a speech where he repeated 'I Have a Dream' since that is the beginning and end of the reverend's history in the corporate media, but in fact he was an ardent champion of economic justice for all and a staunch opponent of the US bloodletting in Vietnam. But this film focuses on the attempt of the communities of color in the Southern US to claim their constitutional right to vote, which then as now was ruthlessly surpressed, although the violence surrounding that issue is thankfully lessened today. The period of 1963-65 is covered and for the most part well, although your reviewer was struck by the feel and look of emptiness in the scenes outdoors. Could be I'm just inured to today's ultra clutter where every available surface has some message or other plastered on it. But the recreation of the period is pretty good, cars and clothes and hair and such. There are also genuinely harrowing moments, especially the moment the Birmingham church explodes, incinerating four little girls. The scenes where King consoles the family of a young man needlessly gunned down by the police is moving, especially in light of today's epidemic of state sanctioned murder by cop. Southerners here are, with some exceptions, portrayed as openly, virulently racist monsters, which indeed many were, although George Wallace is not treated with anything like sympathy. Sadly there are many who still spout nonsense about a 'way of life' that carpetbaggers shouldn't try to change, but hopefully someday thin rationalizations for bigotry will be seen for the drivel that they are. Your correspondent used to believe it difficult for people today to understand the depth of discrimination during the Jim Crow era but in light of recent events which have exposed the still common racism in our society I think that more folks are seeing just how much people of color are still second class citizens. And the camera keeps its unblinking eye on the infancy of paramilitary policing, an issue your reviewer suspects was in the screenplay by design based on issues at the forefront of discourse today.
Certainly we have made some progress, it's rare that paying customers would be turned away at diners although I have read of some places that won't serve people who speak Spanish, and millions of Americans voted for a black man for president although most of them likely didn't realize just how ardent his defense of the privileges of the 1% would be.
But just how big a part does hindsight play in this film, and in others of its ilk? We know how it turns out, or we should--LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, recently eviscerated by the Roberts Supreme Court. King was gunned down in 1968. The Civil Rights Act was also passed during Johnson's administraion, losing the South for the Democratic party for quite some time to come. So it's easy to cheer when the bigots are shamed and the demonstrators have some successes because the good guys and the bad guys are pretty clearly drawn here. But all in all it is a worthwhile film, especially for those not familiar with King's pre-I Have a Dream career or the struggles of the Civil Rights movement and just how difficult it was to get (white) people to listen, or how frightening it must have been to stare down all those gun barrels which were just itching to spew bullets at those trying to lawfully, peacefully march from Selma to Birmingham, Alabama, to illustrate just how openly and constantly constituted rights were ignored or trampled. And the marchers were set upon and brutally beaten with what can only be described as glee. And on the Edmund Pettus bridge the rust streaks, in the late afternoon sun, look like rivers of warm blood.
December 2014
It is difficult, I think, to make a film about Martin Luther King simply because he is so familiar to most folks through history lessons and archival footage. Star David Oyelowo doesn't look much like Dr. King, in fact I thought he more resembled Jesse Jackson, but he wisely avoids rote imitations to suggest the character through vocal inflections. Initially I was skeptical but I came to see the wisdom of this approach to the character as the film progressed. Again it is so difficult to do a historical piece of the recent past, not only because many still remember the events but because these issues are well familiar through repetition of what we now call sound bites. One can forgive a young person if he or she thought that all Mr. King ever did was make a speech where he repeated 'I Have a Dream' since that is the beginning and end of the reverend's history in the corporate media, but in fact he was an ardent champion of economic justice for all and a staunch opponent of the US bloodletting in Vietnam. But this film focuses on the attempt of the communities of color in the Southern US to claim their constitutional right to vote, which then as now was ruthlessly surpressed, although the violence surrounding that issue is thankfully lessened today. The period of 1963-65 is covered and for the most part well, although your reviewer was struck by the feel and look of emptiness in the scenes outdoors. Could be I'm just inured to today's ultra clutter where every available surface has some message or other plastered on it. But the recreation of the period is pretty good, cars and clothes and hair and such. There are also genuinely harrowing moments, especially the moment the Birmingham church explodes, incinerating four little girls. The scenes where King consoles the family of a young man needlessly gunned down by the police is moving, especially in light of today's epidemic of state sanctioned murder by cop. Southerners here are, with some exceptions, portrayed as openly, virulently racist monsters, which indeed many were, although George Wallace is not treated with anything like sympathy. Sadly there are many who still spout nonsense about a 'way of life' that carpetbaggers shouldn't try to change, but hopefully someday thin rationalizations for bigotry will be seen for the drivel that they are. Your correspondent used to believe it difficult for people today to understand the depth of discrimination during the Jim Crow era but in light of recent events which have exposed the still common racism in our society I think that more folks are seeing just how much people of color are still second class citizens. And the camera keeps its unblinking eye on the infancy of paramilitary policing, an issue your reviewer suspects was in the screenplay by design based on issues at the forefront of discourse today.
Certainly we have made some progress, it's rare that paying customers would be turned away at diners although I have read of some places that won't serve people who speak Spanish, and millions of Americans voted for a black man for president although most of them likely didn't realize just how ardent his defense of the privileges of the 1% would be.
But just how big a part does hindsight play in this film, and in others of its ilk? We know how it turns out, or we should--LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, recently eviscerated by the Roberts Supreme Court. King was gunned down in 1968. The Civil Rights Act was also passed during Johnson's administraion, losing the South for the Democratic party for quite some time to come. So it's easy to cheer when the bigots are shamed and the demonstrators have some successes because the good guys and the bad guys are pretty clearly drawn here. But all in all it is a worthwhile film, especially for those not familiar with King's pre-I Have a Dream career or the struggles of the Civil Rights movement and just how difficult it was to get (white) people to listen, or how frightening it must have been to stare down all those gun barrels which were just itching to spew bullets at those trying to lawfully, peacefully march from Selma to Birmingham, Alabama, to illustrate just how openly and constantly constituted rights were ignored or trampled. And the marchers were set upon and brutally beaten with what can only be described as glee. And on the Edmund Pettus bridge the rust streaks, in the late afternoon sun, look like rivers of warm blood.
December 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Twenty One-Cake
Your reviewer has always felt that the appeal of so-called 'reality' television is that most of the folks featured thereon are so screwed up that the viewers watch to enjoy the lives of people even worse off than they. Schadenfreude? Yes. Leaving aside the fact that 'reality' television bears as much resemblance to reality as do the Wizard of Oz books, it has come to this--'HA! Those people are really awful/weird/poor/what have you, and we're not!' So what about 'Cake?' This writer was only familiar with Jennifer Aniston's image, not so much with her acting. Of course she is best known for a popular sitcom, of which your reviewer has only seen one episode which did not impress me in the least. However, it seems that show ran for several years and must have at least a couple of hundred episodes, so one is a very small sample. Ms. Aniston is known as a comedian playing girl next door roles, yes? 'Cake' was billed as a comedy, I seem to recall, and so the expectation here was for a kind of lightweight frothy kind of thing. Was I wrong! We have here a good example of the 'reality' effect--this character is so completely screwed up that you can't help but root for her.
She has successfully driven away her husband, her best friend recently jumped off a bridge, she has been booted out of her suicide support group, and her therapist has suggested that she seek other treatment options after a car crash left her greviously injured and patched back together. This last led to an addiction to painkillers and booze, a very dangerous combination. Ms. A does a fine job in portraying this very messed up person, and Adriana Barraza as her live-in housekeeper/caregiver/troubleshooter is excellent as well. Is keeping company and eventually romancing the widower of said best friend a good idea? Who can say? Life is a funny proposition. But one of the strengths of this film is the way that the script doesn't bludgeon one with the plot points, unraveling the story and backstory as we go, a very good choice. How often we tend to underestimate others' pain! How often we dismiss misery when it's someone else's! It's no wonder the leading lady is grumpy, unpleasant, and entitled so often, she lives in a world of hurt. Still, this hurt is significantly ameliorated by the fact that she's got lots of dough--everything she is facing would be infinitely more difficult were she poor or working class. But that would be a different film entirely, wouldn't it? Not a laugh romp, not for kids, but certainly worth a look for a good character study and for fans of Ms. Aniston who wouldn't mind seeing her break free of her image, bigtime.
December 2014
She has successfully driven away her husband, her best friend recently jumped off a bridge, she has been booted out of her suicide support group, and her therapist has suggested that she seek other treatment options after a car crash left her greviously injured and patched back together. This last led to an addiction to painkillers and booze, a very dangerous combination. Ms. A does a fine job in portraying this very messed up person, and Adriana Barraza as her live-in housekeeper/caregiver/troubleshooter is excellent as well. Is keeping company and eventually romancing the widower of said best friend a good idea? Who can say? Life is a funny proposition. But one of the strengths of this film is the way that the script doesn't bludgeon one with the plot points, unraveling the story and backstory as we go, a very good choice. How often we tend to underestimate others' pain! How often we dismiss misery when it's someone else's! It's no wonder the leading lady is grumpy, unpleasant, and entitled so often, she lives in a world of hurt. Still, this hurt is significantly ameliorated by the fact that she's got lots of dough--everything she is facing would be infinitely more difficult were she poor or working class. But that would be a different film entirely, wouldn't it? Not a laugh romp, not for kids, but certainly worth a look for a good character study and for fans of Ms. Aniston who wouldn't mind seeing her break free of her image, bigtime.
December 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Twenty Two-The Gambler
But there are different types of addictions, aren't there? The protagonist in The Gambler is, as you might have guessed, addicted to gambling. Even after he has run up debts of hundreds of thousands to people you really don't want to piss off, he keeps right on betting on blackjack and roulette. You've got to admit he's got gumption, but your reviewer wasn't really engaged with the character, just didn't appeal positively or negatively. Two of the loan sharks were very good, the African-American gentleman and the big fat guy, whose character I think was named Frank. Both of those performances resonated in a way that Mr. Wahlberg's gambler did not. Is it easier for people not directly involved to be condescending about non-chemical addictions like to gambling, or sex, or television?
I wasn't aware that this film is in fact a remake of a 1970s original in which the titular character was played by James Caan. If nothing else, the 2014 version made me want to see the original. For whatever that's worth.
December 2014
I wasn't aware that this film is in fact a remake of a 1970s original in which the titular character was played by James Caan. If nothing else, the 2014 version made me want to see the original. For whatever that's worth.
December 2014
'Who the hell wants to collect that crap?'--Babe Ruth
It seems like the Bambino, the greatest ballplayer that ever lived, didn't think much of the legions of people who collect a person's signature on a bit of paper, or in a book of some kind. Goodness knows George Ruth signed more autographs than anyone of his time, although your correspondent thinks that Paul McCartney has the all-time record.
This writer played, poorly, in Little Leage, and one year, about 1970 or 71, we had an end of the season banquet in which the guest speakers were Jerry Grote of the Amazing Mets and Jim Palmer, Hall of Fame pitcher of the Baltimore Orioles. They both made speeches and sat at tables afterward, signing autographs for the young players. I was kind of a nervous kid and I didn't have anything for them to sign, so my Dad gave me a couple of pieces torn from the small spiral notebook he kept with him. When I got to the head of the line, I slid both pages before each of the notables, and one of them, I think Jerry Grote, said, 'That's what these cards are for, son.' Turns out they had postcards with their pictures on them and that's what they were signing. Great! Looks much better than plain paper anyway. Those were my first autographs. Around the same time our family used to go to West Haven to see the local minor league affiliate of the Yankees, and one time a fellow spectator, who somehow knew that even as a little kid I had a keen sense of the history of the grand old game, pointed out former Red Sox hurler Bill Monbouquette, who had pitched a no-hitter in 1962. So everyone encouraged me to go up to him and ask him to sign my program. In addition to being nervous I was also quite shy, if you can believe that now, and I very reluctantly walked up to him, fifty-four pounds of nervous, of which forty six pounds were hair, and said something like, 'Congratulations on your no-hitter, Mr. Monbouquette, would you mind?' He must have been surprised that a little kid like me knew he had pitched a no-no, but he cheerfully signed and now I had three autographs in my collection. All of them, sadly, long gone.
Now let us fast forward about fifteen years. I'm living in Bridgeport, Conn., and me and the gang go to the Merry Widow club to hear and see Gatemouth Brown. I can't now remember whether I had one of his records or got one there, but he signed it (to 'Mikel') and that one I still have although it is very faded. In the early 90s I went to one of the Beatles conventions in New Jersey and met Cynthia Lennon, John's first wife, and she signed my copy of Vee-Jay's Introducing...the Beatles and boy did she look jet-lagged.
Now we enter the heyday of my autograph collecting when I ran a hobby shop in Bridgeport that sold sports cards and comics and a bit of memoribilia. Many collectors read a newspaper called Sports Collector's Digest, which I think is still around, and lots of times they would have articles about players that would mention whether or not they signed and what the address to send items to was. There is a protocol to it that unfortunately many people ignored. What you do is, send two of an item, that you don't mind never seeing again in case it gets lost, and include a postage paid return envelope addressed to yourself. Write a polite note saying that if the gentleman or lady would kindly sign one item and slip it into the provided envelope, they are welcome to keep the other for themselves or grandkids or whoever. In so doing I got lots of stuff through the mail, including Gordie Howe, Dick Williams (who signed and returned both), my father's favorite player, Elmer Valo, among others. I sent then Mets manager Bobby Valentine two 1979 cards, showing him as a Mets player, but he returned two 1987 cards showing him as Texas manager. That wasn't nice. At the time there were many card shows around which frequently had autograph guests and one day I went to see Amazin' Met Ed Kranepool. As it happened it was in the fall and as usual I forgot to change my clock and so was way early and also was wearing a Baltimore Orioles cap. Ed K. good-naturedly protested and I replied that I was born in Maryland but saw his eighth inning home run in Game 3 of the '69 Series. That assuaged him and so I added to my roster of Amazin' Mets autos, which now includes Art Shamsky, Tommie Agee, coach Joe Pignatano, broadcaster Ralph Kiner, Al Jackson, Jerry Koosman, and Ron Swoboda, although the latter two I did not get in person or through the mail so who knows. Another time I went to see knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm and brought a ball along intending to ask him how he held his signature pitch but he was so grumpy that I decided not to. I went to see Jimmy Piersall and talked some ball with him while he ate clam chowder. I asked him about his 6-for-6 day against the St. Louis Browns, whether it was at Sportsman's Park in StL. or at Fenway (the former). He spoke of his disdain for Selig and the owners of the White Sox but complimented me on my knowledge of the game, which made me feel good. Once I went to see George Foster, who was wearing pajamas and sunglasses indoors in the middle of the day, and broke into song every so often. I had a story of his life in comic book form which was given out at Shea in '84 or '85 (late September game, GF comes up as a pinch hitter with a chance to win the game in the ninth, strikes out, and is heartily booed, with many comics ending up thrown on the field. Perhaps they are scarce today. Rusty Staub then won the game with a pinch-hit double.) and he said, 'My goodness, where did you get this?' so I have one of the presumably few signed copies of that. Apparently he was friendly with Dave Kingman when they were youths.
About 1997, the manager at the bookstore where I worked got tickets to a release party to celebrate a new book about Yogi Berra, which she kindly gave to me, saying, 'You're into this stuff, go ahead,' and so I did, at the swanky '21' club in NYC. Whitey Ford was there too and so I have that book signed by both of those worthy Hall of Famers. I complimented Mr. Berra on the managing job he did for the '73 Mets, and he said, 'Oh, that's over, that's over.......wait a minute, it's not over until it's over!' and we had a good laugh.
In your author's view one of the best books on baseball ever is Jim Bouton's Ball Four, and now you too can get your copy signed, all he asks is a $5 contribution to his favorite charity which helps sick children. In my collection I have a really nice signed first edition with a dust jacket, as well as my fourth printing without the dj that has been my reading copy for several years and has the food stains to prove it. Every few years I re-read it because it is so darn good. Ditto The Glory Of Their Times, The Summer Game, and several others.
Two last autograph stories: It's summer of '96 or '97, I am working in the book dept. of a store in Westport, Conn. and who should walk in but noted guitar slinger Keith Richards. He was with his assistant Roy and they were shopping for a pair of binoculars and various books. IIRC, Keef likes military history, especially WWII. Anyway when they were at the counter I asked him to sign the Beatles 'Help!' t-shirt that I had on that day but he politely declined. What a collectible that would have made! We did have a display rack (called a 'dump') of small books on various subjects, one of which was the Rolling Stones, so I asked him to sign that instead which he did. It's summer 1998 and I am on vacation! I took a train to Detroit and Chicago to see Tiger Stadium (O lost!) and Wrigley Field and also the blues clubs. One night I tried Chicago's noted pizza pie (ok but New York is better) and wandered into Buddy Guy's blues club, I think on Rush Street. There was a good band there fronted by a troboner, which you don't see every day, and there at the end of the bar was Mr. Guy himself. He is still the only fellow I've ever met who took his beer on the rocks--Heineken in a beer glass filled with crushed ice. New one on me. Anyway I sat down and had one and chatted with him. He couldn't have been more friendly and I made sure to tell him that I enjoyed his music and he signed a club flyer for me.
For the record I have been asked for my own autograph four times in my 'career,' twice as an actor and twice as a musician.
So what will be the next addition to my autograph collection? Who knows? Hopefully Babe Ruth and Paul McCartney!
December 2014
This writer played, poorly, in Little Leage, and one year, about 1970 or 71, we had an end of the season banquet in which the guest speakers were Jerry Grote of the Amazing Mets and Jim Palmer, Hall of Fame pitcher of the Baltimore Orioles. They both made speeches and sat at tables afterward, signing autographs for the young players. I was kind of a nervous kid and I didn't have anything for them to sign, so my Dad gave me a couple of pieces torn from the small spiral notebook he kept with him. When I got to the head of the line, I slid both pages before each of the notables, and one of them, I think Jerry Grote, said, 'That's what these cards are for, son.' Turns out they had postcards with their pictures on them and that's what they were signing. Great! Looks much better than plain paper anyway. Those were my first autographs. Around the same time our family used to go to West Haven to see the local minor league affiliate of the Yankees, and one time a fellow spectator, who somehow knew that even as a little kid I had a keen sense of the history of the grand old game, pointed out former Red Sox hurler Bill Monbouquette, who had pitched a no-hitter in 1962. So everyone encouraged me to go up to him and ask him to sign my program. In addition to being nervous I was also quite shy, if you can believe that now, and I very reluctantly walked up to him, fifty-four pounds of nervous, of which forty six pounds were hair, and said something like, 'Congratulations on your no-hitter, Mr. Monbouquette, would you mind?' He must have been surprised that a little kid like me knew he had pitched a no-no, but he cheerfully signed and now I had three autographs in my collection. All of them, sadly, long gone.
Now let us fast forward about fifteen years. I'm living in Bridgeport, Conn., and me and the gang go to the Merry Widow club to hear and see Gatemouth Brown. I can't now remember whether I had one of his records or got one there, but he signed it (to 'Mikel') and that one I still have although it is very faded. In the early 90s I went to one of the Beatles conventions in New Jersey and met Cynthia Lennon, John's first wife, and she signed my copy of Vee-Jay's Introducing...the Beatles and boy did she look jet-lagged.
Now we enter the heyday of my autograph collecting when I ran a hobby shop in Bridgeport that sold sports cards and comics and a bit of memoribilia. Many collectors read a newspaper called Sports Collector's Digest, which I think is still around, and lots of times they would have articles about players that would mention whether or not they signed and what the address to send items to was. There is a protocol to it that unfortunately many people ignored. What you do is, send two of an item, that you don't mind never seeing again in case it gets lost, and include a postage paid return envelope addressed to yourself. Write a polite note saying that if the gentleman or lady would kindly sign one item and slip it into the provided envelope, they are welcome to keep the other for themselves or grandkids or whoever. In so doing I got lots of stuff through the mail, including Gordie Howe, Dick Williams (who signed and returned both), my father's favorite player, Elmer Valo, among others. I sent then Mets manager Bobby Valentine two 1979 cards, showing him as a Mets player, but he returned two 1987 cards showing him as Texas manager. That wasn't nice. At the time there were many card shows around which frequently had autograph guests and one day I went to see Amazin' Met Ed Kranepool. As it happened it was in the fall and as usual I forgot to change my clock and so was way early and also was wearing a Baltimore Orioles cap. Ed K. good-naturedly protested and I replied that I was born in Maryland but saw his eighth inning home run in Game 3 of the '69 Series. That assuaged him and so I added to my roster of Amazin' Mets autos, which now includes Art Shamsky, Tommie Agee, coach Joe Pignatano, broadcaster Ralph Kiner, Al Jackson, Jerry Koosman, and Ron Swoboda, although the latter two I did not get in person or through the mail so who knows. Another time I went to see knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm and brought a ball along intending to ask him how he held his signature pitch but he was so grumpy that I decided not to. I went to see Jimmy Piersall and talked some ball with him while he ate clam chowder. I asked him about his 6-for-6 day against the St. Louis Browns, whether it was at Sportsman's Park in StL. or at Fenway (the former). He spoke of his disdain for Selig and the owners of the White Sox but complimented me on my knowledge of the game, which made me feel good. Once I went to see George Foster, who was wearing pajamas and sunglasses indoors in the middle of the day, and broke into song every so often. I had a story of his life in comic book form which was given out at Shea in '84 or '85 (late September game, GF comes up as a pinch hitter with a chance to win the game in the ninth, strikes out, and is heartily booed, with many comics ending up thrown on the field. Perhaps they are scarce today. Rusty Staub then won the game with a pinch-hit double.) and he said, 'My goodness, where did you get this?' so I have one of the presumably few signed copies of that. Apparently he was friendly with Dave Kingman when they were youths.
About 1997, the manager at the bookstore where I worked got tickets to a release party to celebrate a new book about Yogi Berra, which she kindly gave to me, saying, 'You're into this stuff, go ahead,' and so I did, at the swanky '21' club in NYC. Whitey Ford was there too and so I have that book signed by both of those worthy Hall of Famers. I complimented Mr. Berra on the managing job he did for the '73 Mets, and he said, 'Oh, that's over, that's over.......wait a minute, it's not over until it's over!' and we had a good laugh.
In your author's view one of the best books on baseball ever is Jim Bouton's Ball Four, and now you too can get your copy signed, all he asks is a $5 contribution to his favorite charity which helps sick children. In my collection I have a really nice signed first edition with a dust jacket, as well as my fourth printing without the dj that has been my reading copy for several years and has the food stains to prove it. Every few years I re-read it because it is so darn good. Ditto The Glory Of Their Times, The Summer Game, and several others.
Two last autograph stories: It's summer of '96 or '97, I am working in the book dept. of a store in Westport, Conn. and who should walk in but noted guitar slinger Keith Richards. He was with his assistant Roy and they were shopping for a pair of binoculars and various books. IIRC, Keef likes military history, especially WWII. Anyway when they were at the counter I asked him to sign the Beatles 'Help!' t-shirt that I had on that day but he politely declined. What a collectible that would have made! We did have a display rack (called a 'dump') of small books on various subjects, one of which was the Rolling Stones, so I asked him to sign that instead which he did. It's summer 1998 and I am on vacation! I took a train to Detroit and Chicago to see Tiger Stadium (O lost!) and Wrigley Field and also the blues clubs. One night I tried Chicago's noted pizza pie (ok but New York is better) and wandered into Buddy Guy's blues club, I think on Rush Street. There was a good band there fronted by a troboner, which you don't see every day, and there at the end of the bar was Mr. Guy himself. He is still the only fellow I've ever met who took his beer on the rocks--Heineken in a beer glass filled with crushed ice. New one on me. Anyway I sat down and had one and chatted with him. He couldn't have been more friendly and I made sure to tell him that I enjoyed his music and he signed a club flyer for me.
For the record I have been asked for my own autograph four times in my 'career,' twice as an actor and twice as a musician.
So what will be the next addition to my autograph collection? Who knows? Hopefully Babe Ruth and Paul McCartney!
December 2014
'It's not the gift, it's the lack of thought behind it.'
I saw an article the other day about the best & worst Xmas gifts ever, and got to thinking about some of the gifting in my past. One of the gifts that I received that I liked best, at the age of twelve or thirteen, was a desk. I was a weird, cerebral kid and I wanted a desk. I don't have any idea where it is today, lost or left behind during one move or the other, I reckon, but I would love to see it preserved as I had it in 1975 or so just to see what the heck was in there. I used to write secret stuff on the sides of the drawers way in the back. I don't have any memory of having it after I went off to university. Sure would like to see it once more, but I don't even know if I'd recognize it! Another Xmas around the same time I was really into pinball (twin influences of 'Pinball Wizard' and the fact that there were no video games to speak of as yet.) So I bugged and bugged my poor Pop and he found an old one from the 30s which was primitive by the standards of the day but which was actually pretty cool. We kept it in our cellar and I had already learned by then to pick the lock on the door so I knew it was there before December 25. I hope I knew enough to act surprised!
Like many a teenager I didn't quite appreciate it as much as I should have but there's something else I'd like to see again. I think Dad got a good offer for it a year or two later and sold it.
When I was a little younger my grandfather on my mother's side was generous enough to take my brother and myself to FAO Schwarz in New York, which is a really fancy toy store on 58th street near Central Park, and allow us to pick one toy each. We did this for several years, I think, but the only thing I can remember, other than going there and wishing I could pick thirty or forty things, greedy little shit that I was, is a board game that I got one year called 'Cry Havoc!' One of the game pieces was a glass cube that I thought was pretty cool. I don't, however, have any memory of actually playing the game.
The one and only time I've ever gifted an actual female girl with an Xmas present was in 1980, and I had not the slightest idea what to get her. For once I did the smart thing and asked my mother and she went into her wicker box of woollen clothes and picked out a really nice sweater. They were about the same size and the gift went over well, as I recall it. Speaking of Christmas clothes, it was a running joke in my family for years that Dad would always--always--get Mom a bathrobe for a gift. I mean like ten years running. One time we spent the holidays with Dad's family in South Jersey and STILL the gift was the same. I imagine that caused some consternation. To be fair, I remember Mom getting a bicycle one year and can still picture my brother riding it around the house--indoors, mind you--while Mom admonished him to get off the darn thing and let her have a ride! More recently, I have a co-worker who gave me two gifts that are very useful and that I still enjoy, a miner's helmet with a lamp on the front so you can have your hands free and still see where you are going, and a Swiss Army knife. Not the red ones that tourists get; he is Swiss and was actually in the Swiss Army as a non-combatant and told me that the kind you can get in hardware stores here are made for export and not for the actual Swiss Army. So the one he gave me was authentic. It doesn't have so many of the bells and whistles that the red ones you may be familar with have, but it is very sturdy and has come in handy many times. Now there's an Xmas gift you can hang your hat on! Just this year that self same co-worker gave me a nice pair of gloves which are always useful during the cold weather months.
I remember about 1973 or so when hand held calculators were just coming around that is all that I wanted that year and I got one! Boy, I liked that thing! I spent hours and hours calculating hypothetical batting averages ('Let's see, if Bud Harrelson had a really hot couple of months and went 85 for 217, that would be.....392! A good 150 points above what he usually hit but he was a Met and one of my favorite players so there.) I told you I was a weird, cerebral kid. At least I told my Dad how much I liked it which was a good thing to do.
One thing that has changed an awful lot is the number of businesses that are open on 12/25. Around the late 70/early 80s I recall driving around aimlessly looking for something to do with a chum of the time, as we wanted to get the hell away from the families for a while but there was absolutely nothing open and so we ended up at the Howard Johnson's next to the freeway playing video games in their arcade. Last week in Jersey lots of stuff was open. This is due to a relaxation of the blue laws and the fact that a lot of folks in the tri state area do not observe Xmas. Lastly, another co-worker, this from Connecticut, used to give me a pound or two of homemade raspberry fudge. Boy was that good.
December 2014
Like many a teenager I didn't quite appreciate it as much as I should have but there's something else I'd like to see again. I think Dad got a good offer for it a year or two later and sold it.
When I was a little younger my grandfather on my mother's side was generous enough to take my brother and myself to FAO Schwarz in New York, which is a really fancy toy store on 58th street near Central Park, and allow us to pick one toy each. We did this for several years, I think, but the only thing I can remember, other than going there and wishing I could pick thirty or forty things, greedy little shit that I was, is a board game that I got one year called 'Cry Havoc!' One of the game pieces was a glass cube that I thought was pretty cool. I don't, however, have any memory of actually playing the game.
The one and only time I've ever gifted an actual female girl with an Xmas present was in 1980, and I had not the slightest idea what to get her. For once I did the smart thing and asked my mother and she went into her wicker box of woollen clothes and picked out a really nice sweater. They were about the same size and the gift went over well, as I recall it. Speaking of Christmas clothes, it was a running joke in my family for years that Dad would always--always--get Mom a bathrobe for a gift. I mean like ten years running. One time we spent the holidays with Dad's family in South Jersey and STILL the gift was the same. I imagine that caused some consternation. To be fair, I remember Mom getting a bicycle one year and can still picture my brother riding it around the house--indoors, mind you--while Mom admonished him to get off the darn thing and let her have a ride! More recently, I have a co-worker who gave me two gifts that are very useful and that I still enjoy, a miner's helmet with a lamp on the front so you can have your hands free and still see where you are going, and a Swiss Army knife. Not the red ones that tourists get; he is Swiss and was actually in the Swiss Army as a non-combatant and told me that the kind you can get in hardware stores here are made for export and not for the actual Swiss Army. So the one he gave me was authentic. It doesn't have so many of the bells and whistles that the red ones you may be familar with have, but it is very sturdy and has come in handy many times. Now there's an Xmas gift you can hang your hat on! Just this year that self same co-worker gave me a nice pair of gloves which are always useful during the cold weather months.
I remember about 1973 or so when hand held calculators were just coming around that is all that I wanted that year and I got one! Boy, I liked that thing! I spent hours and hours calculating hypothetical batting averages ('Let's see, if Bud Harrelson had a really hot couple of months and went 85 for 217, that would be.....392! A good 150 points above what he usually hit but he was a Met and one of my favorite players so there.) I told you I was a weird, cerebral kid. At least I told my Dad how much I liked it which was a good thing to do.
One thing that has changed an awful lot is the number of businesses that are open on 12/25. Around the late 70/early 80s I recall driving around aimlessly looking for something to do with a chum of the time, as we wanted to get the hell away from the families for a while but there was absolutely nothing open and so we ended up at the Howard Johnson's next to the freeway playing video games in their arcade. Last week in Jersey lots of stuff was open. This is due to a relaxation of the blue laws and the fact that a lot of folks in the tri state area do not observe Xmas. Lastly, another co-worker, this from Connecticut, used to give me a pound or two of homemade raspberry fudge. Boy was that good.
December 2014
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Twenty three-The Imitation Game
Given the rise and primacy of the computer in contemporary life, your reviewer wonders how many folks are aware of the contribution of British mathemetician Alan Turing to the early development of computing machines. Happily, with the success of The Imitation Game, many more than did before! An effective structure to the story tells of Turing via scenes of his top-secret service during WWII, to the point where, seven years later, he is still sticking to his cover story of having worked in a factory during the conflict. Tormented in school, he eventually rises to a professorship at Cambridge, and you can bet that you've got to be awfully brainy to do so. Unfortunately Turing was also persecuted for his homosexuality, which was illegal in Britain until 1967, and the ruthless hounding he endured was ultimately too much for he sadly took his own life in 1952. It's to the filmaker's and screenwriter's credit that the viewer is not hit over the head with salacious details, wisely, most of the story is concerned with the effort to break the code called Enigma, which the German military used to relay messages of troop movements, weather forecasts, and the like, and which was changed every day. There were so many possible combinations of settings to the coding machine that it was simply impossible for a human, or team of humans, to test them all in the scant few hours they had before the settings were changed again. So Turing had an idea for a machine to check them and was on the right track but had to battle many obstacles, not the least of which was his own diffident personality. He was seriously lacking in the social graces and once his fellow intelligence operative Joan Clark, well played by Kiera Knightley, impressed upon him the fact that the work would go much more smoothly if his partners actually liked him, it is a pleasure to watch Benedict Cumberbatch enact the hilariously awkward attempts to fit in and make friends. It does work to an extent, though, for when the inevitable conflicts with the war bureaucracy enter in and the program is to be shut down due to the lack of tangible results, each and every one of Turing's previously hostile co-workers threatens to walk out if Turing himself is fired. There is no small amount of poignance to the characterization, as he tries so hard but is so inept at the social interactions that most folks take for granted. For example, Joan's parents are uncomfortable with her working with a bunch of men at the 'factory' and so order her home, so Turing asks what if she were married. Clark/Knightley ponders each of the men in their unit in turn, only lastly considering Turing himself, and reacting with incredulity. The only slightly false note here, other than some too-contemporary hair & wardrobe stylings, is the casual attitude some of the characters take toward Turing's gayness; this writer for one found it difficult to believe that anyone in 1940s Britain (outside of show business, maybe!) would have such a well developed 'gaydar' and have sussed out his secret, or that they wouldn't think it such a big deal, or that he would come out other than on pain of death.
Still, the layers of plot here are most entertaining, and when the breakthrough is achieved almost accidentally by an offhand remark in a pub it almost made one want to cheer. That mood is almost immediately broken by the slowly dawning horror of what comes next--they can not share their triumph. If it became known that the Enigma code had been broken, German intelligence would quickly change their codes and settings, rendering the British advantage null and void. Thus, some attacks on Allied positions must be allowed to go through so as to hide the fact that information on German tactics has been compromised. It is perhaps a bit too pat that one of the team members brothers is in a naval convoy earmarked for sinking but this is a minor quibble.
Go on and see it.
December 2014
Still, the layers of plot here are most entertaining, and when the breakthrough is achieved almost accidentally by an offhand remark in a pub it almost made one want to cheer. That mood is almost immediately broken by the slowly dawning horror of what comes next--they can not share their triumph. If it became known that the Enigma code had been broken, German intelligence would quickly change their codes and settings, rendering the British advantage null and void. Thus, some attacks on Allied positions must be allowed to go through so as to hide the fact that information on German tactics has been compromised. It is perhaps a bit too pat that one of the team members brothers is in a naval convoy earmarked for sinking but this is a minor quibble.
Go on and see it.
December 2014
For Old Lang Sign
Your correspondent got to thinking about the recent New Year's Eve and past celebrations of that soggy holiday. If we go way back, the earliest I recall ringing in the New Year was along about '72 or '73 when I spent the evening at my friend Mark's house and we used water and food coloring to pretend to drink booze. I remember pretending to pass out and Mark bringing me back to 'consciousness' by slapping half a lemon to the side of my face, an act which, forty years later, still puzzles me. But what the hell, we were kids.
Next on our trip down memory lane we advance a few years to '79-'80 when the writer went to NYC to see the Allman Brothers Band ring in the new decade. I must have been insufferable constantly yapping about how I was listening to the Brothers through two decades. One year later, at university, my best pal and I and our respective lady friends were at one of our houses in Conn. when the lady I was with took sick and spent the countdown to midnight barfing, which was a sad if accurate comment on the direction our relationship was shortly to take, one hundred percent because of my own immaturity and general cluelessness. If I ever have another opportunity for romance, here's hoping I can learn from my mistakes and do better. Another year in the mid-80s I and a couple of the 'gang' were at my father's condo in Conn. and had a raucous time. We watched cable tv, then a novelty, and emptied the refrigerator. And that's all I can remember...................
In 1997 I was playing a First Night gig in Danbury where they had my happy little band and some other entertainments on the bill. We played our set, to acclaim, I might add, and decided to head for the bass player's house as it was closest, to see the ball drop and toast 1998. We chuckled at the prospect of having played a full set at a New Year's party and still getting home in time to drink some more and watch Dick Clark.
I always wondered, as a kid, what it would feel like to ring in the new millenium of 2000 (or 2001, depending on how much you cling to the actual definition) but given my status as a confirmed party animal for many years, I wouldn't have guessed that I would be at the home of a co-worker with his wife & father & a couple of other family members playing word games. And no partying at all. Nope, wouldn't have guessed that! On the other hand it was probably a good thing to wake up feeling good New Year's Day and I do recall driving home and thinking that the very first song I heard on the radio in the 2000s was Led Zeppelin's The Immigrant Song.
Each and every one of the doctors I've seen lately for various reasons have told me in no uncertain terms that it would be a really good idea to abstain from alcohol. This leads to tame, nontraditional NYE's, but one of the last times I was drinking at the end of the year was '09-'10 when I had my food, booze, dvds, and music all set up for a nice, enjoyable, long night---and fell asleep at 10.45! How's that for setting the tone for the next few years? So now it's the Honeymooners or Twilight Zone marathon and a good book with the cat on the lap. Funny how that looks better and better as the years go by.
January 2015
Next on our trip down memory lane we advance a few years to '79-'80 when the writer went to NYC to see the Allman Brothers Band ring in the new decade. I must have been insufferable constantly yapping about how I was listening to the Brothers through two decades. One year later, at university, my best pal and I and our respective lady friends were at one of our houses in Conn. when the lady I was with took sick and spent the countdown to midnight barfing, which was a sad if accurate comment on the direction our relationship was shortly to take, one hundred percent because of my own immaturity and general cluelessness. If I ever have another opportunity for romance, here's hoping I can learn from my mistakes and do better. Another year in the mid-80s I and a couple of the 'gang' were at my father's condo in Conn. and had a raucous time. We watched cable tv, then a novelty, and emptied the refrigerator. And that's all I can remember...................
In 1997 I was playing a First Night gig in Danbury where they had my happy little band and some other entertainments on the bill. We played our set, to acclaim, I might add, and decided to head for the bass player's house as it was closest, to see the ball drop and toast 1998. We chuckled at the prospect of having played a full set at a New Year's party and still getting home in time to drink some more and watch Dick Clark.
I always wondered, as a kid, what it would feel like to ring in the new millenium of 2000 (or 2001, depending on how much you cling to the actual definition) but given my status as a confirmed party animal for many years, I wouldn't have guessed that I would be at the home of a co-worker with his wife & father & a couple of other family members playing word games. And no partying at all. Nope, wouldn't have guessed that! On the other hand it was probably a good thing to wake up feeling good New Year's Day and I do recall driving home and thinking that the very first song I heard on the radio in the 2000s was Led Zeppelin's The Immigrant Song.
Each and every one of the doctors I've seen lately for various reasons have told me in no uncertain terms that it would be a really good idea to abstain from alcohol. This leads to tame, nontraditional NYE's, but one of the last times I was drinking at the end of the year was '09-'10 when I had my food, booze, dvds, and music all set up for a nice, enjoyable, long night---and fell asleep at 10.45! How's that for setting the tone for the next few years? So now it's the Honeymooners or Twilight Zone marathon and a good book with the cat on the lap. Funny how that looks better and better as the years go by.
January 2015
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Twenty Four-Six Dance Lessons, The Fault In Our Stars, Archaeology of a Woman, Foxcatcher.
Your reviewer started to watch The Fault in our Stars but only got thirty minutes into it and just couldn't take it any more. Too, too precious for words. So many topical, twenty-first century mentions. Nothing that would make an (older) audience give two fucks about any of these people. You'd think that it would be a slam dunk, as the saying goes, attractive teens with cancer, but the view here is that the filmmakers fumbled it.
This seems to be a depressing season for films, what with Julianne Moore acting (exquisitely) the part of a 50-year-old woman grappling with early onset Alzheimers, Gena Rowlands acting (exquisitely) a lonely old woman who signs up for dance lessons and forms an unlikely bond with her much younger, smartass, gay dance teacher, and now another old woman slowly losing it in The Archeology of a Woman. The latter is just a bit one note, Mom doing something strange and paranoid and Daughter rushing to her from The acting is good but it's really hard not to be depressed at what might be a glimpse into the future which is the same quibble that probably kept your reviewer from fully enjoying Two Nights with Marion Cotillard. Six Dance Lessons was pretty good, the characters believeable and the acting topnotch. Thankfully it wasn't played for maudlin sentimentality or laffs, but for the most part it played like a situation that could actually happen. Not so Fault, or even Foxcatcher. Wrestling brothers, yawn, hook up with a wealthy aficionado who bankrolls their training and then kills one of them in a coke-addled state. Yawn. Just dull. If, though, you are into wrestling then you will love this just like folks really into food will like Chef.
Is it me or are these reviews getting shorter and shorter?
January 2015
This seems to be a depressing season for films, what with Julianne Moore acting (exquisitely) the part of a 50-year-old woman grappling with early onset Alzheimers, Gena Rowlands acting (exquisitely) a lonely old woman who signs up for dance lessons and forms an unlikely bond with her much younger, smartass, gay dance teacher, and now another old woman slowly losing it in The Archeology of a Woman. The latter is just a bit one note, Mom doing something strange and paranoid and Daughter rushing to her from The acting is good but it's really hard not to be depressed at what might be a glimpse into the future which is the same quibble that probably kept your reviewer from fully enjoying Two Nights with Marion Cotillard. Six Dance Lessons was pretty good, the characters believeable and the acting topnotch. Thankfully it wasn't played for maudlin sentimentality or laffs, but for the most part it played like a situation that could actually happen. Not so Fault, or even Foxcatcher. Wrestling brothers, yawn, hook up with a wealthy aficionado who bankrolls their training and then kills one of them in a coke-addled state. Yawn. Just dull. If, though, you are into wrestling then you will love this just like folks really into food will like Chef.
Is it me or are these reviews getting shorter and shorter?
January 2015
Mike's Thumbnail Film Reviews!
Volume Twenty Five-St. Vincent and Unbroken.
Recently when Sony's info was hacked one of the stolen emails from one of their executives said that Angelina Jolie was a whiny no-talent. Your reviewer doesn't recall seeing her acting much but she can certainly direct with anyone after a viewing of Unbroken, a tale of a US military man who is stranded with two comrades in a life raft after their plane goes down in the Pacific. Based on a true story, the two men (one died, sorry for the spoiler) spent weeks in the raft, only to end up in a Japanese POW camp where they were brutally mistreated. As everyone has learned lately, it's only ok to torture people if the USA does it.
So this film is well shot, with good acting and a gripping story. So why didn't it engage me? It's hard to say. Too many repetitive scenes of beatings? Overlong in the airplane before it crashed? My own pacifism and general distaste for military pictures? All of the above? I don't know, it just didn't resonate. Still, if folks are criticizing Ms. Jolie for her directing, I personally don't see it.
Bill Murray has an excellent turn in St. Vincent as a curmudgeonly neighbor of Melissa McCarthy's overworked single mom who is somehow enlisted to look after her kid after school. There is a danger here of a one note performance, but Murray skillfully plays the nuances of the character, particularly after he is beaten for nonpayment of debts and suffers a stroke. It is very difficult to portray infirmity. In fact it is McCarthy's character who suffers a certain sameness about her scenes. However, the young man who plays the son turns in a top notch performance and we can be sure that this oughtn't to be the last we hear of him.
The title arises from the tony religious school that the kid is attending; an assignment for the students to nominate a 'saint' that they know gives our protagonist only one real choice, as Murray has taught him how to defend himself from bullies, how to gamble, and how to hang out in bars, among other useful information. A saint is a bit over the top, perhaps, but this is surely worth a look.
January 2015
So this film is well shot, with good acting and a gripping story. So why didn't it engage me? It's hard to say. Too many repetitive scenes of beatings? Overlong in the airplane before it crashed? My own pacifism and general distaste for military pictures? All of the above? I don't know, it just didn't resonate. Still, if folks are criticizing Ms. Jolie for her directing, I personally don't see it.
Bill Murray has an excellent turn in St. Vincent as a curmudgeonly neighbor of Melissa McCarthy's overworked single mom who is somehow enlisted to look after her kid after school. There is a danger here of a one note performance, but Murray skillfully plays the nuances of the character, particularly after he is beaten for nonpayment of debts and suffers a stroke. It is very difficult to portray infirmity. In fact it is McCarthy's character who suffers a certain sameness about her scenes. However, the young man who plays the son turns in a top notch performance and we can be sure that this oughtn't to be the last we hear of him.
The title arises from the tony religious school that the kid is attending; an assignment for the students to nominate a 'saint' that they know gives our protagonist only one real choice, as Murray has taught him how to defend himself from bullies, how to gamble, and how to hang out in bars, among other useful information. A saint is a bit over the top, perhaps, but this is surely worth a look.
January 2015
My Cat Simpkins
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In the late spring of 2000, a woman I had met at an audition (for Agatha Christie's Mousetrap, if I remember correctly. Neither one of us was cast.) called me out of the blue and asked if I could kitty sit for her two cats for the summer, boarding them at my house while she was away for the summer working at a theater. It had been nearly three years since my beloved Fluffy went to kitty heaven and I was about ready for another furry pal to dote upon and so I said ok. Once I returned them to the lady on Labour Day, I decided after careful deliberation to go to the shelter and find myself a furry pal. So I hied myself to the Animal Shelter on the Post Road in Westport and looked over their selection of kitties. They had several who I simply felt were too old, several that were obviously ill, but one that came up to the edge of her cage and looked right at me and mewed and looked like she could really use a nice home. It was a pretty good deal, $50 for a carrier, the kitty, and a free rabies shot at a local vet. So all that happened, and on December 23, 2000, I brought Simpkins home to my then residence in Bridgeport, Conn. A skinny calico, she put away bowl after bowl of dry food like it was on a conveyor, leading me to believe, not that they didn't feed their charges at the shelter but that it is a stressful existence for the animals and difficult to maintain an healthy appetite. Anyway no matter how much food she inhaled she was always quite scrawny. I think it was the first or second night she was with me that she curled up on my lap. For the next ten years, she did lap time maybe--maybe--half a dozen times. Just not a lap kitty. Until 2010. In October of that year I took a three week vacation in Europe and left kitty in the capable hands of my landlady's daughter who came down once or twice a day to feed kitty and change the water and make sure she was ok. Incidentally, she refused to take any money for doing so, which I found admirable. Anyway I was gone three weeks, and since then Simpkins has been the lap kitty to end all lap kitties, every single time I sit down there she is, claiming her nap place on my legs. Quite a contrast! I would have thought it would be more gradual. By the same token, as she aged she became more sensitive to cold (Just like Daddy!) and started to burrow under the covers next to me at night. I found this puzzling at first for in my experience, kitties did not like to be completely enclosed as they did not like the sensation of being trapped, but apparently Simpkins feels comfy enough to not be bothered by that and enjoying the tradeoff of being nice and warm. Nowadays, with the exceptions of July and August, she wants to be in the Warm Area all the time. The trouble is that she wants to be invited in, so to speak, and will hover over my sleeping form and meow literally for hours until I awaken and lift the covers so she has room to crawl in. This makes it difficult to get a good nights sleep but, after all, kitty can't help it if she's cold. But---I know for a fact that she could squiggle under the covers by herself if she so desired for I have seen her do so when I am sitting in my easy chair and reading or writing or some such rendering the Lap Area unavailable. Then she zips under, admittedly with some difficulty due I think to arthritis in her back legs. So why can't she do that in the middle of the night? Who knows? Who can decipher the behavior of a kitty? Not me, that's for sure!
She has been pretty healthy other than her increasingly wobbly back legs. When I sprang her from the shelter they estimated her age at about two years, but our vet in Queens opined that she might be a bit older than that. Anyway at the age of about sixteen currently she seems in reasonably good shape. She had an infection of the gums in 2009, necessitating the extraction of most of the teeth on one side, but she adapted well and now eats her crunchies with a funny tilt of her head to access the remaining choppers. What a pain it was to give her medicine, and how she hated wearing the lampshade round her neck to prevent her ripping up her mouth stitches! Can't really blame her, but I carefully explained that all she needed to do was hold still for literally one second while I eyedroppered a shpritz of goo past her upper lip. This met with resistance, as did my attempts to give her a proper pill. Oy! I hope we don't ever have to do that again. Maybe we'll be lucky, I think at sixteen or so she's already gone past the usual expectancy for an indoor kitty. I've been lucky myself to have such a swell pal for these last fourteen years and change, and here's hoping for fourteen more! Viva Simpkins! (P.S.--Sadly, we lost Simpkins on May 25, 2017, at home, of natural causes. RIP best pal! I'll sure miss you.) March 2015 |
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Concert tickets
As a dashing young buck, I went to lots of concerts. Living near NYC and then near San Francisco, there were ample opportunities to see a wide variety of artists, and during my concert-going heyday it was downright affordable too! Recently while poring through a batch of archives, clippings and old programs and the like, I found a list that I had made of the concerts that I'd taken in at one point or another. Herewith a partial list, soon to be followed by the whole enchilada:
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr x 2, Stevie Ray Vaughan x 3 before he got famous, B.B. King, Muddy Waters x 2, Eric Clapton x 3, Led Zeppelin, Steve Winwood x 2, ZZ Top, Allman Brothers x 6, Hot Tuna x 15-20, Jefferson Starship, Jeff Beck, Jackson Browne, Kansas, ELP, Yes, Roy Buchanan, Richard Thompson, Dr. John, Gatemouth Brown, Bo Diddley, Alvin Lee, Jack Bruce x 2, Joey Molland & Badfinger, Chuck Berry, Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Spirit, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, CSN x 2, Roger Waters x 2, Santana x 2, David Gilmour, King Crimson x 2, Todd Rundgren & Utopia, The Who x 3, The Clash, Deep Purple x 3, Heart x 2, Blue Oyster Cult x 2, Rush, Frank Zappa x 2, Mountain, Canned Heat, Neil Young x 3, The Band, James Brown, Simon Townshend, They Might Be Giants x 2, Miles Davis, Seldom Scene, Laurie Lewis, Del McCoury, Foghat, Doc Watson x 6, Grateful Dead, Humble Pie, Robin Trower, Ginger Baker, Judas Priest, Jethro Tull, Ozzy Osbourne, Pat Travers, Kinks, Christine Lavin, Eric Andersen, Jimmy McGriff, Jools Holland, Jeff Healey, Larry Carlton, Hubert Sumlin, Al DiMeola, Pat Metheny, Eduardo Fernandez, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Robert Cray, Elvin Bishop, Taj Mahal, Johnny Copeland, Charlie Daniels, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, Black Sabbath, John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Buckwheat Zydeco, Fairport Convention, Dan Ar Bras, Lonesome Standard Time, Dixie Hummingbirds, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Les Paul x 2, Alison Krause, Steve Hackett, Renaissance, Bonnie Raitt, Tedeschi Trucks, Dave Mason, Brian Wilson, Buddy Guy and Caribou Gone!
Did I list anyone twice? Did I forget anyone? I reserve the right to future edits!
April 2015
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr x 2, Stevie Ray Vaughan x 3 before he got famous, B.B. King, Muddy Waters x 2, Eric Clapton x 3, Led Zeppelin, Steve Winwood x 2, ZZ Top, Allman Brothers x 6, Hot Tuna x 15-20, Jefferson Starship, Jeff Beck, Jackson Browne, Kansas, ELP, Yes, Roy Buchanan, Richard Thompson, Dr. John, Gatemouth Brown, Bo Diddley, Alvin Lee, Jack Bruce x 2, Joey Molland & Badfinger, Chuck Berry, Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Spirit, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, CSN x 2, Roger Waters x 2, Santana x 2, David Gilmour, King Crimson x 2, Todd Rundgren & Utopia, The Who x 3, The Clash, Deep Purple x 3, Heart x 2, Blue Oyster Cult x 2, Rush, Frank Zappa x 2, Mountain, Canned Heat, Neil Young x 3, The Band, James Brown, Simon Townshend, They Might Be Giants x 2, Miles Davis, Seldom Scene, Laurie Lewis, Del McCoury, Foghat, Doc Watson x 6, Grateful Dead, Humble Pie, Robin Trower, Ginger Baker, Judas Priest, Jethro Tull, Ozzy Osbourne, Pat Travers, Kinks, Christine Lavin, Eric Andersen, Jimmy McGriff, Jools Holland, Jeff Healey, Larry Carlton, Hubert Sumlin, Al DiMeola, Pat Metheny, Eduardo Fernandez, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Robert Cray, Elvin Bishop, Taj Mahal, Johnny Copeland, Charlie Daniels, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, Black Sabbath, John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Buckwheat Zydeco, Fairport Convention, Dan Ar Bras, Lonesome Standard Time, Dixie Hummingbirds, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Les Paul x 2, Alison Krause, Steve Hackett, Renaissance, Bonnie Raitt, Tedeschi Trucks, Dave Mason, Brian Wilson, Buddy Guy and Caribou Gone!
Did I list anyone twice? Did I forget anyone? I reserve the right to future edits!
April 2015
Dear Diary,
The excerpts from the diaries of Edward Robb Ellis are called A Diary of the Century, and they are every bit of that. Born in 1911, Ellis worked from the mid-30s to 1962 as a newspaper reporter, quitting the NY World Telegram only four years before that paper's demise. He then turned to writing books, including well received works on New York City, the (first) Great Depression, and World War I. He kept a daily diary from the age of 16 in 1927 until his death in 1998 and was a witness to the twentieth century's major events and knew and sometimes interviewed some of the best known and most controversial figures of the time.
Seminal events like the (first) Depression, Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of JFK and MLK, the moon landing, and Watergate have of course been so well documented as to be well familiar even to those of us who were not yet born. But starting in the 70s, the era is close enough to the present that one feels mostly sadness at the contrast between the decade of 'malaise' and today. Ellis quotes Anthony Lewis on the American bombing of Cambodia in 1970: 'We set up a program to assassinate leaders suspected of sympathy with the other side. We allowed, and sometimes participated in, systematic torture of prisoners. We wantonly killed civilians. We bombed hospitals.'
All of this will sound quite familiar to contemporary readers, but there are some stark differences. For one thing, there was much more protest against state-sponsored massacres and atrocities in Southeast Asia than there is now in the Middle East. This is attributable to three factors--the fact that the all volunteer army CHOSE to join up, the blind worship of the military in the post September 11 era, war crimes, atrocities, and all, and the careful stage managing of the corporate controlled news, which takes pains to spin or simply ignore facts which are inconvenient to the black hat/white hat narrative.
Ellis, writing on August 8, 1974: 'Except for the Joe McCarthy era, never had this nation come so close to totalitarianism as in the last two years of the Nixon administration.' Were Ellis alive today, what would he have made of the near total surveillance most Americans accept with a shrug? Of the casual acceptance of torture and mass murder of Muslims? Of the ruthless suppression of dissent and the overt expressions of violent racism by our militarized police forces? We expect times to have been different sixty, seventy, one hundred years ago. But even as recently as the 1970s, Ellis writes of a friend who retired from his career as an elevator operator to an apartment in the Chelsea district of Manhattan who spent his time making up for his poor education by reading from his collection of thousands of books. Yes, as recently as that, one could make a decent living operating an elevator, have a decent retirement from the same, and afford an apartment in a desirable section of Manhattan.
None of these are even remotely possible today, nor will they ever be. Forty years from now, will today's working class struggles look as good by comparison? I consider it my good fortune that I will not be around to know.
April 2015
Seminal events like the (first) Depression, Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of JFK and MLK, the moon landing, and Watergate have of course been so well documented as to be well familiar even to those of us who were not yet born. But starting in the 70s, the era is close enough to the present that one feels mostly sadness at the contrast between the decade of 'malaise' and today. Ellis quotes Anthony Lewis on the American bombing of Cambodia in 1970: 'We set up a program to assassinate leaders suspected of sympathy with the other side. We allowed, and sometimes participated in, systematic torture of prisoners. We wantonly killed civilians. We bombed hospitals.'
All of this will sound quite familiar to contemporary readers, but there are some stark differences. For one thing, there was much more protest against state-sponsored massacres and atrocities in Southeast Asia than there is now in the Middle East. This is attributable to three factors--the fact that the all volunteer army CHOSE to join up, the blind worship of the military in the post September 11 era, war crimes, atrocities, and all, and the careful stage managing of the corporate controlled news, which takes pains to spin or simply ignore facts which are inconvenient to the black hat/white hat narrative.
Ellis, writing on August 8, 1974: 'Except for the Joe McCarthy era, never had this nation come so close to totalitarianism as in the last two years of the Nixon administration.' Were Ellis alive today, what would he have made of the near total surveillance most Americans accept with a shrug? Of the casual acceptance of torture and mass murder of Muslims? Of the ruthless suppression of dissent and the overt expressions of violent racism by our militarized police forces? We expect times to have been different sixty, seventy, one hundred years ago. But even as recently as the 1970s, Ellis writes of a friend who retired from his career as an elevator operator to an apartment in the Chelsea district of Manhattan who spent his time making up for his poor education by reading from his collection of thousands of books. Yes, as recently as that, one could make a decent living operating an elevator, have a decent retirement from the same, and afford an apartment in a desirable section of Manhattan.
None of these are even remotely possible today, nor will they ever be. Forty years from now, will today's working class struggles look as good by comparison? I consider it my good fortune that I will not be around to know.
April 2015
Did you miss me while I was away? How lucky I am!
I fervently hope that this is my last job ever. I've just hired on, to my delight, at the Mysterious Bookshop on Warren Street in Tribeca. It suits me to a tee, being here with these good people and being again surrounded by books. When the Complete Traveller closed in January, I thought to myself that I needed one more break to find good honest work for the rest of my life, however long that is, and hoping against hope that that is the case now. It seems unlikely that I will retire, both because retirement seems kind of boring unless one is wealthy, and because it is an open question as to whether the safety net for retirees will prove adequate to live on, or whether it will still even be there. But here's hoping I can make this wonderful job last for the fifteen or twenty years that I have left!
Meanwhile I still do guided bus tours two nights per week and am looking for my next acting/music project. Along with my usual voracious reading habit.
July 2015
Meanwhile I still do guided bus tours two nights per week and am looking for my next acting/music project. Along with my usual voracious reading habit.
July 2015
Setting an Example.
I didn't realize it at the time, but my father was setting a good example for me simply by supporting his family and going off to work every day even if what he was doing wasn't exactly his dream job. Also being conscientious in dealings at work and with other people in general, a 'golden rule' sort of thing where one would treat others the way one would wish to be treated. For example I have become much more circumspect about running my mouth, being more cognizant of not wanting to accidentally cross over into delicate topics or open a particular can of worms or even wanting to avoid starting 'a thing.' Quite often I've found myself thinking about my father in the twenty-one years he's been gone and while this sort of lesson took much longer to sink in to this writer than it should have I presume better late than never!
When I started tentatively playing guitar around Bridgeport, Conn., in 1988, quite often I went to a place called the Tip Toe Inn which featured an open mic night and, what do you know! they'd let anyone come in and play. I can't remember what night of the week it was, but yours truly was a fixture there for a while. The fellow who administered the evening was a guy called Dan Aldrich, and he was quite the travelling jukebox--he knew lots and lots of songs from the 60s and 70s and was always good enough to show me how something went on the numerous occasions when I asked what the changes were on 'You Don't Mess Around With Jim' or 'Mother Goose' or some obscure tune from the rock and roll era which might have scraped the bottom of the charts.
Granted, he might have given me some good natured guff but he'd always show me what I wanted to know. So I vowed that if a younger musician (And they're ALL younger musicians nowadays!) asked me how to play something that I would show them how to do it. I've politely asked fellow guitar pickers about tunes that I'd heard them play and had them be selfish jerks about it and I don't ever want to be THAT guy.
Dan Aldrich also showed me a lot in terms of a professional approach to playing music. How to put on a show and entertain people even if you're not at your best; finding a good, full sound if you are a solo artist; changing keys and transposing chords; logistics, practical things like how to change a string gracefully, and so on. Mind, this was not a classroom sort of deal, I usually just observed by watching and silently absorbed information and very slowly learned some things, both about what to do and what not to do. Much of this know-how wasn't used immediately but stored for future residence, even though I didn't know I was storing info at the time!
I think that I'm finally realizing the effects of these and other influences over myself just now without having been conscious of the effect on me until well after the fact. Here's to all the people who have influenced me for the better over the years, whether you meant to or not, whether you wanted to or not, whether you realized it or not!
August 2015
When I started tentatively playing guitar around Bridgeport, Conn., in 1988, quite often I went to a place called the Tip Toe Inn which featured an open mic night and, what do you know! they'd let anyone come in and play. I can't remember what night of the week it was, but yours truly was a fixture there for a while. The fellow who administered the evening was a guy called Dan Aldrich, and he was quite the travelling jukebox--he knew lots and lots of songs from the 60s and 70s and was always good enough to show me how something went on the numerous occasions when I asked what the changes were on 'You Don't Mess Around With Jim' or 'Mother Goose' or some obscure tune from the rock and roll era which might have scraped the bottom of the charts.
Granted, he might have given me some good natured guff but he'd always show me what I wanted to know. So I vowed that if a younger musician (And they're ALL younger musicians nowadays!) asked me how to play something that I would show them how to do it. I've politely asked fellow guitar pickers about tunes that I'd heard them play and had them be selfish jerks about it and I don't ever want to be THAT guy.
Dan Aldrich also showed me a lot in terms of a professional approach to playing music. How to put on a show and entertain people even if you're not at your best; finding a good, full sound if you are a solo artist; changing keys and transposing chords; logistics, practical things like how to change a string gracefully, and so on. Mind, this was not a classroom sort of deal, I usually just observed by watching and silently absorbed information and very slowly learned some things, both about what to do and what not to do. Much of this know-how wasn't used immediately but stored for future residence, even though I didn't know I was storing info at the time!
I think that I'm finally realizing the effects of these and other influences over myself just now without having been conscious of the effect on me until well after the fact. Here's to all the people who have influenced me for the better over the years, whether you meant to or not, whether you wanted to or not, whether you realized it or not!
August 2015
Books Are Good!
Right now is a really good time to be a book collector! I know, I
know. I'm (too) well familiar with the tired old canards: Books are
passe, no one reads anymore, technology is king and on and on
ad nauseum.
Bollocks, say I! Many people prefer print to reading on a gizmo;
and indeed there are concrete advantages to doing so. Recent
studies have shown that retention of the material read is much
higher for print than for digital. No doubt this suits America's
ruling class just fine, for in this writer's view, IF in fact there is a
dearth of print readers out there, it has more to do with the
ongoing, deliberate destruction, defunding, and privatization
of the public school system than anything else. Poor attention
spans, a lack of ability in critical thinking and analysis, and a
comfort in very brief sound bytes
all tend to discourage a longer term commitment (only measured
in hours, but still) to read, absorb, and enjoy a longer form
piece. Too, this trend will possibly have a deleterious effect
on writing as well, for how can a person raised on 140-character
bits and pieces possibly create a novel, or even a short story
or essay? What can we expect when we force one and a half
generations of schoolkids to take tests all the time?
So for anyone cheering the alleged demise of Gutenberg's
seminal creation, forget it. You're going to have to wait at least
one more generation, until us boomers die off. Perhaps then
the gadget will take precedence but until then it's print FTW!
And speaking of gadgets, deliver me from folks who cry
'convenience!' when it comes to carrying a device versus
carrying a tome. You're telling me that you can carry some
sort of contraption, but you can't carry a book? Then for gosh
sakes, go see a doctor!
Listen--reading is one of life's great pleasures, and if you can't
or won't avail yourself of this scintillating discipline, then too
bad for you! I presume it is better to read on some gizmo
than not to read at all, but guess what?
It's like taking a protein pill instead of sitting down
to a fine meal--you'll get a bare minimum of what you need to
stay alive, but where's the pleasure? Where is the aspect that
makes it worthwhile, something to be looked forward to and
immersed in? Heck, books are readily available and in
some cases very inexpensive. Lots of good reading to be had,
easily and for cheap! What more could a collector ask?
I'm sure most of you faithful readers (if such there be) have
received or given a book as a gift. Hopefully it was a treasured
gift. But where is the pleasure in giving or receiving a download?
Yes, yes, I know I'm a grumpy old man, but it seems to me
a very hollow expression to give a few bytes! And you
whippersnappers will never know the pleasure of finding a novel
or that biography that you've been looking for for years in a
shop. What a thrill! Alas, one that you philistines will never know.
September 2015
know. I'm (too) well familiar with the tired old canards: Books are
passe, no one reads anymore, technology is king and on and on
ad nauseum.
Bollocks, say I! Many people prefer print to reading on a gizmo;
and indeed there are concrete advantages to doing so. Recent
studies have shown that retention of the material read is much
higher for print than for digital. No doubt this suits America's
ruling class just fine, for in this writer's view, IF in fact there is a
dearth of print readers out there, it has more to do with the
ongoing, deliberate destruction, defunding, and privatization
of the public school system than anything else. Poor attention
spans, a lack of ability in critical thinking and analysis, and a
comfort in very brief sound bytes
all tend to discourage a longer term commitment (only measured
in hours, but still) to read, absorb, and enjoy a longer form
piece. Too, this trend will possibly have a deleterious effect
on writing as well, for how can a person raised on 140-character
bits and pieces possibly create a novel, or even a short story
or essay? What can we expect when we force one and a half
generations of schoolkids to take tests all the time?
So for anyone cheering the alleged demise of Gutenberg's
seminal creation, forget it. You're going to have to wait at least
one more generation, until us boomers die off. Perhaps then
the gadget will take precedence but until then it's print FTW!
And speaking of gadgets, deliver me from folks who cry
'convenience!' when it comes to carrying a device versus
carrying a tome. You're telling me that you can carry some
sort of contraption, but you can't carry a book? Then for gosh
sakes, go see a doctor!
Listen--reading is one of life's great pleasures, and if you can't
or won't avail yourself of this scintillating discipline, then too
bad for you! I presume it is better to read on some gizmo
than not to read at all, but guess what?
It's like taking a protein pill instead of sitting down
to a fine meal--you'll get a bare minimum of what you need to
stay alive, but where's the pleasure? Where is the aspect that
makes it worthwhile, something to be looked forward to and
immersed in? Heck, books are readily available and in
some cases very inexpensive. Lots of good reading to be had,
easily and for cheap! What more could a collector ask?
I'm sure most of you faithful readers (if such there be) have
received or given a book as a gift. Hopefully it was a treasured
gift. But where is the pleasure in giving or receiving a download?
Yes, yes, I know I'm a grumpy old man, but it seems to me
a very hollow expression to give a few bytes! And you
whippersnappers will never know the pleasure of finding a novel
or that biography that you've been looking for for years in a
shop. What a thrill! Alas, one that you philistines will never know.
September 2015
Happy Birthday To Me.
Happy Birthday To Me
Today is my birthday, and many happy returns of the day! I never
expected to live this long! I've been thinking about what I did
on previous birthdays. I was born in Frederick, Maryland on October
9, 1961. I must have had parties and such as a little kid but I don't
remember them. Earliest I can recall is age eight when my granny
was visiting and we were excited (at least I was) about going to
the World Series game a few days hence (Game 3, Mets 5
Orioles 0). Then a bit later, '70 or '71 me mum came into my room
to wake me up for school on the day before and I starting
singsonging, 'Tomorrow is my birthday, tomorrow is my birthday,
tomorrow is my birthday, today is the 8th of Oct.' This so tickled
my mother that I heard her repeating the ditty next door to my
brother in his room. I remember going to the dentist I think in
'76 and having a mouthful of painful fillings. I remember my
eighteenth at university and my father sending a check and (semi)
jokingly saying to buy some Molson's beer, my drink of choice at
the time. Believe it or not, kids, the drinking age was 18 then.
I remember at 19 having a little party in my dorm room which for
the first and so far only time included an actual female girl. I recall
at 20 being alone and sad because I foolishly drove said girl away.
I remember at 22 joking with my roomate that I was about the
oldest student in the whole dorm. I remember at 25 watching
Bob Ojeda beat the Astros in the National League playoffs. This
was before they let three quarters of the teams into the playoffs or
whatever it is.
I remember at 26 getting a nice gift of a vcr from Dad which I put
to heavy use the next few years. I remember at 29 or 30 going into
NYC and finding a bunch of back issues of MAD magazine and
starting my collection of them, which today includes each and
every issue from 1962-1979, with lots of specials and some
issues before, earliest being #22. I remember at 35 going up
to New Haven for the day and buying some books. Feeling
pretty good, had a band, a job i liked although when I see pics
of myself from then, I was kind of fat. I celebrated my 40th by performing,
for by then I had started acting as well as playing music, and I
was in a production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, playing
two different parts. Also in the cast was a woman I had worked
with and upon whom I had a serious loving crush which
unfortunately was not returned. At 45 I played a game
of golf in Connecticut and shot 54 for 9 holes, which really isn't
bad for the first time out. At 49 I was vacationing in Nice, France,
and was standing knee deep in the Mediterranean as the warm tide rolled in
diagonally to the shore and laughing out loud because it was so excellent.
At 50 I went to the Botanical Gardens and also played
mini golf. Today at 54 I was planning to go to FDR state park,
about an hour or an hour and a half from here, but the forecast
calls for rain today so I will postpone that until next week and go
to Riverside state park in northern Manhattan instead. This way
it's a quicker hop home when it starts, and I still get out and
enjoy the relatively warm weather. Soon it will be too cold
to enjoy day trips so I want to get outside while the gettin's
good! Who knows what future October ninths will bring? I'd like
to perform as an actor and musician again, I'd like to socialize
more, but the future will reveal its mysteries in its own good time.
October 2015
Today is my birthday, and many happy returns of the day! I never
expected to live this long! I've been thinking about what I did
on previous birthdays. I was born in Frederick, Maryland on October
9, 1961. I must have had parties and such as a little kid but I don't
remember them. Earliest I can recall is age eight when my granny
was visiting and we were excited (at least I was) about going to
the World Series game a few days hence (Game 3, Mets 5
Orioles 0). Then a bit later, '70 or '71 me mum came into my room
to wake me up for school on the day before and I starting
singsonging, 'Tomorrow is my birthday, tomorrow is my birthday,
tomorrow is my birthday, today is the 8th of Oct.' This so tickled
my mother that I heard her repeating the ditty next door to my
brother in his room. I remember going to the dentist I think in
'76 and having a mouthful of painful fillings. I remember my
eighteenth at university and my father sending a check and (semi)
jokingly saying to buy some Molson's beer, my drink of choice at
the time. Believe it or not, kids, the drinking age was 18 then.
I remember at 19 having a little party in my dorm room which for
the first and so far only time included an actual female girl. I recall
at 20 being alone and sad because I foolishly drove said girl away.
I remember at 22 joking with my roomate that I was about the
oldest student in the whole dorm. I remember at 25 watching
Bob Ojeda beat the Astros in the National League playoffs. This
was before they let three quarters of the teams into the playoffs or
whatever it is.
I remember at 26 getting a nice gift of a vcr from Dad which I put
to heavy use the next few years. I remember at 29 or 30 going into
NYC and finding a bunch of back issues of MAD magazine and
starting my collection of them, which today includes each and
every issue from 1962-1979, with lots of specials and some
issues before, earliest being #22. I remember at 35 going up
to New Haven for the day and buying some books. Feeling
pretty good, had a band, a job i liked although when I see pics
of myself from then, I was kind of fat. I celebrated my 40th by performing,
for by then I had started acting as well as playing music, and I
was in a production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, playing
two different parts. Also in the cast was a woman I had worked
with and upon whom I had a serious loving crush which
unfortunately was not returned. At 45 I played a game
of golf in Connecticut and shot 54 for 9 holes, which really isn't
bad for the first time out. At 49 I was vacationing in Nice, France,
and was standing knee deep in the Mediterranean as the warm tide rolled in
diagonally to the shore and laughing out loud because it was so excellent.
At 50 I went to the Botanical Gardens and also played
mini golf. Today at 54 I was planning to go to FDR state park,
about an hour or an hour and a half from here, but the forecast
calls for rain today so I will postpone that until next week and go
to Riverside state park in northern Manhattan instead. This way
it's a quicker hop home when it starts, and I still get out and
enjoy the relatively warm weather. Soon it will be too cold
to enjoy day trips so I want to get outside while the gettin's
good! Who knows what future October ninths will bring? I'd like
to perform as an actor and musician again, I'd like to socialize
more, but the future will reveal its mysteries in its own good time.
October 2015
The male-female dance.
Nice Guys Finished Last.
'You could have been more aggressive,' she said, or maybe it was 'should have
been.'
Either way it turned out the same. Apparently I should have been bolder in
making advances. It seems that was one of the things that sank our nascent
relationship, not that it got off the ground anyway. I never knew where we stood,
and maybe that's partially my fault--I could have or should have been more
assertive in having that conversation. Or maybe I just didn't want to know the
answer, fearing with reason that it wouldn't be favorable to me. So I should have
maybe put my foot down when it came to who did what when we went out, and I
should maybe have been a little pushier when it came to kisses and such?
I've heard it said that one's first relationship very much sets the tone for any future
interaction with the gender of one's preference; my first and so far only foray into
romance came early in my college career. I met an attractive co-ed who, mirable
dictu, actually liked me and so we began keeping company. She had never been
with anyone either and understandably, and prudently, wanted to take things very
slowly, until she was sure about me, and about us.
Unfortunately it didn't last, due entirely to my utter cluelessness and teenaged
immaturity, but, possibly overcautiously, I have been very circumspect ever since
about 'putting the moves' on a woman. That and my natural shyness (built-in
awkwardness, if you will) has made for some very lonely times. So should I have
been more aggressive? All the professional advice givers and websites like
this one say that you should ask someone whose word you trust to give you
an honest evaluation re romance issues, and there were four people with whom
I felt comfy enough to do so. The answers I got: 1) You're queer and don't
realize it. (Untrue.) 2) You don't try hard enough. (Partly true. There have
been times I made major efforts to attract a woman and times when I
made no effort at all.) 3) It's all in your mind. (I wish this was true but I did
not make up dozens of rejections over a thirty year period.) 4) You hate
America and everyone in it. (This said by my very own mother about
ten years ago. I was, and remain, very outspoken in my opposition to
America's bloodthirsty foreign policy which made Mom uncomfortable
given her constant diet of the right-wing propaganda that passes for news in
this country.) That exercise didn't help much. Writing this now it strikes me
as pretty pathetic that I only knew three unrelated people that I could ask
about myself.
But dammit, it's just not in my nature to be pushy or aggressive with people,
especially women. Not only because of the influence of my first attempt
at love but because it's just part of my makeup.
But now there's a new wrinkle. Over the years, time and again I've seen
boorish behavior on the part of men seemingly rewarded by female
attention, while polite, thoughtful men are treated as doormats, or worse,
ATMs. Unfortunately it is not possible today to have a rational discussion
of this particular issue. Nowadays the default position is that any man
making the observation that Nice Guys Finish Last is an entitled jerk who
can't understand why models aren’t throwing themselves at him. But I have
seen the same pattern repeat itself too many times to chalk it up to the
Nice Guy (tm) entitlement syndrome and I sure as hell would be all
kinds of intimidated dating a model.
Would I have had successful adult relationships over the years had I
been less polite? If I had refused to pay on the occasions I was the invitee
and not the invitor? If I had insisted on frequent makeout sessions?
Had I done any of these things my co-ed and I wouldn't have lasted two
minutes. How much has that truth influenced my subsequent attempts at
dating?
Accept it or not, the world is still full of misogyny, which is simply a manifestation
of a lack of respect for women as human beings. And perhaps if men listened
to women they would hear a great desire for respect, listening, sharing (house-
work, calm discussions, finances, etc.), collaboration, in short, all the things
that men expect and usually receive as a matter of course.
And yet here the situation breaks down. How is it that many a time that same
respect backfires and is not reciprocated?
At this point I want to emphasize that I am only operating with my own
observations and am well aware that even given a large number of samples,
this does not constitute anything resembling evidence. Nor am I suggesting
that there are not many well mannered men who are loved and appreciated
by a woman of quality. I am simply wondering why I have seen poorly behaved
men somehow not turning people off, other guys as well as women, and why
honesty and good manners are so often considered drawbacks in much the
same way that selfishness and greed are no longer considered particularly
grim qualities to exhibit. Put bluntly, why aren't douchy guys treated as
social lepers? Nor am I referring to sexual matters. Too often the cultural
discussion veers into 'oh, you are just bitter because you can't get laid.'
But it is ultimately a question of a form of integrity being mocked and
belittled.
Is there a basis in fact for the notion that arrogant male behavior is attractive?
In pondering my own lifelong ineptitude with women I've put it down to bad
pheromones. However, I've also heard it said that for humans, pheromones
have little meaning and that they are much more important for other species.
But if the nice guy/bad boy thing is a myth, isn't there usually some kernel of
truth in most stereotypes? What IS the basis for attraction between people?
(Since my perspective is that of a straight man the viewpoints herein expressed
are heteronormative, with respect to those of differing persuasions. Hope you
find the article interesting anyway.) It can't be as shallow as 'appearances
only;' I won't allow myself to believe that. Charisma? Confidence?
Quite possibly. These traits are common denominators in most discussions of
the dance of romance. Which then brings up the question of whether these
qualities are built in to a person or whether they can be learned. And if it's the
latter, how can they be learned? How can one maintain a positive demeanor
in the absence of any positive reinforcement?
I don't have the answers, I've only raised questions. Have I been doing something
wrong all these years? Am I better off alone? Should I have been bolder?
Could I have been? Did my one failed relationship effort permanently encase
me in a shell of tentativity? Is tentativity a word?
It seems the older I get, the less I understand, and here I was always given to
think that folks got wiser as they aged. Not on your life!
October 2015
'You could have been more aggressive,' she said, or maybe it was 'should have
been.'
Either way it turned out the same. Apparently I should have been bolder in
making advances. It seems that was one of the things that sank our nascent
relationship, not that it got off the ground anyway. I never knew where we stood,
and maybe that's partially my fault--I could have or should have been more
assertive in having that conversation. Or maybe I just didn't want to know the
answer, fearing with reason that it wouldn't be favorable to me. So I should have
maybe put my foot down when it came to who did what when we went out, and I
should maybe have been a little pushier when it came to kisses and such?
I've heard it said that one's first relationship very much sets the tone for any future
interaction with the gender of one's preference; my first and so far only foray into
romance came early in my college career. I met an attractive co-ed who, mirable
dictu, actually liked me and so we began keeping company. She had never been
with anyone either and understandably, and prudently, wanted to take things very
slowly, until she was sure about me, and about us.
Unfortunately it didn't last, due entirely to my utter cluelessness and teenaged
immaturity, but, possibly overcautiously, I have been very circumspect ever since
about 'putting the moves' on a woman. That and my natural shyness (built-in
awkwardness, if you will) has made for some very lonely times. So should I have
been more aggressive? All the professional advice givers and websites like
this one say that you should ask someone whose word you trust to give you
an honest evaluation re romance issues, and there were four people with whom
I felt comfy enough to do so. The answers I got: 1) You're queer and don't
realize it. (Untrue.) 2) You don't try hard enough. (Partly true. There have
been times I made major efforts to attract a woman and times when I
made no effort at all.) 3) It's all in your mind. (I wish this was true but I did
not make up dozens of rejections over a thirty year period.) 4) You hate
America and everyone in it. (This said by my very own mother about
ten years ago. I was, and remain, very outspoken in my opposition to
America's bloodthirsty foreign policy which made Mom uncomfortable
given her constant diet of the right-wing propaganda that passes for news in
this country.) That exercise didn't help much. Writing this now it strikes me
as pretty pathetic that I only knew three unrelated people that I could ask
about myself.
But dammit, it's just not in my nature to be pushy or aggressive with people,
especially women. Not only because of the influence of my first attempt
at love but because it's just part of my makeup.
But now there's a new wrinkle. Over the years, time and again I've seen
boorish behavior on the part of men seemingly rewarded by female
attention, while polite, thoughtful men are treated as doormats, or worse,
ATMs. Unfortunately it is not possible today to have a rational discussion
of this particular issue. Nowadays the default position is that any man
making the observation that Nice Guys Finish Last is an entitled jerk who
can't understand why models aren’t throwing themselves at him. But I have
seen the same pattern repeat itself too many times to chalk it up to the
Nice Guy (tm) entitlement syndrome and I sure as hell would be all
kinds of intimidated dating a model.
Would I have had successful adult relationships over the years had I
been less polite? If I had refused to pay on the occasions I was the invitee
and not the invitor? If I had insisted on frequent makeout sessions?
Had I done any of these things my co-ed and I wouldn't have lasted two
minutes. How much has that truth influenced my subsequent attempts at
dating?
Accept it or not, the world is still full of misogyny, which is simply a manifestation
of a lack of respect for women as human beings. And perhaps if men listened
to women they would hear a great desire for respect, listening, sharing (house-
work, calm discussions, finances, etc.), collaboration, in short, all the things
that men expect and usually receive as a matter of course.
And yet here the situation breaks down. How is it that many a time that same
respect backfires and is not reciprocated?
At this point I want to emphasize that I am only operating with my own
observations and am well aware that even given a large number of samples,
this does not constitute anything resembling evidence. Nor am I suggesting
that there are not many well mannered men who are loved and appreciated
by a woman of quality. I am simply wondering why I have seen poorly behaved
men somehow not turning people off, other guys as well as women, and why
honesty and good manners are so often considered drawbacks in much the
same way that selfishness and greed are no longer considered particularly
grim qualities to exhibit. Put bluntly, why aren't douchy guys treated as
social lepers? Nor am I referring to sexual matters. Too often the cultural
discussion veers into 'oh, you are just bitter because you can't get laid.'
But it is ultimately a question of a form of integrity being mocked and
belittled.
Is there a basis in fact for the notion that arrogant male behavior is attractive?
In pondering my own lifelong ineptitude with women I've put it down to bad
pheromones. However, I've also heard it said that for humans, pheromones
have little meaning and that they are much more important for other species.
But if the nice guy/bad boy thing is a myth, isn't there usually some kernel of
truth in most stereotypes? What IS the basis for attraction between people?
(Since my perspective is that of a straight man the viewpoints herein expressed
are heteronormative, with respect to those of differing persuasions. Hope you
find the article interesting anyway.) It can't be as shallow as 'appearances
only;' I won't allow myself to believe that. Charisma? Confidence?
Quite possibly. These traits are common denominators in most discussions of
the dance of romance. Which then brings up the question of whether these
qualities are built in to a person or whether they can be learned. And if it's the
latter, how can they be learned? How can one maintain a positive demeanor
in the absence of any positive reinforcement?
I don't have the answers, I've only raised questions. Have I been doing something
wrong all these years? Am I better off alone? Should I have been bolder?
Could I have been? Did my one failed relationship effort permanently encase
me in a shell of tentativity? Is tentativity a word?
It seems the older I get, the less I understand, and here I was always given to
think that folks got wiser as they aged. Not on your life!
October 2015
The Club Tip Toe
Right around the fourth of July, 1988, I was in a bar in Bridgeport,
Conn., called the Tip Toe, and I found out that they had this new
fangled thing called an 'open mic' night, where anyone at all could
hit the stage and play. I can't remember now why I was there in the first place; they had live music, of course, and maybe I was there for future reference to check out the price of a future show, or maybe I just happened along at random, or maybe I learned about it from one of the guys in the mailroom of the Bridgeport Post, where I was working at the time. In any event I went in there, and being too poor/cheap to buy a measly beer, went in and asked about this open mic thing. They told me that anyone could go on stage and play or sing or read a poem or tell jokes or anything at all. 'Anything?' I asked, incredulous. 'Anything,' the bartender confirmed.
'Well, what do you know!' I thought to myself as I headed for home in my brown three-on-the-floor Ford. I've got to take advantage of that, I thought, and when I got home I ran through a few tunes on my Yamaha FG-340 acoustic, which I still have, and tried to decide what to play. If I remember correctly, and that is a mighty big if, the festivities took place every Tuesday, and come Tuesday there I was and pretty soon it was my turn. The fellow running the place, a pleasant chap named Dan Aldrich, ran through a few tunes, I think James Taylor, Brewer and Shipley, maybe a CSN or some such, kind of folk-blues stuff. Then, me. I perched on a stool, and being very unused to wobbling at these heights, tried to get my pipes close to the microphone, being very unused to singing into a device as well.
Just as I was about to start, a voice from the audience (a girl, no less) called out, 'Who are you?' and she didn't mean the Who record, either. Just then my throat was about as big around as a pin, and I squeaked out my name and that I lived a couple of miles away and then off I went. I started with the traditional song The Monkey and the Engineer, after the Grateful Dead version, which is funny because I wasn't then and am not now such a big fan; I think they have a few nice tunes, but I liked that one and it was easy to play and so I went with it. I can't remember what else I played, I think you got about fifteen minutes and back then in July 1988 I probably played some Neil Young, maybe a tune or two of mine own, and goodness knows what. Somewhere in my archives I have a set list or two from that time, or a little after, but all I can recall offhand is that I was big into Neil, the Canadian troubadour, at the time so he probably featured prominently in my mini set. So I finished unscathed, no one threw anything, and I went back on the regular for a good two or three years after that. I remember playing 'Don't Let It Bring You Down' once (poorly) and a girl in the audience just started freaking out, screaming and crying and carrying on like you can't believe; her friends hustled her out and one of them told me later, after I protested that I couldn't be THAT bad, that she had had a flashback and I wasn't to do with me at all. I remember the good folks at the Tip Toe got mad at me since all I ever drank was water, not making much scratch in those days, and I don't blame them, but I did/do think that I was entertaining (?) their customers (?) for free and that deserves some consideration. Once I almost 'picked up' a girl there who was the worse for the wear for booze, but I had walked or ridden my bicycle there that night so when she asked me did I have a car, what could I say? Probably wouldn't have ended well anyway. I remember going to see the guitarist Larry Coryell there, and being excited to see Humble Pie, one of my favorite bands in high school, which was only ten years in the past at that time. A bit of a joke, really, because only one of the band had actually played in the Pie, the drummer, Jerry Shirley. Still, I tapped my foot in time to the music and saw my old high school chum, Joe Demarsico, who was into the same kind of music I was back then and who I hadn't seen in maybe three or four years by then. We were good friends back then and I remember hearing later on that he'd got married and why didn't he invite me to the wedding? I wonder if he's still married and what he's doing now?
One night I was on my way to the Tip Toe during an in between jobs period and all I had on me was my house key, a pick, and a capo, and was walking there, intending to borrow a guitar to play, when I saw three guys on the corner and one said, 'Yo, chill right there, yo.'
I didn't know too much street slang but I got the gist of it. They were mugging me! So I held out my key, pick, and capo and one of them said, 'What the fuck's that?' and I, in my wisdom, started to explain that it was a gizmo attached to the neck of a guitar to change the pitch of the strings without having to retune, but in the middle of my long-winded explanation, they got frustrated because boy had they picked on the wrong target and one of them went upside my head with the butt of the pistol and ran away and I stumbled the rest of the way to the Tip Toe and got one of the guys to give me a life home, didn't feel much like playing after that. For a while I had all these Rambo-esque fantasies about whipping out a bazooka and blowing them all to kingdom come, but that didn't last long.
I found other places to play, formed a band for a couple of years in the 90s, and didn't go so much to the Tip Toe after a while. I can't remember when the last time was, but it's been years, and I wonder now if I could even find it, or remember where it was. Who knows?
But that was that time and place and maybe that's where it belongs.
December 2015
Conn., called the Tip Toe, and I found out that they had this new
fangled thing called an 'open mic' night, where anyone at all could
hit the stage and play. I can't remember now why I was there in the first place; they had live music, of course, and maybe I was there for future reference to check out the price of a future show, or maybe I just happened along at random, or maybe I learned about it from one of the guys in the mailroom of the Bridgeport Post, where I was working at the time. In any event I went in there, and being too poor/cheap to buy a measly beer, went in and asked about this open mic thing. They told me that anyone could go on stage and play or sing or read a poem or tell jokes or anything at all. 'Anything?' I asked, incredulous. 'Anything,' the bartender confirmed.
'Well, what do you know!' I thought to myself as I headed for home in my brown three-on-the-floor Ford. I've got to take advantage of that, I thought, and when I got home I ran through a few tunes on my Yamaha FG-340 acoustic, which I still have, and tried to decide what to play. If I remember correctly, and that is a mighty big if, the festivities took place every Tuesday, and come Tuesday there I was and pretty soon it was my turn. The fellow running the place, a pleasant chap named Dan Aldrich, ran through a few tunes, I think James Taylor, Brewer and Shipley, maybe a CSN or some such, kind of folk-blues stuff. Then, me. I perched on a stool, and being very unused to wobbling at these heights, tried to get my pipes close to the microphone, being very unused to singing into a device as well.
Just as I was about to start, a voice from the audience (a girl, no less) called out, 'Who are you?' and she didn't mean the Who record, either. Just then my throat was about as big around as a pin, and I squeaked out my name and that I lived a couple of miles away and then off I went. I started with the traditional song The Monkey and the Engineer, after the Grateful Dead version, which is funny because I wasn't then and am not now such a big fan; I think they have a few nice tunes, but I liked that one and it was easy to play and so I went with it. I can't remember what else I played, I think you got about fifteen minutes and back then in July 1988 I probably played some Neil Young, maybe a tune or two of mine own, and goodness knows what. Somewhere in my archives I have a set list or two from that time, or a little after, but all I can recall offhand is that I was big into Neil, the Canadian troubadour, at the time so he probably featured prominently in my mini set. So I finished unscathed, no one threw anything, and I went back on the regular for a good two or three years after that. I remember playing 'Don't Let It Bring You Down' once (poorly) and a girl in the audience just started freaking out, screaming and crying and carrying on like you can't believe; her friends hustled her out and one of them told me later, after I protested that I couldn't be THAT bad, that she had had a flashback and I wasn't to do with me at all. I remember the good folks at the Tip Toe got mad at me since all I ever drank was water, not making much scratch in those days, and I don't blame them, but I did/do think that I was entertaining (?) their customers (?) for free and that deserves some consideration. Once I almost 'picked up' a girl there who was the worse for the wear for booze, but I had walked or ridden my bicycle there that night so when she asked me did I have a car, what could I say? Probably wouldn't have ended well anyway. I remember going to see the guitarist Larry Coryell there, and being excited to see Humble Pie, one of my favorite bands in high school, which was only ten years in the past at that time. A bit of a joke, really, because only one of the band had actually played in the Pie, the drummer, Jerry Shirley. Still, I tapped my foot in time to the music and saw my old high school chum, Joe Demarsico, who was into the same kind of music I was back then and who I hadn't seen in maybe three or four years by then. We were good friends back then and I remember hearing later on that he'd got married and why didn't he invite me to the wedding? I wonder if he's still married and what he's doing now?
One night I was on my way to the Tip Toe during an in between jobs period and all I had on me was my house key, a pick, and a capo, and was walking there, intending to borrow a guitar to play, when I saw three guys on the corner and one said, 'Yo, chill right there, yo.'
I didn't know too much street slang but I got the gist of it. They were mugging me! So I held out my key, pick, and capo and one of them said, 'What the fuck's that?' and I, in my wisdom, started to explain that it was a gizmo attached to the neck of a guitar to change the pitch of the strings without having to retune, but in the middle of my long-winded explanation, they got frustrated because boy had they picked on the wrong target and one of them went upside my head with the butt of the pistol and ran away and I stumbled the rest of the way to the Tip Toe and got one of the guys to give me a life home, didn't feel much like playing after that. For a while I had all these Rambo-esque fantasies about whipping out a bazooka and blowing them all to kingdom come, but that didn't last long.
I found other places to play, formed a band for a couple of years in the 90s, and didn't go so much to the Tip Toe after a while. I can't remember when the last time was, but it's been years, and I wonder now if I could even find it, or remember where it was. Who knows?
But that was that time and place and maybe that's where it belongs.
December 2015
Set List Fever
As mentioned in the previous post, your correspondent played a set o'music in public for the very first time on July 5, 1988. I knew it was right around then, but now I know exactly, for I found the original set list I'd made.
This was at the Tip Toe, already mentioned in a previous post.
The list is on a piece of notepaper, about the size of an index card, and has browned quite a bit over the last twenty-seven-and-a-half years. At the top it reads Club Tip Toe 7-5-88.
And now, the part you've all been waiting for!
The songs:
I sat on a tall stool, which I always hated because it made me feel like I was about to topple over, but I sat nonetheless and made ready to play, when, like I wrote above, a spectator (there were maybe half a dozen) called out, 'Who are you?.' by which I don't believe meant the Who song, so I stammered out my name and mentioned that I lived right in town and promptly launched into 'Monkey and the Engineer,' which I'd heard somewhere or other, I think there's a live version by the Grateful Dead that was released around that time and that could be it, although at this remove I don't recall.
Next, an unusual choice, even by my low standards of 'unusual.' From the Canadian troubadour Neil Young comes 'Revolution Blues,' which I'd heard on the LP it came out on, 'On the Beach.' I really liked that record and I played the song somewhat more slowly than it is on the record, which is unusual since I usually speed 'em up! Not having a rhythm section my tempo is/was all over the place.
Returning to Neil, we've got the title track to 'Time Fades Away,' from a time period some recall as dark, but I always thought some of his most interesting tunes stemmed from this period. I heard it recently after many years and it still sounded fine.
The Fab Four check in with George Harrison's first songwriting effort, 'Don't Bother Me,' from the Beatles second album, 'With the Beatles.' I remember having an idea that I'd record a backing track and play over that but never did it.
Fifth on our set list is the Hot Tuna number 'Been So Long.' Big fan of Tuna then and now and here it is. Over a quarter a century later (!) I can play this one a lot better.
The penultimate song in our set that long ago summer is 'A Taste Of Honey,' of course after the Beatles' version from their very first album 'Please Please Me.' I wonder if my pipes were sufficiently smooth to do this one justice.
Lastly we did Traffic's 'John Barleycorn Must Die,' a nice little tune with nice little picking, although if I played it now I don't think I'd do this one last in the set.
I can't really remember much about actually playing these songs that day or night or whenever it was, I have a memory of that particular set being during daylight but being as it was July it may have been 7 or 8. But I played lots of sets at the ol' Tip Toe, and the next time I'm in Bridgeport I must go over there and see if it's still there.
I also found a few other set lists from yesteryear and will post about another one soon.
January 2016
This was at the Tip Toe, already mentioned in a previous post.
The list is on a piece of notepaper, about the size of an index card, and has browned quite a bit over the last twenty-seven-and-a-half years. At the top it reads Club Tip Toe 7-5-88.
And now, the part you've all been waiting for!
The songs:
I sat on a tall stool, which I always hated because it made me feel like I was about to topple over, but I sat nonetheless and made ready to play, when, like I wrote above, a spectator (there were maybe half a dozen) called out, 'Who are you?.' by which I don't believe meant the Who song, so I stammered out my name and mentioned that I lived right in town and promptly launched into 'Monkey and the Engineer,' which I'd heard somewhere or other, I think there's a live version by the Grateful Dead that was released around that time and that could be it, although at this remove I don't recall.
Next, an unusual choice, even by my low standards of 'unusual.' From the Canadian troubadour Neil Young comes 'Revolution Blues,' which I'd heard on the LP it came out on, 'On the Beach.' I really liked that record and I played the song somewhat more slowly than it is on the record, which is unusual since I usually speed 'em up! Not having a rhythm section my tempo is/was all over the place.
Returning to Neil, we've got the title track to 'Time Fades Away,' from a time period some recall as dark, but I always thought some of his most interesting tunes stemmed from this period. I heard it recently after many years and it still sounded fine.
The Fab Four check in with George Harrison's first songwriting effort, 'Don't Bother Me,' from the Beatles second album, 'With the Beatles.' I remember having an idea that I'd record a backing track and play over that but never did it.
Fifth on our set list is the Hot Tuna number 'Been So Long.' Big fan of Tuna then and now and here it is. Over a quarter a century later (!) I can play this one a lot better.
The penultimate song in our set that long ago summer is 'A Taste Of Honey,' of course after the Beatles' version from their very first album 'Please Please Me.' I wonder if my pipes were sufficiently smooth to do this one justice.
Lastly we did Traffic's 'John Barleycorn Must Die,' a nice little tune with nice little picking, although if I played it now I don't think I'd do this one last in the set.
I can't really remember much about actually playing these songs that day or night or whenever it was, I have a memory of that particular set being during daylight but being as it was July it may have been 7 or 8. But I played lots of sets at the ol' Tip Toe, and the next time I'm in Bridgeport I must go over there and see if it's still there.
I also found a few other set lists from yesteryear and will post about another one soon.
January 2016
More Set List Fever!
As promised, I found some old set lists and will be posting about them now and again. From September 1, 1991, also at the Tip Toe, I think:
We started the set with that classic from Rubber Soul, 'Wait.' It's played (or at least I play it) with a capo at the second fret, and still play it today.
As long as we had the capo on, we whacked right in to Greg Brown's 'Who Woulda Thunk It?,' which I first heard on WPKN radio in Bridgeport, Conn. From when I moved there in 1985 to when I left in 2002, that station turned me on to a lot of great music. Like Greg Brown.
Next, a song from this writer, composed on the occasion of the start of America's long term aggression in Iraq called 'No More War.' This one I always thought could be a companion to 'War Is Over,' or 'War Pigs' or some such. I had an alternate set of lyrics to this tune about going on the game show To Tell The Truth, but to tell the truth the anti-war version is better.
Next on the list is the Broadway classic 'Pass That Peace Pipe' from the musical picture Good News. I heard Desi Arnaz singing it with Bill Frawley and Vivian Vance on I Love Lucy. That's a tricky song to play for just one guitar and I have a feeling that my version was pretty dire. I might have a tape of me from around that time but I'll be damned if I'm going to post it!
Back to the Beatles for 'Every Little Thing.' Early-mid Fabs is, of course, excellent to arrange for one or two musicians.
We finished off this late summer/early fall performance with 'Sweet Sunny South,' which I also first heard on WPKN, along about the 80s, with a woman singing whose name I can no longer remember.
So except for 'Pass That Peace Pipe,' I can and do still play all these although 'Every Little Thing' is in semi-retirement.
Next: More set lists from the 90s.
February 2016
We started the set with that classic from Rubber Soul, 'Wait.' It's played (or at least I play it) with a capo at the second fret, and still play it today.
As long as we had the capo on, we whacked right in to Greg Brown's 'Who Woulda Thunk It?,' which I first heard on WPKN radio in Bridgeport, Conn. From when I moved there in 1985 to when I left in 2002, that station turned me on to a lot of great music. Like Greg Brown.
Next, a song from this writer, composed on the occasion of the start of America's long term aggression in Iraq called 'No More War.' This one I always thought could be a companion to 'War Is Over,' or 'War Pigs' or some such. I had an alternate set of lyrics to this tune about going on the game show To Tell The Truth, but to tell the truth the anti-war version is better.
Next on the list is the Broadway classic 'Pass That Peace Pipe' from the musical picture Good News. I heard Desi Arnaz singing it with Bill Frawley and Vivian Vance on I Love Lucy. That's a tricky song to play for just one guitar and I have a feeling that my version was pretty dire. I might have a tape of me from around that time but I'll be damned if I'm going to post it!
Back to the Beatles for 'Every Little Thing.' Early-mid Fabs is, of course, excellent to arrange for one or two musicians.
We finished off this late summer/early fall performance with 'Sweet Sunny South,' which I also first heard on WPKN, along about the 80s, with a woman singing whose name I can no longer remember.
So except for 'Pass That Peace Pipe,' I can and do still play all these although 'Every Little Thing' is in semi-retirement.
Next: More set lists from the 90s.
February 2016
Four Set Lists In One!
For my set on September 14, 1993, I wasn't sure how long I would play, so I prepared a set list of four, five, six/seven, and eight songs. How's that for flexibility?
Our short list started with my song 'No Beach To Walk On,' which is a poignant tune about loneliness. The title comes from a tremendous inspiration of mine, Star Trek. At the end of an early episode, Kirk is on the bridge and reaches out in a wistful gesture to Yeoman Rand and says, 'No beach to walk on...' and after all, who is lonelier than a starship captain? Next up we return to the Beatles' 'Wait,' and then two more of mine own tunes, 'Now That I've Found You,' and 'Heaven In Your Arms.' Both are just a little country flavored and were influenced by my enjoyment of bluegrass music at that time. If allowed a fifth song, it would have been 'Eat All Your Vegetables,' an ode to vegetarianism which, according to my notes, had some lyrical contributions by Robert Jones, although on the lyric sheet that I still have in my archives, I didn't use any of his words in the demo version.
The extra tunes for an extended set include 'Somebody Save Me/Coming Up the Hill,' which were two separate songs originally but put together to form a jigsaw puzzle. Another medley kind of thing was also considered, time permitting, 'Sea Of Green,' title but not the song taken from 'Yellow Submarine.' It's a fingerpicked instrumental and goes right into 'She's Easy To Worship,' which goes all the way back to the mid-1980s and had to do with an unrequited crush that, to make matters worse, I soon found out was boning my roomate. Who 'forgot' to tell me. That was unpleasant, although I'm happy to say the woman is long forgotten and ex-roommate and I are still good friends. A happy ending! I ought to write a song about it.....
February 2016.
Our short list started with my song 'No Beach To Walk On,' which is a poignant tune about loneliness. The title comes from a tremendous inspiration of mine, Star Trek. At the end of an early episode, Kirk is on the bridge and reaches out in a wistful gesture to Yeoman Rand and says, 'No beach to walk on...' and after all, who is lonelier than a starship captain? Next up we return to the Beatles' 'Wait,' and then two more of mine own tunes, 'Now That I've Found You,' and 'Heaven In Your Arms.' Both are just a little country flavored and were influenced by my enjoyment of bluegrass music at that time. If allowed a fifth song, it would have been 'Eat All Your Vegetables,' an ode to vegetarianism which, according to my notes, had some lyrical contributions by Robert Jones, although on the lyric sheet that I still have in my archives, I didn't use any of his words in the demo version.
The extra tunes for an extended set include 'Somebody Save Me/Coming Up the Hill,' which were two separate songs originally but put together to form a jigsaw puzzle. Another medley kind of thing was also considered, time permitting, 'Sea Of Green,' title but not the song taken from 'Yellow Submarine.' It's a fingerpicked instrumental and goes right into 'She's Easy To Worship,' which goes all the way back to the mid-1980s and had to do with an unrequited crush that, to make matters worse, I soon found out was boning my roomate. Who 'forgot' to tell me. That was unpleasant, although I'm happy to say the woman is long forgotten and ex-roommate and I are still good friends. A happy ending! I ought to write a song about it.....
February 2016.
Spring 2016 Holiday Trip=Germany and Denmark!
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Key to photos, from the top:
Municipal building, Copenhagen
The view from the ferry across the Baltic Sea to Denmark
The tall, exhilarating ride at Tivoli Gardens ridden by MD and friend Gisa Saturday 4/23
MD live on the video board in downtown Copenhagen, photo by Gisa (Note the ad for the ice cream sandwich--MMMmmmmmmm!)
Lit-up entrance to Tivoli
Town square in Copenhagen with interactive video screens
St. Lambert's church towering over Munster
The Erbdrostenhof, Munster
The Schloss (castle) on the university campus
Botanical garden behind the Schloss
A one-legged duck
The Zwinger fortress from the 16th century, Munster
View from the roof of the mining museum, Bochum
The Round Tower, (Rundetaarn) Copenhagen
Stroget shopping street, Copenhagen
Kimba the Not-Serval
Lex the Serval
An uneventful flight is the best kind--the kind where one shows up at the airport, checks in and is away without delay. And that's pretty much what happened Wednesday afternoon. Checked thoroughly at home to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything and that Simpkins the Cat was ok. She was curled up on the bed, face down for warmth, and I thought, why disturb her, as we'd already had our goodbye pet. You know how kitties are--they like a routine and when it's broken they can certainly tell. And with packing etc. I think she knew something was up. But I snuck out while she was sleeping and thence to the PATH train. Off to Newark and the #62 bus, check in at EWR and away! Almost on time--9.15 instead of 8.50 but close. My third visit to Germany to see my friends Ralf and Ela, and then meet with my friend Gisa in Hamburg from where we will drive up to Copenhagen to spend the weekend. It's going to be epic!
Ralf and Ela's son Marcel picked me up-he is much taller than I remembered-and so my first surprise. Ralf has a broken foot! What's more, he isn't sure how it happened! He thinks that a flight attendant may have run it over with a cart. Can you imagine?
But I'd hoped not to be underfoot at their place and get out on my own too. Ela and I had a nice lunch and then I rested some and had a long walk around the immediate area in Bochum, just near Duesseldorf. I used a purple auto and the bright green house, was it on Indirastr.?, as landmarks so I wouldn't get lost. I wandered near a local ballfield (around these parts it's soccer, don't you know) and somehow managed to find my way back! At five we left to pick up Ralf at his office since it's his right foot and he can't drive. We spoke and caught up a bit then left. After he locked up we got in the car but they thought they saw someone lurking at the door to the building and so doubled back to check. Luckily no one was around.
Ela is a fantastic cook. We had kartoffel soup and vegetables for supper, and some combo of fruit, hazelnuts, yogurt, and kase for brekkie. Ralf must get up v. early for work and the night before needs his shots and exercises to help the blood flow in his leg and I was v. tired myself so we retired around ten. Up betimes and to the hauptbanhof for the train to Hamburg! The train was late, but only 15m or so. The widespread belief in the US is that German trains are always bang on time, but 'tis not so, and I heard some grumping from the local riders too. Made me feel right at home! How well I remember the last time when it was such a hassle getting the train to Hamburg after a huge storm in the summer of 2014? (See the relevant post, above) I had some time before the train's arrival so I went into the station's bucherie and they had books about the DC history of Wonder Woman and Superman at 8 or 9 Euro each and I almost got one or the other but decided to wait and see what else the trip had in store. But happily this time the train ride was pretty uneventful and I continued reading If I Never Get Back by Darryl Brock in which a fellow from the 1980s finds himself on a train with the Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869 on their inaugural tour. Finished Sunday on the way back to Bochum, v. good.
So Gisa met me at the Hamburg station, then in the car and off to Copenhagen! In all my travels, and this is my sixth trip to Europe if you don't count London or Dublin (and the eighth if you do!), and each time I've been by myself. Until now. Gisa and I had planned to visit Denmark in 2014 but I took ill and we had to wait until next time. Well, next time is here and off we go! I'm looking forward to travelling with a companion and as it's only for one weekend we are unlikely to get on each other's nerves! As it happened we had a very pleasant conversation covering lots of different topics over the five hours or so that we drove. It was really nice to have some company and such a good friend too. All the times when I've travelled, I haven't had to consider anyone else's wishes, coming and going as I please, but this time had to discuss what to do and when to do it, which was really kind of nice. After all, two people can come up with twice as many ideas as to what to do. At least in theory. Originally my plan had been to take the train or bus to Malmo in Sweden which is only an hour or so from Denmark's capital city. Gisa opined that there wasn't much to see and we'd only go and come right back and that we'd be better off this time just seeing what's around Copenhagen. That first night I couldn't sleep at all and while laying awake most of the night, thought and thought and eventually decided she was right, best to leave Sweden until next time, with more time maybe we can see Stockholm. Needless to say, she agreed with my decision and complimented my perspicacity in seeing the wisdom of her opinion!
Had I been on my own I would have taken the train, and indeed planned to do just that, before she mentioned that she'd like to drive. I was all for that, not only because of the better chance to see scenery but also to make our own schedule, plan our own route and so on. She has a roomy mini van one year old and still nearly new. Thus we drove from Northern Germany up to the Danish border--this is mostly farmland where fruit is grown, and on the way back we took a different route, slightly more westerly and taking bridges instead of the ferry. I can't remember what the region is called, but a lot of Xmas trees are grown there. We got to the ferry across the Baltic, waited a while and boarded and went up to the observation area. I was inspecting my change at the ferry entrance and had three American quarters, all state jobs, and she wanted one as a souvenir, and took one of the scenic ones, leaving me Maryland and Wyoming. It was pretty cold but it was sunny so we observed the surf, so to speak, and then G. wanted to get some cigarettes with a discount coupon that she'd gotten at the ferry admissions. (She said they were lousy smokes, no wonder they were giving discounts! By the way, in Europe, at least the parts I've been in, ciggies are much cheaper than they are in the US, about 5-6 euro per pack.) In Copenhagen I'd picked the Hotel Lowen (Lion) to stay largely for price--and I got it! Centrally located, no frills for sure, no tv in the room (good), no soap that I could find (bad) no desktop for customer use. Gisa selected a place a few blocks away for its free parking space, which when we arrived didn't seem very free to me. But her place was much nicer with more amenities.
All this time I had phone problems, got it unlocked in JC @ Metro for $35 which I thought was steep, and got a SIM card in Bochum (at the grocery store!) which at Metro they swore would work. And it did--partially and eventually. German SIM wouldn't work in Denmark and apparently take 1-3 days to activate. I wish they'd told me that! So it was frustrating at first as I couldn't contact kitty sitter Ruby or call Ralf but it all worked out. Eventually.
So we went on the ferry which was a 45 minute ride. Lots of wind turbines, much support for clean energy, especially in Germany. Found out an interesting thing; there isn't so much of an issue generating the power with wind, but there isn't sufficient infrastructure to get the power from the north to the south, apparently a lack of cables! Seems like a fixable problem. Anyway we continued driving in Denmark, which was very flat land. Gisa said it was so flat you can see on Friday who is coming to visit you on Sunday! (I am totally going to steal that line. Borrow. I meant borrow.)
So, through southern Denmark! It seems there are Danish hot dogs that Gisa likes and we stopped at a gas station (!) to get one but she said it wasn't as good as she remembered. She is into nutrition and wellness but everyone needs a treat sometimes, especially me. We talked a lot about that and she gave me a lot of good advice about my never ending quest to improve and vary my diet.
Then, Copenhagen! The outskirts, and really the center too, was overrun with construction everywhere you looked, just all over the place! We went to the Loven first and I checked in and asked where to change $ (at the Central Station), and if they had a desktop for guests to use (no), and got a twenty minute lecture on the Evil Freeloading Syrians (tm) and they also asked me what I thought of Trump et al. And I told them. Most people that I spoke to, once they found I was from the US, wanted to know what I thought of Trump, and occasionally Mrs. Clinton, but no one mentioned Mr. Sanders or Mr. Cruz at all. Quite a few seemed puzzled we couldn't find anyone better to be President! They also subscribed to the untruth that the ACA aka Obamacare meant national health for all in the US and I corrected that misapprehension and noted that it was a small step in the right direction and that it had helped me, but that we still had a long way to go for a sane health care policy.
Anyway.
So I got up Saturday nice 'n' early (couldn't sleep anyway, remember?) and went to the Central Station and changed $ per the advice of the Norwegian concierge. The cute young Danish woman also in the office was nice enough to let me use her phone to text/email but no go. Gmail has a way to log in remotely nowadays that doesn't use the security questions any more but wants to text or call the number provided or use another device, neither of which helped me one bit! Next time I'm going to get a handy, which is German slang for a local cell phone.
I changed some dollars to Euro and to Danish Kroner, then met G for brekkie, her hotel, the Mercur, gave two brekkie cards good at the buffet for two for each day of the stay, which meant that we could both eat for free the two mornings.
Then, after more fruitless fiddling with the stupid phone (I didn't stop to think that it wouldn't work in Denmark nor did I know that it took awhile to connect.) we went bucherie-hopping since Tivoli Gardens didn't open until 11 and it was only 9.30. The first bookshop was well organized, and the English language titles were downstairs and I found a book by Brian Epstein's assistant, so that one goes in the collection--never saw it before and barely heard of him. (Standing In the Wings by Joe Flannery, History Press, 1st ed.) The next shop was upstairs behind a grate down the street from where G saw a necktie with skulls on it and went in and got one as well as some cufflinks with shiny skulls also, for her Gentleman Friend of course. But that bucherie was closed, so off to the next. Third shop was a stereotypically cluttered place and there found a book of interviews 1965-2011 with Keith Richards as well as several vintage mystery paperbacks. It was early afternoon by then and G wanted to relax a while so I set off in search of postcards and stamps to send to co-workers Steve and Ian. (Note: they were mailed Saturday 4/23 and as I write this on May 7th, have not yet arrived!) First, we got cakes and tea from a group of women in the town square selling tasty treats to benefit children in distress, great grub and a worthy cause. I went round to the Round Tower, the Rundetaarn, which was built between 1635-1642, at first as an astronomical observatory, but but it's now really a place for views for tourists. But, the line to get in was a bunch of people long and I didn't have time to go up, as I had to meet Gisa at 4 at her room. We'd already walked along the Stroget shopping area and she'd shown me where she was married and the restaurants and stores near the canal area, and somehow I got turned around after seeing the Tower and ended up down there again, which even I knew wasn't right. It was raining and I was tired of walking (it snowed in the morning when she got a shirt for the GF and I got one for me and an umbrella that I had to leave with her as it wouldn't fit in my case and I didn't want to take it loose on the plane) so I decided to get a cab and zipped back across town for about E 16-18 and arrived to meet only about fifteen minutes late. Am I directionally challenged? Clearly, yes.
Then--Tivoli Gardens! The second oldest amusement part in the world, opened in 1843. Funnily enough, the oldest is only a few miles away, the Dyrehavsbakken, which opened for business way back in 1583! We didn't go there, though--didn't know about it! See what happens when you can't look things up on your handy handy? Anyway when we got to Tivoli it had mercifully stopped raining and we walked around in the sun and briskness and saw the nice flower arrangement and lawns and rides and the house peacocks. G wanted to go on the roller coaster through the mini-'Alps' which was pretty good, went up and down and through pitch dark tunnels and so we saw no need for the big wooden one. Then we went on the big tower with seats hanging two by two on chains that rise up and go round and round. What a view! Too bad no pics from the top--they make you empty your pockets and lock everything up so nothing falls and hurts someone. From our vantage point up there we saw the Bridge between Sweden and Denmark that we'd have gone on to get to Malmo and that Ralf was telling me was the site of a ten part television miniseries featuring one detective from each country trying to solve a murder where the corpse was on the bridge right on the border line, halfway in each country. Will try and see if NYPL has it. (Which they do. Waiting on it now.) But spinning way up there was fun, if a little unnerving, and won't soon be forgotten.
We walked around Tivoli a little more and decided to eat there. G said I should choose between American style diner and Danish rest, and I picked the latter, for when in Copenhagen..... Had both of us an onion tart, which was v. good. Then we took a leisurely stroll back to the Round Tower only to find it geschlossen at 18.00 even though their website said 21.00. No tall views for scenic Copenhagen pictures on this trip, I guess! After stroll G returned to room to retire and M wandered around for awhile longer. Fri night had supper halfway between our two rooms at Italian place, had 1 pc garlic (knoblauch!) bread, 1 small piece black bread, 1 garden salat, tomato and mozzarella, and tom soup, all v. good.
Copenhagen reminded me of Amsterdam and Vienna, old European charm and pedestrian only shopping streets with generally prosperous, happy looking people but some signs of poverty and inequality.
Another free brekkie at the hotel, had a bit less today than the dozen scrambled I inhaled the previous day along with cheese and yogurt (Jeez, I could hardly waddle out the door!), then back to Hamburg. Left a little early since Cop was dead on Sunday morning and so we could have a little time in Hamburg. Freezing rain dogged us in Denmark and Germany, as did a fruitless search for The Perfect Danish Hot Dog. In Hamburg, met Gisa's Gentleman Friend, whose name I'm sorry I've forgotten, and he seemed a good guy, handlebar mustache, good sense of humor. Somehow the conversation turned to the Life of Brian, and we agreed that it's one of the funniest motion pictures ever made. Clearly a man of quality and taste! Had lunch of falafel and salat that the boys got from the Turkish place down the street where we'd eaten last time. Henrik and Leif are teens now, and a few years back Leif decided he wanted to be known by his second name, so he is now Constantine (Konstantin?).
GF drives a vintage '64 Volvo, done on ceiling in purple velvet. Talking about Pythonesque humor, we were talking about how boys weren't able to join us at Tivoli and about the roller coaster ride through the 'Alps,' and he said, I'll show you Tivoli and went screaming around a corner on just about two wheels! Funny, even though he about killed us all. When we got in the car I yelled 'Driver! Hautptbanhof!' to a general laugh. Wish I'd thought to yell 'Schnell!' but that maybe would have been too much. At the apartment after lunch, GF says, after I politely declined a cig, you don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't eat meat, what do you do? Kind of dull, I said, but I'm pretty good on guitar. So they asked me if I'd sit down at their piano and play a couple. (Gisa: Do you want to play? MD: The question is, do you want to hear me play?) Of course I sat and ran through For No One and Imagine. They were kind enough to acclaim me and happily overlooked my mistakes on the piano fingers and my hoarse voice. Felt good to be at a real piano again. Then we had to pile into the retro Volvo and head to the Hbf. So G and GF and Henrik and Konstantin were good enough to take me to the station and see me off and thus to Bochum. Per Ela's instructions I looked on the platform and didn't see a familiar face so I went downstairs to the entrance to the track (Eingang fur die gleis?) and eventually saw Marcel. Seems we were standing twenty meters apart and didn't see each other! After a hearty supper of broccoli soup and cauliflower with melted Gruyere and vegetables and that amazing hot chocolate cake (with a liquid chocolate center, heated in the oven and some kind of tasty. Didn't hurt me too much and o boy were they good) then to bed and a few chapters of 'Trent's Last Case,' which was quite good, and Monday morning off to Munster. It was another cold morning and the 15 minute delay brought back memories of the train delay in trying to get to Hamburg in 2014, as mentioned, plus I had to change trains, but only across the platform, so easy enough.
For a city of 300,000 people which includes 50K students, the banhof at Munster was strangely pedestrian, consisting only of a corridor with the tracks on either side. If there were any amentities, I didn't see them. No loo, which I realized I sorely needed upon disembarking. I started to walk around and saw a comics shop on the other side of the station but it didn't open until 11 and it was only a little past ten so I decided to come back to it later, except that I forgot where it was! I kept looking for a WC and thought there might be one in the little park across the street but no. Munster is known as Germany's bicycle capital and they are really ubiquitous, second only to Amsterdam in my travels. There are even great big parking garages dedicated to thousands of two-wheelers! Never saw that before. So I went along, intending at first to go the Picasso museum, but I changed direction to go instead to the Prinzipalmarkt, a sort of outdoor mall with arched passageways. Luckily my phone finally started working to the point where I could use the map function to find my way which proved invaluable. Finally I decided to stop at one of the numerous bakeries in the area (BOY, do the Danish and Germans and Austrians enjoy their baked treats!) for a cup of tea and a rest (room) while I planned my next move. There were also numerous bookshops in town, at one of which was on the shelf the UK edition of Otto's Sherlock collection. I snapped a pic after asking and explaining why to the clerk; perhaps boss Otto'll get a kick out of it. Ralf was good enough to print the Wiki page for Munster and so I had a handy list of attractions. Unfortunately the Stadtmuseum was closed Mondays, as was the Picasso museum (Good thing I changed directions early on!) At least I saved E10 admission to Picasso but I wanted to see and learn about the history of the city. Oh well. In the town center is the St. Lambert's church, dating back to 1375. There are cages hanging from the tower that in 1535 were used to display the corpses of the leaders of the Munster rebellion, which promoted a kind of proto-socialism to the point of renouncing property and making everyone walk around naked in preparations for the End Times.
I circled the town center and went over by the University to see the Schloss, or palace, that is now a U. admin building. There was also a botanical garden here and I spent some time happily wandering among it. Happily wandering around a new town is a pleasure of travelling, and this was a most pleasant interlude, as was walking in Copenhagen despite the cold. Strolling back in the general direction of the town centrum I stopped at a Rewe Markt (Roo-veh?) for some cheese and nuts, cheaper than a deli, I'll wager. Although it would have been cool, now that I think of it, to go to a German deli despite the language barrier. (Pardon me for the bits and pieces of German in this essay. In a way I'm still there!) Along a lovely promenade is the Zwinger fortress, a round stone building dating to 1528, also used as a prison in the 18th-20th centuries. When I was sitting, eating and taking pictures and again pondering my next move, a man came up to me and asked me some questions in German. I busted out my old standby, 'Ich sprechen kein Deutsch.' ('I don't speak German.') He then said he spoke a little English and asked me where the Turkish embassy was, so I looked it up on my now-mostly working phone, and pointed him in the right direction. So maybe I did a good deed, but imagine asking me for directions? The person who can start walking in the wrong direction even with map in hand? (See: turning the wrong way in Copenhagen and ending up on the other side of town even though I had a map on me.)
So onwards, Munster has quite a few old buildings, like St. Paul's cathedral that towers over the city with its green top, and the Kramerantshaus. It was cloudy and cool and drizzled off and on most of the day, so some of the pics were taken quickly. Smack in the middle of the shopping area was the Erbdrostenhof, that had a gate around it that was open, so I strolled in, but no one was around so I walked through into the back yard and back around to the front, to the street. It was ornate in the style of the old buildings and dates to 1749-53. I noticed that a lot in Germany, shiny new structures side-by-side with those dating back centuries. I understand Rome is like that too, which city is next on the visiting list.
I spent some time wandering around looking for the comics shop while strolling along the water. Munster is situated along the river Aa, and what kind of a name is that for a river? Late in the afternoon it started to rain and I continued to look for the shop once I ascertained that the Stadtmuseum and the Picasso were closed. Stopped in a grocery in a mall for a snack and found some delicious zuckerfrei coconut yogurt and inhaled that as I continued to walk around and snap pics.
I finally found the comic shop but only 15 minutes before my train was to leave, but it turned out all right; it was no great shakes and had nothing to interest me. In fact despite the plethora of bookshops in Munster, nearly all of them sold new stuff, mostly in German, so I didn't get anything there.
Back to Bochum and Tuesday morning off to the mining museum. In the Ruhr area, there is/was much mineral and coal mining, and it was this part of the country which provided much energy from the 1700 to the 1980s. We museumgoers, which included a gaggle of students and a couple of guys from Canada whose German was about nonexistent like mine, went down in an elevator, on the doors of which were projected images of contemporary miners that spoke about the mining operations, past and present. Wish I could have understood!
Of course the tour itself was in German, but I got the gist of it and I thought that the tour guide did well; everyone seemed engaged and several asked questions. He would step aside occasionally and let folks play around, for example, with the jackhammers, which replaced pickaxes in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. The machinery used by the miners was formidable, and as time passed, seemed to have gotten bigger and stronger! Also a couple of rooms made note of the role of the various minerals in making household products. The gift shop was full of jewelry, which I guess promoted the mining interests in Bochum's history. A pretty good-sized city, too, something over 350K. But all the books in the gift shop were in Deutsch, which was disappointing; figure they'd certainly sell more if they had some in English, including to me.
Down in the shafts, which by the way were shallower reconstructions and not real mines, it was very cold and I was feeling dauncey so it wasn't as good as it could have been. Then we went to the top of the structure, high over the city, and took a couple of pics, but it was raining and v. windy, so it was tough to snap, but I got a few.
Then off to the antiquariat in Bochum. A wild-haired, bespectacled man who spoke English and was friendly and helpful, presided over a stereotypically cluttered store; there were piles, apparently random, everywhere, all over. He directed me to the section of books in English, which were mostly paperbacks in double rows on the metal shelves. Ela patiently dropped me off around three and promised to come back for me around six (she patiently dropped me off all over the place, the banhof, airport, and bookstores several times, along with Marcel. Kudos!) so I browsed for three hours. Just about enough time to peruse all or most of the books in English that he had. It was real cold in there too, so I was chilled all day, which contributed to the daunciness. But the gentleman had a fair amount of vintage mystery paperbacks, and I picked up a couple of ES Gardners, a Graham Greene, a very interesting edition of the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, published in Munchen in '65 and intended for German students of English and annotated with study themes, a copy of Bulldog Drummond by 'Sapper' in a trade paper edition from 1931, Raffles by Hornung (Otto's favorite mystery, so I'm told), Beast Must Die by Blake, Lost Weekend by Chas. Jackson, a J.J Marric, and one volume of a multi-set about various genres, I got the procedurals which included King's Ransom by McBain, which means I only need three more to have all 55 of the 87th Precinct stories. Also a magazine for theater folks from the UK in 1963, mostly about Shakespeare, which was interesting if a bit dry. Not sure how much the charge even was for that one, just a euro or two, I think. Some of the prices dated back some years to the D-marks days, which, if no 'E' in front of the number, were half as many Euro so I saved some and only spent E15.
Then back home for a tasty supper of Aubergine (eggplant) along with the last of the broccoli soup. When I wrote in their guest book, I included a plea for Ela to bring some of her homemade soup here!
The Lufthansa ground crews were in a labor dispute and were striking, I don't know the issues, but had some uneasy moments when it looked like I might not be able to leave on time. I think Ralf was having fun with me over it, claiming that my flight was cancelled and that I could maybe go back to Denmark and leave from there! Happily they settled and my flight left bang on time and all was well--flight to EWR was uneventful, and remember those are the best kind. Pleasant young German fellow agreed to take window seat; he had three Sprites, several waters, and an orangehaft, and never went to the loo once! Truly a man of iron.
A very enjoyable, relaxing holiday in which I saw many cool things, unmarred by illness or transportation troubles, home to find kitty fine if mad at me for leaving, and now back to the routine. Auf wiedersehen, and I will be back!
May 2016
It's Yesterday Once More.
Very likely In the summer of 1973, my father and I went on a trip on our boat for about two weeks, sailing around Long Island Sound. Along about the end of July, beginning of August, I should think. I hadn't spent much time with my father of late and I was still a couple of years away from being the surly, annoying teenager that I turned into so we had a nice time. We had a power boat of about 26-28 feet if I remember correctly which slept two or three or four people very comfortably. Logically, to a twelve-year-old, I brought along a minimal amount of clothing, but a big stack of books and my portable radio. At that time, the top 40 was much more eclectic than now, you could hear many different styles and artists, selected by the disc jockey, instead of computer-generated dance music selected by another computer. That said, there was the Top Ten in heavy rotation, and that trip I remember three songs playing over and over to the point where even today when I hear them, it takes me right back in my memory to that summer and that boat trip with Pop. Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, Touch Me in the Morning by Diana Ross, and Yesterday Once More by the Carpenters. A few years later I got into Purple in a big way, and I've seen them in three of the world's great cities: At the Cow Palace in San Francisco in '84 or '85; in Brixton, London in 1993; and at the Garden in New York in 2007 (I think). The show in London was one of the last with original guitarist Ritchie Blackmore as he quit just a few days later. The NYC show had Steve Morse on guitar and was really good, they opened with Fireball, one of my favorite songs. The San Francisco show was in support of the Perfect Strangers record and I don't remember much about that one because a) it was a long time ago and b) I may not have been cold sober.
I only ever liked two Supremes songs, I always thought D. Ross was a bit overrated and also had a chicken neck, but Stop! In the Name of Love and Love Child are topnotch and Touch Me in the Morning is also a fine tune from her solo years.
I never saw the Carpenters play live (or Ms. Ross, for that matter) and frankly they were seen as a bit corny during my teenage years, but even at my most snobby I recognized that Karen C. had a voice for the ages and, while some of the material was indeed pretty syrupy, Yesterday Once More really worked for me, just as it does to this day. Except for the chorus, kind of. The album version is very long and has a retro part in the middle that I'd completely forgotten but I was most familiar with the single version anyway.
We sailed (powered?) into port somewhere on Long Island one night for a proper meal and noticed that the local community theater was showing a production of 'You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown,' and since I was and remain a huge fan of Charles Schulz' work, Dad and I decided to see it. I recall enjoying it, my first exposure to live theater! And not my last by a long chalk.
Then as now, I liked to read during meals as well as before and after, and I was afraid of running out of reading material, so what I did was, I checked out a huge stack of books from the Ferguson Library in Stamford, Connecticut, which is happily still there, and added up all the pages of all the books, divided the total by the number of days we'd be gone, in order to have an amount of pages I could read each day so as not to run out. I've long since forgotten what books they were. What I wouldn't give to see a list of what I was reading then! Whatever YA titles were around? Maybe a little too old for Matt Christopher and Encyclopedia Brown? Who knows? Very likely at least a couple on MLB history. There's no telling now, but if I get a burst of long buried memory I will edit to reflect that. Yep, I was a weird, cerebral kid. But I didn't run out of pages!
May 2016
I only ever liked two Supremes songs, I always thought D. Ross was a bit overrated and also had a chicken neck, but Stop! In the Name of Love and Love Child are topnotch and Touch Me in the Morning is also a fine tune from her solo years.
I never saw the Carpenters play live (or Ms. Ross, for that matter) and frankly they were seen as a bit corny during my teenage years, but even at my most snobby I recognized that Karen C. had a voice for the ages and, while some of the material was indeed pretty syrupy, Yesterday Once More really worked for me, just as it does to this day. Except for the chorus, kind of. The album version is very long and has a retro part in the middle that I'd completely forgotten but I was most familiar with the single version anyway.
We sailed (powered?) into port somewhere on Long Island one night for a proper meal and noticed that the local community theater was showing a production of 'You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown,' and since I was and remain a huge fan of Charles Schulz' work, Dad and I decided to see it. I recall enjoying it, my first exposure to live theater! And not my last by a long chalk.
Then as now, I liked to read during meals as well as before and after, and I was afraid of running out of reading material, so what I did was, I checked out a huge stack of books from the Ferguson Library in Stamford, Connecticut, which is happily still there, and added up all the pages of all the books, divided the total by the number of days we'd be gone, in order to have an amount of pages I could read each day so as not to run out. I've long since forgotten what books they were. What I wouldn't give to see a list of what I was reading then! Whatever YA titles were around? Maybe a little too old for Matt Christopher and Encyclopedia Brown? Who knows? Very likely at least a couple on MLB history. There's no telling now, but if I get a burst of long buried memory I will edit to reflect that. Yep, I was a weird, cerebral kid. But I didn't run out of pages!
May 2016
Hot Dogs, Green Grass, All At Shea!
When I was a lad in the early 70s, me and my chum Mark were both rabid Mets fans and would play ersatz National League games all the livelong day once school let out. Chastised more than once for calling at the crack of dawn on Saturdays, Mark was righthanded and would take the identity of ‘Mark’ Shamsky and Jim ‘MarkAndrew,’ while y-r friendly blogger, being lefthanded, would be Ed Kranepool and Bud Harrelson. Who wasn’t lefthanded but who was my favorite player at the time. On the room side of my bedroom door I had a small poster made out of a kind of fiber board stuck there, a nice color image of Buddy chasing a pop fly, I think. Hard to believe it was over forty years ago!
So we REALLY looked forward to summer in them days, since we could play for hours on end in our back yard or, more rarely, at the elementary school down the street. I only attended that school for one year, in sixth grade, but that was enough! Didn’t want to spend the summer there too although we did get up some games on the ballfield there when we had enough guys. Usually if there was more than Mark and me we just played in the street. You could do that in the suburbs then. And how lucky we were to be growing up in a time when folks weren’t so fearful and paranoid. Many’s the time, especially after school let out, that I’d just head out in the morning and come back for supper with nary a raised eyebrow. Usually I was playing ball somewhere or riding my bike or downtown at the candy store looking for my sugar fix and at the latest comics, or maybe at the library. Yep, I went to the library in the summer. What of it?
So in the summertime, from ‘can’t see’ to ‘can’t see,’ me and Mark would bust out our gloves and bats and balls and pitch to each other, us as the Mets, against our nefarious foes in the National League. We didn’t generally specify opposing players, what we’d do is, when the ‘Mets’ were at bat, take turns hitting as various New York players. There was a row of bushes separating our yard with that of the neighbor’s, and of course if we drilled one over the shrubbery, that was a home run. As I recall, we rarely did! We had a good-sized plastic bat and large size wiffle balls that we used, the better to protect the windows of my house! We always laughed at the logo on the bat: Saf-T-Play. Supposedly it had cork in it to propel the ball further, if you hit it, and since it was plastic, it really couldn’t hurt you too much. So we’d do that until we mutually decided there were three outs. Then we’d switch to defense! So we’d throw each other grounders and fly balls and make ‘double plays’ and such until we decided that there were three outs. Strangely, it always took a lot longer for the ‘Mets’ to be retired than the opposition!
As kids will do, or did then, I don’t know if young’uns still do this, but we imitated our favorite players mannerisms. We both liked Ken Boswell’s straight-armed, leaning over stance, for instance, and I remember trying Stan Musial’s kid-peeking-around-corners-to-see-if-the-cops-were-there batting form which I’d seen in a book. I wrapped tape around my wrists because I’d seen the big boys do so on television; although they probably didn’t use Scotch tape like I did since we didn’t have white surgical tape! I loved the style then in vogue of wearing the batting helmet over the regular cap, remember the plastic batting helmets with the adjustable band inside? I had a couple of Mets’ versions over the years, and I even used one in the 80s when I played intramural softball at university! Although I never played officially in school, largely because I sucked, I remember how cool it felt to have an actual pair of (plastic) cleats even though they never got out of the back yard. And at some point I got some stirrup socks to wear with my cleats, but no baseball trousers, so I took a pair of school trou and cut them off at the knee, the better to show off my stirrups! Somewhat to my mother’s chagrin.
A couple of times per summer I’d get out to Shea Stadium to watch the Amazin’s in person. I’ve only got fleeting memories of those times, but I have a photo of myself in the parking lot pointing to the ballpark. A car buff would have a field day identifying all those gas guzzlers! I remember going with Mark and his mother once but it rained and during the delay they decided to leave, so what could I do? Another time my mother took me and Mark, I think, and we saw the Giants and I remember Tito Fuentes hotdogging all over the place and that he had a bright yellow glove. The Mets had an outfielder called Dave Marshall then, about ‘72, and when he was throwing between innings he kind of flipped himself the ball before he threw it to Agee or whoever was playing center and we got a kick out of that. I got a coin bank with miniature bats all around it representing all of the National League teams. A few years later, me and Mom saw Tom Seaver’s return to Shea after he was traded. He shut out the Mets and hit a double.
I had a lot more fun playing in my back yard with Mark than I ever did in Little League. I have a photo of myself that my father took, I was playing for the Star Deli team and my shining moment? A bases loaded single! At least one RBI! Even though I’m left-handed, for some reason I told the coach that I could play second base, so he put me out there and a ground ball came my way--oops! right through the wickets. End of second base. I might have made a decent LL pitcher, what with being a southpaw and all, but I was a scrawny, weak kid and I could barely get the ball to the plate from the mound. One game I found myself on second as a runner and after the inning the coach told me that I’d missed the steal sign numerous times. This kind of thing is why I liked playing around the neighborhood so much better. None of that competitive crap, just for fun. I give my folks credit for not being pushy, though, they let me go my own way for the most part, whether it was my obsession with the Grand Old Game from ages 8-14 or my obsession with Rock and Roll from ages 14-death. Both of which I still have, actually.
June 2016
So we REALLY looked forward to summer in them days, since we could play for hours on end in our back yard or, more rarely, at the elementary school down the street. I only attended that school for one year, in sixth grade, but that was enough! Didn’t want to spend the summer there too although we did get up some games on the ballfield there when we had enough guys. Usually if there was more than Mark and me we just played in the street. You could do that in the suburbs then. And how lucky we were to be growing up in a time when folks weren’t so fearful and paranoid. Many’s the time, especially after school let out, that I’d just head out in the morning and come back for supper with nary a raised eyebrow. Usually I was playing ball somewhere or riding my bike or downtown at the candy store looking for my sugar fix and at the latest comics, or maybe at the library. Yep, I went to the library in the summer. What of it?
So in the summertime, from ‘can’t see’ to ‘can’t see,’ me and Mark would bust out our gloves and bats and balls and pitch to each other, us as the Mets, against our nefarious foes in the National League. We didn’t generally specify opposing players, what we’d do is, when the ‘Mets’ were at bat, take turns hitting as various New York players. There was a row of bushes separating our yard with that of the neighbor’s, and of course if we drilled one over the shrubbery, that was a home run. As I recall, we rarely did! We had a good-sized plastic bat and large size wiffle balls that we used, the better to protect the windows of my house! We always laughed at the logo on the bat: Saf-T-Play. Supposedly it had cork in it to propel the ball further, if you hit it, and since it was plastic, it really couldn’t hurt you too much. So we’d do that until we mutually decided there were three outs. Then we’d switch to defense! So we’d throw each other grounders and fly balls and make ‘double plays’ and such until we decided that there were three outs. Strangely, it always took a lot longer for the ‘Mets’ to be retired than the opposition!
As kids will do, or did then, I don’t know if young’uns still do this, but we imitated our favorite players mannerisms. We both liked Ken Boswell’s straight-armed, leaning over stance, for instance, and I remember trying Stan Musial’s kid-peeking-around-corners-to-see-if-the-cops-were-there batting form which I’d seen in a book. I wrapped tape around my wrists because I’d seen the big boys do so on television; although they probably didn’t use Scotch tape like I did since we didn’t have white surgical tape! I loved the style then in vogue of wearing the batting helmet over the regular cap, remember the plastic batting helmets with the adjustable band inside? I had a couple of Mets’ versions over the years, and I even used one in the 80s when I played intramural softball at university! Although I never played officially in school, largely because I sucked, I remember how cool it felt to have an actual pair of (plastic) cleats even though they never got out of the back yard. And at some point I got some stirrup socks to wear with my cleats, but no baseball trousers, so I took a pair of school trou and cut them off at the knee, the better to show off my stirrups! Somewhat to my mother’s chagrin.
A couple of times per summer I’d get out to Shea Stadium to watch the Amazin’s in person. I’ve only got fleeting memories of those times, but I have a photo of myself in the parking lot pointing to the ballpark. A car buff would have a field day identifying all those gas guzzlers! I remember going with Mark and his mother once but it rained and during the delay they decided to leave, so what could I do? Another time my mother took me and Mark, I think, and we saw the Giants and I remember Tito Fuentes hotdogging all over the place and that he had a bright yellow glove. The Mets had an outfielder called Dave Marshall then, about ‘72, and when he was throwing between innings he kind of flipped himself the ball before he threw it to Agee or whoever was playing center and we got a kick out of that. I got a coin bank with miniature bats all around it representing all of the National League teams. A few years later, me and Mom saw Tom Seaver’s return to Shea after he was traded. He shut out the Mets and hit a double.
I had a lot more fun playing in my back yard with Mark than I ever did in Little League. I have a photo of myself that my father took, I was playing for the Star Deli team and my shining moment? A bases loaded single! At least one RBI! Even though I’m left-handed, for some reason I told the coach that I could play second base, so he put me out there and a ground ball came my way--oops! right through the wickets. End of second base. I might have made a decent LL pitcher, what with being a southpaw and all, but I was a scrawny, weak kid and I could barely get the ball to the plate from the mound. One game I found myself on second as a runner and after the inning the coach told me that I’d missed the steal sign numerous times. This kind of thing is why I liked playing around the neighborhood so much better. None of that competitive crap, just for fun. I give my folks credit for not being pushy, though, they let me go my own way for the most part, whether it was my obsession with the Grand Old Game from ages 8-14 or my obsession with Rock and Roll from ages 14-death. Both of which I still have, actually.
June 2016
Commons, Rookies, and Chumps.
WeCommons, Rookies, and Chumps--an appreciation.
Also, a bigger font size for near-sighted folk like me!
In May of 1990, I answered an ad for a job at a baseball card store, which were quite common in the Northeast at the time. There were three things about Cardland in Bridgeport, Conn, that really appealed to me: It was only a five-minute walk from my house, it had to do with the Grand Old Game, and the place opened at noon, which was a good selling point, for then, as now, I'm a poor morning person.
So I went over there, wearing a Detroit Tigers cap over my (then) ponytail for good luck, and I got the job! The co-owners ran a wholesale candy and tobacco business and a couple of years prior decided to take advantage of the boom in sports collectibles to sell the trading cards that were burgeoning in popularity. The pay was thin, but as mentioned there were mitigating factors. I'd actually been in the store a couple of times. As mentioned somewhere or other on this blog, in the fall of '86 I worked in downtown Bridgeport and used to shop at a Woolworth's-like store called, I think, Green's, and they were selling packs of 1986 Fleer cards for forty or fifty cents per pack. With the Amazing Mets out in front of the NL East, my interest was sparked and so I bought some packs and enjoyed a modest renaissance of collecting. When the shop opened around '87 or '88, I toddled over there and spoke to the proprietor John, who politely pointed out a printing error on my '86 Fleer Jose Canseco and gently confirmed that, perfect game notwithstanding, there wasn't much demand for Tom Browning cards. I think he took my '87 McGwires off my hands though. Eventually he left to start his own shop and they needed a new proprietor which is where this writer came in!
An older gentleman by the name of Joe worked there part time and he showed me the ropes, such as they were. I was thus introduced to the dubious joys of sorting! See, sports cards are divided into rookie cards, stars, and commons, the latter being the more run of the mill players who don't command a price premium. So if you want to complete your set of, say, 1971 Topps, you'd make a list of the cards needed by the number, and then you'd come into the store and we'd look through the box of '71s and pluck out what was on the list. Much easier if they are in numbered order!
Then I learned about condition. With any collectible the condition of it is the most important factor, and I found out quickly that card collectors are some kind of picky! The corners need to be sharp, the picture needs to be well centered, and starting right around this time, collectors started complaining about the stains that the infamous bubble gum left on the cards, so if I remember correctly, 1991 was the last year that Topps included gum in their packs. I always thought they could just wrap the sticks but evidently the Brooklyn/Duryea PA company decided to eliminate the expense altogether. Topps enjoyed a monopoly on baseball cards from 1955, when they bought out the Bowman company, until 1980, when a court ruled against their cornered market. Thus 1981 saw Fleer and Donruss issuing somewhat hasty sets noted for blurry photography and thin card stock. Then in 1989 came Upper Deck with much better stock and two color photos per card.
Most adult collectors have a soft spot for the cards that they collected as kids, this writer's being 1970-'73 with just a bit in 1974 before I discovered rock and roll. As with books and music, I like the vintage stuff rather more than what's going on now ($5 and up for a pack? $80 for a wax box, or foil box, or whatever they're called now? Yipes!) and over the years I was able to acquire a few cool things, a 1910 T-206 Fred Merkle, a 1934 Leo Durocher, a 1957 Jimmy Piersall which I later got signed, a bunch of 1950 and 1951 Bowmans, heavy on the Whiz Kid Phillies. I have a Mike Schmidt rookie card, a second year George Brett, a '71 Nolan Ryan, a nearly complete set of the 1964 b&w Beatles cards, several autographed cards, and even a Taft Wright card from the 40s. Also, a Verna Felton card from the NBC television/radio stars set and a George Washington and a Warren Harding from an early presidential set. Quite a contrast!
By the time I entered the business, a statistician by the name of James Beckett had begun compiling selling prices of new and vintage cards, and publishing a magazine listing them. This was, at best, a mixed blessing. From my perspective, it took much of the fun out of the hobby by reducing the point to money. And isn't there too much of that mentality in the world already? So many times I would speak to customers, young and old alike, and point out some amazing stat on the back or some story about the player, only to hear the typical refrain, 'But how much is it worth?' No matter how many times I tried to explain that something was 'worth' however much you, the customer, was willing to pay, or that printing numbers in a magazine did not mean you could exchange that card for that amount of money on demand, or that your 1989 Topps set was never, ever going to pay for your kid's college, people believe what they want to believe and that's the way it is.
Along about the mid eighties, the baby boomers suddenly realized that they weren't immortal after all, and started to monetize their nostalgia for their childhood, and certain categories of comics, cards, toys, and records were selling for significant premiums. Although I would rephrase the typical observation, 'Who ever thought that this [collectible] would be worth money someday?' as 'Who ever thought that the boomers would age so poorly and pay fat prices for some of this stuff?' for the latter is much closer to the truth.
We played host to many regular customers, quite a few characters among them. There was an apartment above the store, a two-room job for which I think the owners were charging $500/month twenty-five years ago, a price that many would kill for today. It was rented to a young fellow and I think his lady friend, but it soon became clear that he was not on the up-and-up. One day I arrived at the shop to find a huge hole in the wall, up near the ceiling, and the cash drawer gone! I suspected the miscreant living upstairs but had no proof. It could be a coincidence, but shortly thereafter he came into the shop and asked me to change a huge bag of coins into bills. I told him to go to a bank but he kept bugging me to give him the bills, unmoved by my protest that giving a customer change in change wouldn't go over too well. Another regular tried to steal a Jose Canseco '86 Donruss card, which was over $100 retail at the time. One of our other regulars was a local cop, and when he came strolling in that day, the wannabe thief passed me a note that said, If I give back the card, will it be ok? This after he swore up and down that he didn't have it when I noticed the empty space in the case! I don't remember exactly, but I don't think that we pressed charges, just banished him.
To be sure, there were plenty of nice, reasonable people who enjoyed collecting for its own pleasures and it was a very fine thing to talk baseball all summer (and indeed the year round) with some fellow fans. Not to sound too curmudgeonly, but this was before juicers, multiple layers of playoffs, this replay nonsense, and nine figure contracts, so it was in many respects the last gasp of fun in the grand old game. While quite wealthy, most players at least looked human, and not like the behemoths of today. And get off my lawn!
We had a Goudey Babe Ruth card from '33 or '34 which I'd surely like to have in my collection, or Babe Ruth anything, best ballplayer ever. Can't remember if we ever sold that one; I may have made a trade for a bunch of Nolan Ryans and other stars of the '70s but can't recall for sure.
We had a few autographed items over the years, but the one that took the cake was when a fellow came in with a ball signed by the 1950 Boston Braves. He wanted a lot of money for it because Henry Aaron's name was on it but was unbowed when I pointed out that Hammerin' Hank came up to the Braves in 1954. When they were in Milwaukee. Reminds me of the fellow who wanted me to buy a signed biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, published in 1973. When I told him that the great architect died in 1959, he STILL insisted that it was a genuine signature. In fact, it was a facsimile printed under the frontispiece as part of the design of the book!
We had a Heartland statue of Mickey Mantle in the display case which drew lots of comment but few inquiries from prospective purchasers. It did have some condition issues like a crack running through the Mick's torso, and it wasn't the original bat he was holding. I had quite a few fraught discussions with the shop owner about how we couldn't hope to sell it at full retail for a mint condition example, given its faults, but he was unmoved, and it was his store, after all.
We had our trade papers in the sports memorabilia industry. I liked reading Sports Collectors Digest, which I think is still around. They had interesting interviews with former players and a lot of times would print their addresses so you could send a card or something and get it signed. I always followed the protocol of sending two cards, inviting the player to keep one if they wished, and ALWAYS provided a stamped envelope for return along with a short, polite cover letter. Most retired players didn't charge anything and most signed and returned both cards. There were exceptions, though. I remember a Mets outfielder sending a form letter saying he couldn't sign because the cards I sent had a glossy finish and couldn't be signed, despite the fact that I'd sent two 1986 cards that were all cardboard and no finish. I remember sending Bobby Valentine two 1979 cards showing him as a Mets player, and him sending back one 1987 card showing him as the Rangers manager. At least he sent something! I've sent copies of their respective books to Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez, with return envelopes and postage, out to Queens where they announce for the Mets, but nothing yet. In Darling's case it's been several years, so that seems unlikely, but I sent Keith's book Pure Baseball in March or April so I hold out some hope, however slim. Sadly, the agent for Jerry Reuss sent a form letter and my card back demanding $13 before the former pitcher would deign to sign. Not from me, buster! But almost all of the old timers were happy to get a cheery letter and sign, so I have quite a few stars from yesteryear in my collection.
Non-sports cards were popular as well. This blogger believes it wrong to profit off of other people's misery but the cards depicting the 1991 invasion of Iraq sold very well for a short time, and Marvel Comics cards did well also. After a while we got a couple of video games, which as I recall I played (after hours) more than anyone else! Cardland also was the location of the one and only time (so far) that Your Blogger heard himself on the radio. One of the deejays at the local listener supported station ran a small club in central Connecticut and I sent him a demo of four songs to see if I could convince him to let me play a set there, and what did he do but play one of the tunes during his show! I'm listening at the shop, not really paying much attention, and I thought, gee, this tune sounds pretty good. Wait, it's me! I ran over to the boom box and pressed 'record' but I tripped and went sprawling and missed half the song and then the box picked that moment to malfunction and the playback sped up so that I sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks! Of course I knew better than anyone what the song sounded like, but it would have been cool to have the recording of the over the air broadcast.
So things were going along swimmingly, people were interested, the hobby was booming, stores were thriving---and then it all crashed.
What happened? Greed. The card companies believed that, if selling 10,000 cases of cards was good, then selling 100,000 or 1 million would be better! True in some businesses, but in this case overproduction killed the goose, so to speak. Way too much product means less demand and lower prices over time, and since many if not most of the born-again collectors were in it for the money, this drove a lot of people away. Not such a bad thing in a way, but the overriding gimmick that drove a lot of sales hurt in the long run also. The 'chase' card. Eventually it was felt that ten or fifteen cards per pack of MLB players wasn't enough to generate profits and long term, brand loyal customers. The solution was deemed to be special, scarcer cards found in packs only occasionally, that collectors would 'chase,' hopefully buying more packs than usual in the quest to find that limited printing of Reggie, or Shaq, or whoever was the holy grail of the moment. In a very short time, I and other card sellers were confronted by the spectacle of someone, adults as well as kids, opening a pack, and if not seeing the chase card, leaving the cards along with the wrapper on the counter and storming out in a huff. Not much fun for a hobby, eh? Eventually a lot of people would hopefully ask me if the best way to collect was to buy a bunch of things and stash them unopened in the hope of cashing out down the road. I always replied that that method was like zero fun, that the value wouldn't be there in the years to come since so many people were doing the same thing, and, killjoy that I was, that the best thing to do was collect what you like and appreciate, insuring that you'll never be disappointed and not to worry so darn much about money.
Over and over I tried to get people interested in the non-monetary, non chase aspects of collecting: You can see what the player looks like, you might have a cool action shot, you can (sometimes) check out their career stats or where they were born or went to school, you can try to find all the players on your favorite team, and so on.
But nobody wanted to know. It was all money. Lots of times when I was out on the town somewhere, I would run into a customer who would invariably ask, 'Why won't you pay $50 for the '89 Upper Deck Ken Griffey? That's what the guide says it's worth!' And not listen to my reasonable retort that I needed to pay the bills and put food on the table, and that selling below guide was about the only way I could sell anything anyway!
When the Olympics cast aside any further pretense of amateurism and let NBA players in the Games so the US could beat Guam 175-3, and with the rise of Shaquille and Jordan et al, soon basketball cards became our most popular item. Upper Deck cards in general sold well also. But in 1994, the baseball owners made one more ultimately unsuccessful attempt to break the players' union which led to the strike that extended into the 1995 season before judge Sonia Sotomayor ordered everyone to cut the crap and play ball. She went on to bigger and better things, but the sport had been damaged in terms of fandom. Sales were down and the shop owners continually blamed the strike despite my protests that, while certainly a factor, the downturn had a lot to do with their refusal to advertise or promote the business in any way. They also owned the convenience store next door, which naturally made a lot more money and ownership decided to expand sales of lottery tickets, soft drinks and snick-snacks into the card store and shut that end of the business down. So we sold our last card in November of 1994. Then I got into the book business, but that is another post.
August 2016
George Foster in his PJs.
Continuing with our look back at the glory days of card collecting, from 1990-1994 y_r blogger worked at a sports card and memorabilia shop, and as a result would often go to the various card shows in the area to look for stuff for the shop and to meet the autograph guests and try to enhance my own collection at the same time. I stuck an official National League ball in my jacket pocket, intending to ask Hoyt Wilhelm to show me how he held his knuckleball (Generally they are not held with the actual knuckles, but with the fingertips), but while I was waiting to speak to him I noticed that he was very grouchy and I chickened out and just got my '71 Topps card signed instead. One October I went to see Ed Kranepool in (I think) Orange, Conn., but as usual forgot to reset my clock for the end of daylight savings time and showed up an hour early! But the Miracle Mets man was personable and needled me about the Baltimore Orioles cap I was wearing. So I told him that, while I'd been a Mets fan since seeing Game 3 of the '69 Series (in which Ed K hit an 8th inning dinger, which I mentioned also) I was born in Maryland, near Baltimore, hence the O's hat. He mentioned that the photo on the '74 Topps card I had for him to sign was from '73, as that was the only year he had a mustache. Afterwards his wife made him shave it off.
Another former star that I memorably bantered with was Jimmy Piersall. He was sitting at a table by himself, eating a bowl of clam chowder, so me and my colleague figured we'd say hello, and of course we got to talking some baseball. I asked him whether his six-for-six day against the Browns was at Fenway or at Sportsman's Park, as I recall it was the latter. At some point Piersall told me that I really knew my baseball, which made me feel pretty good. He had nothing good to say about the White Sox owners, Einhorn and Reinsdorf, with whom he had feuded. He also held animosity towards ersatz commissioner Bud Selig, who he didn't feel had the best interests of the game at heart.
Back in 1984 or '85, the Mets played a late season game at Shea where they gave away a comic featuring the life story of George Foster. The Amazin's fell behind and George came up in the ninth with a chance to win it but struck out. My memory may be faulty, but I seem to recall quite a few comics being hurled at George in disgust that night! But wait! Rusty Staub came up to pinch-hit and promptly lined a pitch into the right field corner. Ball game.
Fast forward a few years, and the long-retired George was doing a signing at a local show, so I dug out my copy of his comic and off I went. Mr. Foster was sitting at a table with a representative from the show, and I was puzzled to see that he was wearing shades, indoors and in the middle of the afternoon, and was clad in what seemed to me to be his pajamas. Well, perhaps he valued comfort over style, like y_r friendly blogger does. I got to the table and before I could say anything, he started singing. A song. I can't recall what song, but this was getting a little strange! When George finished his tune, I set the comic down in front of him and he peered at it through his shades and said, 'Where the heck did you get this thing?' So I told him where I'd gotten it, leaving out the part about his K, and he cheerfully signed it and off I went. I'll bet there aren't so many signed George Foster comics out there! Of course, there probably isn't much demand either. I kind of miss the days when there were frequent card and comic shows on weekends around my neighborhood in Fairfield County, Conn., but they seem pretty scarce now. I occasionally sell off part of my collection when I need some space, and my general rule of thumb is if I haven't looked at something in a year or more, it's probably expendable, but George's comic? Staying in the collection.
October 2016 (P.S. I notice I've posted this story already. Sorry about that.)
Another former star that I memorably bantered with was Jimmy Piersall. He was sitting at a table by himself, eating a bowl of clam chowder, so me and my colleague figured we'd say hello, and of course we got to talking some baseball. I asked him whether his six-for-six day against the Browns was at Fenway or at Sportsman's Park, as I recall it was the latter. At some point Piersall told me that I really knew my baseball, which made me feel pretty good. He had nothing good to say about the White Sox owners, Einhorn and Reinsdorf, with whom he had feuded. He also held animosity towards ersatz commissioner Bud Selig, who he didn't feel had the best interests of the game at heart.
Back in 1984 or '85, the Mets played a late season game at Shea where they gave away a comic featuring the life story of George Foster. The Amazin's fell behind and George came up in the ninth with a chance to win it but struck out. My memory may be faulty, but I seem to recall quite a few comics being hurled at George in disgust that night! But wait! Rusty Staub came up to pinch-hit and promptly lined a pitch into the right field corner. Ball game.
Fast forward a few years, and the long-retired George was doing a signing at a local show, so I dug out my copy of his comic and off I went. Mr. Foster was sitting at a table with a representative from the show, and I was puzzled to see that he was wearing shades, indoors and in the middle of the afternoon, and was clad in what seemed to me to be his pajamas. Well, perhaps he valued comfort over style, like y_r friendly blogger does. I got to the table and before I could say anything, he started singing. A song. I can't recall what song, but this was getting a little strange! When George finished his tune, I set the comic down in front of him and he peered at it through his shades and said, 'Where the heck did you get this thing?' So I told him where I'd gotten it, leaving out the part about his K, and he cheerfully signed it and off I went. I'll bet there aren't so many signed George Foster comics out there! Of course, there probably isn't much demand either. I kind of miss the days when there were frequent card and comic shows on weekends around my neighborhood in Fairfield County, Conn., but they seem pretty scarce now. I occasionally sell off part of my collection when I need some space, and my general rule of thumb is if I haven't looked at something in a year or more, it's probably expendable, but George's comic? Staying in the collection.
October 2016 (P.S. I notice I've posted this story already. Sorry about that.)
Fast cars, lemons, and automobiles.
Back in the 1970s, when y_r friendly blogger was in high school, a deal was struck with the parents. If I got a B average or better, I could get a car of my own provided I paid for it myself with dough that I earned working at Sears, Roebuck after school and on weekends. They would attach me to their insurance. That was the deal. So all I needed to hold up my end was at least a B- average in computer science class. At that time, the lab had a good-sized mainframe which used punch cards and tape. I can't speculate on how much memory was in the thing, but I think it's safe to assume that the telephone in your pocket has more! Anyway, I set up and loaded my project and made ready to hit the switch. If a certain bank of lights lit up, then it was correct and I'd get my B. And it did! Huzzah!
So now the task was to find an auto for my very own. A colleague at Sears, probably also seventeen like I was, wanted to unload his gas guzzler on me and I was all for it but Mom didn't think it was a good idea and vetoed the transaction. I was vocally annoyed in the jerky way that I had then but it turned out she was right, even though she changed her mind later. Anyway he sold it to someone else so it was a moot point. Next we tried the want ads. First up was an auto that, among other things, was missing a rear view mirror on one side. It was being sold by a kind of spacey young woman, and Mom vetoed that one too, and was right again, and commented that I myself was all ready to buy it without due diligence, which was true. I was very hot and bothered to have my own wheels, as what seventeen year old isn't? Next we answered an ad for a 1974 Chevrolet Vega. In a sort of military/khaki dark green, two-door. A fellow in his twenties and his dad were selling it. It took some time for me to start it for my test drive, and they said it was because the starter was so new! And I fell for it! So we got it and happily I had my very own auto. Too bad it turned out to be a lemon! Nothing but trouble with the engine, the body started to rust out and...oy. I think now if I had been a little less anxious I could have shopped a bit more and not had so much trouble. But hindsight, in this case, is 20/10! After that car croaked about two years later, my dad got two surplus vans from the gas company and gave me one, which I drove across the country way back in January 1984. Had that one for a couple of years but unbeknownst to me there was a leak in the oil reservoir and it seized up on me on route 101 outside of San Francisco and started pouring smoke. I stopped along the roadside and went to grab the fire extinguisher but a cop pulled up and hauled his little bitty extinguisher out of his trunk and sprayed the fire. That is, he TRIED to spray the fire, but he had it pointed the wrong way and sprayed himself instead. Boy, it was all I could do to keep from laughing but I bit my tongue and we got it out but the engine was history. When I got back to Conn., I got a three-on-the floor Ford, brown. What a boat! And it was the first standard shift I ever tried. Talk about learning on the job! At that time I worked the third shift at a motel and the entrance to the freeway headed home in the morning was at the top of a hill and I must have stalled that thing a zillion times trying to get up there before I got the hang of it. I had that baby for a few years then it died and I went without an auto for a while since my work was within walking/biking distance. Then I got a Honda Civic hatchback which I really liked, plenty of room for my guitars and amps and good gas mileage and always started right up. Then I totaled it. Driving along back roads to work one morn in February of 1997 (to avoid the hell that was and is I-95) I hit a patch of black ice and squealed off the road into the woods and hit a tree. A good thing, too, for if not for the tree, I would have gone off the end of a hill and ended up hood first in a creek! Which would have damaged me somewhat; as it was I ended up with bruises only. But the car was history. To their credit, the insurance company paid off promptly and I got another Honda which served me well until I sold it upon moving to NYC in 2004. I don't see myself owning a car again, nowadays I rent a car to visit Conn. once or twice per year, but I hope I don't forget how to drive a stick shift! Isn't that one of those things that you always have with you, like riding a bicycle or sending a rocket to Mars?
November 2016
So now the task was to find an auto for my very own. A colleague at Sears, probably also seventeen like I was, wanted to unload his gas guzzler on me and I was all for it but Mom didn't think it was a good idea and vetoed the transaction. I was vocally annoyed in the jerky way that I had then but it turned out she was right, even though she changed her mind later. Anyway he sold it to someone else so it was a moot point. Next we tried the want ads. First up was an auto that, among other things, was missing a rear view mirror on one side. It was being sold by a kind of spacey young woman, and Mom vetoed that one too, and was right again, and commented that I myself was all ready to buy it without due diligence, which was true. I was very hot and bothered to have my own wheels, as what seventeen year old isn't? Next we answered an ad for a 1974 Chevrolet Vega. In a sort of military/khaki dark green, two-door. A fellow in his twenties and his dad were selling it. It took some time for me to start it for my test drive, and they said it was because the starter was so new! And I fell for it! So we got it and happily I had my very own auto. Too bad it turned out to be a lemon! Nothing but trouble with the engine, the body started to rust out and...oy. I think now if I had been a little less anxious I could have shopped a bit more and not had so much trouble. But hindsight, in this case, is 20/10! After that car croaked about two years later, my dad got two surplus vans from the gas company and gave me one, which I drove across the country way back in January 1984. Had that one for a couple of years but unbeknownst to me there was a leak in the oil reservoir and it seized up on me on route 101 outside of San Francisco and started pouring smoke. I stopped along the roadside and went to grab the fire extinguisher but a cop pulled up and hauled his little bitty extinguisher out of his trunk and sprayed the fire. That is, he TRIED to spray the fire, but he had it pointed the wrong way and sprayed himself instead. Boy, it was all I could do to keep from laughing but I bit my tongue and we got it out but the engine was history. When I got back to Conn., I got a three-on-the floor Ford, brown. What a boat! And it was the first standard shift I ever tried. Talk about learning on the job! At that time I worked the third shift at a motel and the entrance to the freeway headed home in the morning was at the top of a hill and I must have stalled that thing a zillion times trying to get up there before I got the hang of it. I had that baby for a few years then it died and I went without an auto for a while since my work was within walking/biking distance. Then I got a Honda Civic hatchback which I really liked, plenty of room for my guitars and amps and good gas mileage and always started right up. Then I totaled it. Driving along back roads to work one morn in February of 1997 (to avoid the hell that was and is I-95) I hit a patch of black ice and squealed off the road into the woods and hit a tree. A good thing, too, for if not for the tree, I would have gone off the end of a hill and ended up hood first in a creek! Which would have damaged me somewhat; as it was I ended up with bruises only. But the car was history. To their credit, the insurance company paid off promptly and I got another Honda which served me well until I sold it upon moving to NYC in 2004. I don't see myself owning a car again, nowadays I rent a car to visit Conn. once or twice per year, but I hope I don't forget how to drive a stick shift! Isn't that one of those things that you always have with you, like riding a bicycle or sending a rocket to Mars?
November 2016
Free Toy Inside!
It's been a long time since y_r friendly blogger had a bowl of cereal. Is not half a box of Cheerios or Cap'n Crunch soaked in half a gallon of milk the best comfort food there is? But as a lad, cereal was the main breakfast dish for many years. What influenced the decision as to what kind to pester Mom to get? Well, the rule was that first we had to finish the half-empty boxes we already had. But that was so yesterday's news! And besides, there are way cooler prizes in this or that box. I wonder if it's still a selling point for cereal--the prize inside! I remember liking Kellogg's 3-D baseball cards from the early 70s. I have a few yet in my collection that I got in the 90s when I was in the business. The issue with them was that the plastic 3-D coating tended to crack and the cards would curl. Still, they were pretty cool!
I remember reading a series of Charlie Brown strips where he's got various issues with 'Snicker-Snacks' that were very funny, because they were true. Except for the one where the package promised one marble in the box of 'Snicker-Snacks,' and ol' Chuck got four hundred marbles and one 'Snicker-Snack.'
So we usually chose based not on brand loyalty, taste, or price, but on what cheap plastic bauble was inside the box. Usually something like a little army man or car or dinosaur or some such. That way the manufacturer could make the same exact thing in six different colors and say 'collect 'em all!' and so we did. One time I bugged Mom for a box of 'Kaboom!' because I think I liked their commercials. Time to ban advertising directed at kids! Problem was, the harsh brightly colored dyes they used made me sick so out it went. That was one time we didn't have to finish the box first! Since this occurred many years ago we didn't lawyer up and sue the bejeezus out of General Mills, or whoever it was. I'll bet the family of a cereal-sickened ten-year-old today would do exactly that. And the FDA moved quickly to disallow these poisonous color dyes in foodstuffs. This is in direct contrast to now, when the FDA is more concerned protecting profits and less with protecting people. And unfortunately that trend will continue and even accelerate.
So that's the question--do cereal makers still entice youthful consumers with trinkets and geegaws? Y_r blogger will check the next time he is in the grocery and will append this post forthwith. And by 'forthwith' I mean, someday.
December 2016
I remember reading a series of Charlie Brown strips where he's got various issues with 'Snicker-Snacks' that were very funny, because they were true. Except for the one where the package promised one marble in the box of 'Snicker-Snacks,' and ol' Chuck got four hundred marbles and one 'Snicker-Snack.'
So we usually chose based not on brand loyalty, taste, or price, but on what cheap plastic bauble was inside the box. Usually something like a little army man or car or dinosaur or some such. That way the manufacturer could make the same exact thing in six different colors and say 'collect 'em all!' and so we did. One time I bugged Mom for a box of 'Kaboom!' because I think I liked their commercials. Time to ban advertising directed at kids! Problem was, the harsh brightly colored dyes they used made me sick so out it went. That was one time we didn't have to finish the box first! Since this occurred many years ago we didn't lawyer up and sue the bejeezus out of General Mills, or whoever it was. I'll bet the family of a cereal-sickened ten-year-old today would do exactly that. And the FDA moved quickly to disallow these poisonous color dyes in foodstuffs. This is in direct contrast to now, when the FDA is more concerned protecting profits and less with protecting people. And unfortunately that trend will continue and even accelerate.
So that's the question--do cereal makers still entice youthful consumers with trinkets and geegaws? Y_r blogger will check the next time he is in the grocery and will append this post forthwith. And by 'forthwith' I mean, someday.
December 2016
Is it thirty years ago already?
Actually, it's more like thirty-two! In May 1985 I decided to move from the Bay Area where Mom was back to Connecticut where Dad was, and all my friends and hopefully some work! I lived with friends up near UConn that summer and then, when the semester began, we got the boot for the incoming students and I lived with friends in Meriden for two months until I found my own place. Happily my stepmother's father had the third floor of his house in Bridgeport vacant and we negotiated an embarrassingly cheap rent. But the place hadn't been lived in since 1978, as I recall, and so Dad cut us a deal--he'd pay for storm windows and an upgrade to the electricity and when done I'd move in and pay him back $100 per month until it the cost of the work had been paid off. A very fair deal! So on November 11, 1985, my pal Ben and I loaded up the car with my modest supply of stuff (a bag of clothes, some guitars, some books, and Fluffy the Cat) and drove from Meriden to Bridgeport. All I had in the place was a small table lamp, a black and white portable tv that I got from somewhere and a bed that had been extraneous at Dad's place. I remember I could only get a couple of channels on the teevee being then as now unwilling to spend good money on cable. There was a Leave It To Beaver marathon on so that's what we watched that weekend. On the boombox I found, way over to the left of the dial, 89.5 FM WPKN in Bridgeport, then the U of BPT station, now listener supported radio. As mentioned earlier in this blog, I learned a whole lot of great music from them which is what helped bring me out of my long term music snobbery. That first night they were playing some real down home Delta blues which caught my ear very quickly. At first I scratched around with bullshit jobs, then in September 1986 I started working in the mailroom of the Bridgeport Post (now they call it the Connecticut Post), and since I was working steady I was able to enjoy a little more thoroughly the smashing Mets victory over the Red Sox in that years World Series. Then in 1990 I started working in the card shop, as already mentioned, then in '95 to the book business, which is where I was when I moved back to Stamford in 2002. Being on the top, third, floor right under the roof, BOY was that place hot in the summer! (I wasn't as sensitive to cold weather then, now I would be delighted with that kind of heat.) But it had two big windows in the front room and another in the bedroom, one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen so there was plenty of natural light, unlike the place I live in now. Funny thing, there was just a bathtub without a shower attachment and my feeble attempts to install one were less than successful, shall we say. So from '85 to '02, I took only baths.
After a dozen years in the metro NYC area I have become accustomed to being without a car, but in Bpt one certainly needed one. When I got there, Dad found a good deal on a car, a brown Ford Granada with a three on the floor, can't remember the year, 70s I guess, about a city block long. Dad worked with a gentleman who knew about autos and he inspected it and found it sound. Trouble was, I didn't know how to drive a stick. So Al showed me and as I believe I've related on this blog somewhere, I drove home from my overnight shift at a local motel (now THAT'S worth a post--stay tuned) where the entrance to the freeway was up a slight hill and just about wore out the clutch until I got the hang of it. I'd get done at 7.30 and since all the traffic was headed the other direction, it was a snap getting home. In the easy chair by eight, I'd have a beer or two and watch the Flintstones and My Three Sons, then hit the hay until the afternoon. A tough schedule but I was young and resilient. Didn't really go to a proper 9-5 M-F kind of thing until the mid-90s at Klein's of Westport. But that's another post too.
For years, every Saturday afternoon I'd go to Massimo's pizzeria and get a large plain and take it home to watch the local Mets telecast, then toss the leftover slices in the freezer, since I thought they tasted better reheated after being frozen solid. Fluffy the cat liked Bridgeport and even got outside a few times. Once I was taking her home from the vet in the crappy cardboard holder I had when suddenly the bottom fell out of it, depositing poor scared kitty on the sidewalk! She took off across the street, and there was a van bearing down on her! Later, my father said he wished he'd been there so he could have seen the stricken look on my face. But the driver saw her, thankfully, and stopped in time to let her (and me) dash across the road. I scooped kitty up and carried her the rest of the way home. And got a sturdy carrier. In the spring of 1986 my college roommate and still good friend Frank said that his parents were moving to Florida and couldn't take their cranky old cat and did I want her? I was pretty reluctant since I already had a kitty and you know how territorial they are. But he said that they were simply going to have the poor kitty killed for convenience if no one took her in and so I got guilted into it. The cat had showed up on their doorstep one wintry evening in the seventies when Frank was a kid and so they named her Kringle, which I thought was lame. In fact Frank always referred to 'that musty old cat,' and that is the moniker that I picked up and used. Predictably, Musty ran roughshod over Fluffy, who would roll over into a submissive posture when Musty entered the room even though Fluffy was twice as big and a lot younger. Musty would inhale her food and then move over to Fluffy's dish and eat that too and soon I had to feed them in separate rooms. Fluffy liked to sit on my right leg when I was in my easy chair, never the left, always the right, and a couple of times Musty would laboriously climb up onto the chair and stand on my lap and yow for food, and if Fluffy was sitting there, sometimes she'd stand right on Fluffy, who would look at me with alarm. Come fall of 1987, though, Musty started growing weaker and the vet said her kidneys were failing and she needed kitty dialysis once a day at $45 a pop. Since that was more than I was making at the time, the sad inevitable was at hand and we had to say goodbye in October '87. Fluffy, on the other hand, did a happy dance, for she had her home and Daddy all to herself again.
Eventually my stepmother's father, an old man even at the beginning, decided to move in with her and her new husband. Bill's sister in law and her adult kid lived on the first floor, Bill on the second and I on the third. When Bill left, Jim the nephew took the second floor and immediately made plans to carve up the apartment there into multiple living spaces somehow and populate them with his acquaintances from rehab and at that point I decided to leave. By then I was working in Greater Stamford and was sick of the commute and moved to North Stamford for a couple of years. My new place was much smaller and I had to get rid of a lot of stuff. I donated a lot of books to the local library and I remember I had Yellow Submarine action figures, if you can call them that, that I gave to the children's hospital. This was in June 2002 and I wonder if the hospital is still there, if the figures are still there, and if anyone even knows what they're from. Like a boob, I gave away my bongos to a co-worker who turned out to be a jerk, and in hindsight, the place wasn't that small, I could have surely found space for them and that I regret to this day. I don't seem to have the desire to buy a new set, I just want my old one back! I wonder what's become of them these fifteen years? However, I almost donated my collection of Baseball Digest, nearly complete 1976-2000, but didn't and I'm glad of that, I like them and am glad I still have them. Wouldn't mind a bigger place though! If I could get a deal like that third floor in Bridgeport.....
March 2017
Shucks, Ma'am, I'll Meet You Out On the North Forty!
It was eleven years ago, in 2006. I'd just finally gotten a DVD player and happened to find myself in the dollar store. My eye found a sleeve that proclaimed 'Bonanza' and I thought, gee, I haven't seen one of those in a long time. Three episodes for one dollar can't be beat, so I snapped it up along with Flash Gordon and One Step Beyond, the latter being a Twilight Zone clone. I started seeing Bonanza DVDs all over the place once I started looking. I found out that two or three dozen Bonanza episodes from the first and second seasons were in public domain and that's why so many of them were available on low-cost discs.
And that started my affair with Westerns. Over the next few years I scouted for shows of the Old West, some of which I'd never even heard of. When digital tv came in and the attendant sub-channels, 4.2 and 7.3 and so on, a lot of them featured old Western series from the heyday of the genre, and I enjoyed several fantastic series each weekday morning over breakfast, some of which I'd never heard of before. One favorite was The Virginian, starring James Drury and Lee J. Cobb, from Owen Wister's 1902 novel. Which is much different from the lighter tone of the show, by the way! It was one of the very few tv shows that clocked in at 90 minutes. Also, Laramie, starring John Smith and Robert Fuller. You may recall the latter from his several years on Emergency! as Dr. Brackett. Prior to that he was Jess Harper, adventuring at a stagecoach way station in Wyoming Territory. He also put in a couple of years on Wagon Train, yet another worthy western. He didn't want to do Emergency! at first, telling Jack Webb that he wanted to do another 'oater.' The latter carefully explained that Westerns were 'out' and the Fuller might as well put down the six-gun and pick up a stethoscope. Laramie co-star John Smith had been in Cimarron City, which also featured Dan Blocker, soon a Bonanza co-star, in a supporting role. Sadly, as a child, Smith found a gun in a closet and accidentally killed his younger sister. After Laramie, he was featured in an episode of Adam-12, among other shows.
Future film star Clint Eastwood joined Eric Fleming in Rawhide, about cattle drovers, and the aforementioned Wagon Train followed several different cast groups over the old West trails en route to the promised land in California. You'd think they would have arrived after eight seasons!
But how about twenty seasons? Gunsmoke ran from 1955 to 1975 and of course told of the adventures of Matt Dillon, voiced on the radio version by William Conrad, who was deemed too portly to star in the tv version. James Arness, all 6'7" of him, memorably played Dillon. The first few seasons, half and hour and in black and white and featuring Dennis Weaver as Chester Goode, are commonly held to be the best. This viewer always wondered why Amanda Blake co-starred as Kitty for all but the final season. Health issues, perhaps?
Even some of the kiddy shows weren't bad--after all, the whole point of most Westerns is good vs. evil, black hat/white hat, and everything works out when good wins in the end. So some of the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry shows certainly have their charms, even for adults.
William Boyd was shrewd enough to ensure ownership of his character, Hopalong Cassidy, and a measure of control over the medium and the money. He was one of the very few heroes to wear a black hat, although the plots of the tv episodes and films were usually pretty simplistic good vs. evil. Similarly the Lone Ranger and Tonto fought easily recognizable villains. Rule of thumb: watch out for the guy with the mustache!
The Wild Wild West and Maverick provided a contrast once more adult westerns came along. Both shows, while adhering to the usual tropes, had a lighter tone and sometimes descended into out and out slapstick along with WWW's love of arcane gadgetry. Y_r friendly blogger likes the dramatic westerns much more than when they try for the funny.
Have Gun Will Travel provided the lexicon with a timeless saying, perhaps more than actually watched the show! Have___ Will Travel is certainly a well worn phrase, but the adventures of Paladin, as portrayed by Richard Boone, still hold up well despite the cringe worthy Asian sidekick 'Hey Boy.'
Noted film star Miss Barbara Stanwyck took a turn at Western tv with The Big Valley, which introduced viewers to Lee Majors as well.
There were occasional attempts to show history, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett were nearly ubiquitous on the airwaves for a while there. Never had a coonskin cap, though--before my time. Noted lawman Wyatt Earp had a show of his own and naturally came out smelling like a rose. Wells Fargo bank was represented by representative Jim Hardie, who protected the company's interests. After the recent revelations of the bank's officers rank dishonesty, perhaps they could give a show another try! Even the major leagues are represented: Chuck Connors had cups of coffee with the Brooklyln Dodgers (1 AB in '49) and Chicago Cubs (201 ABs in '51), then starred in The Rifleman. No doubt his .229 lifetime average contributed to his career change.
Western teevee, which dominated the airwaves in the late 50s and early 60s, is one of the best forms of escapist entertainment. We usually know the heroes and the villains and, at least at first, there were few 'grey areas' in the story. Everyone was pretty much good or bad. Some of film and television's finest actors, writers and crew worked in or got their start in a Western, and to this day the plethora of fine classic television remains one of Y_r friendly blogger's favorite forms of relaxing entertainment. Let's mount up, move 'em out, and ride out on the range!
June 2017
And that started my affair with Westerns. Over the next few years I scouted for shows of the Old West, some of which I'd never even heard of. When digital tv came in and the attendant sub-channels, 4.2 and 7.3 and so on, a lot of them featured old Western series from the heyday of the genre, and I enjoyed several fantastic series each weekday morning over breakfast, some of which I'd never heard of before. One favorite was The Virginian, starring James Drury and Lee J. Cobb, from Owen Wister's 1902 novel. Which is much different from the lighter tone of the show, by the way! It was one of the very few tv shows that clocked in at 90 minutes. Also, Laramie, starring John Smith and Robert Fuller. You may recall the latter from his several years on Emergency! as Dr. Brackett. Prior to that he was Jess Harper, adventuring at a stagecoach way station in Wyoming Territory. He also put in a couple of years on Wagon Train, yet another worthy western. He didn't want to do Emergency! at first, telling Jack Webb that he wanted to do another 'oater.' The latter carefully explained that Westerns were 'out' and the Fuller might as well put down the six-gun and pick up a stethoscope. Laramie co-star John Smith had been in Cimarron City, which also featured Dan Blocker, soon a Bonanza co-star, in a supporting role. Sadly, as a child, Smith found a gun in a closet and accidentally killed his younger sister. After Laramie, he was featured in an episode of Adam-12, among other shows.
Future film star Clint Eastwood joined Eric Fleming in Rawhide, about cattle drovers, and the aforementioned Wagon Train followed several different cast groups over the old West trails en route to the promised land in California. You'd think they would have arrived after eight seasons!
But how about twenty seasons? Gunsmoke ran from 1955 to 1975 and of course told of the adventures of Matt Dillon, voiced on the radio version by William Conrad, who was deemed too portly to star in the tv version. James Arness, all 6'7" of him, memorably played Dillon. The first few seasons, half and hour and in black and white and featuring Dennis Weaver as Chester Goode, are commonly held to be the best. This viewer always wondered why Amanda Blake co-starred as Kitty for all but the final season. Health issues, perhaps?
Even some of the kiddy shows weren't bad--after all, the whole point of most Westerns is good vs. evil, black hat/white hat, and everything works out when good wins in the end. So some of the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry shows certainly have their charms, even for adults.
William Boyd was shrewd enough to ensure ownership of his character, Hopalong Cassidy, and a measure of control over the medium and the money. He was one of the very few heroes to wear a black hat, although the plots of the tv episodes and films were usually pretty simplistic good vs. evil. Similarly the Lone Ranger and Tonto fought easily recognizable villains. Rule of thumb: watch out for the guy with the mustache!
The Wild Wild West and Maverick provided a contrast once more adult westerns came along. Both shows, while adhering to the usual tropes, had a lighter tone and sometimes descended into out and out slapstick along with WWW's love of arcane gadgetry. Y_r friendly blogger likes the dramatic westerns much more than when they try for the funny.
Have Gun Will Travel provided the lexicon with a timeless saying, perhaps more than actually watched the show! Have___ Will Travel is certainly a well worn phrase, but the adventures of Paladin, as portrayed by Richard Boone, still hold up well despite the cringe worthy Asian sidekick 'Hey Boy.'
Noted film star Miss Barbara Stanwyck took a turn at Western tv with The Big Valley, which introduced viewers to Lee Majors as well.
There were occasional attempts to show history, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett were nearly ubiquitous on the airwaves for a while there. Never had a coonskin cap, though--before my time. Noted lawman Wyatt Earp had a show of his own and naturally came out smelling like a rose. Wells Fargo bank was represented by representative Jim Hardie, who protected the company's interests. After the recent revelations of the bank's officers rank dishonesty, perhaps they could give a show another try! Even the major leagues are represented: Chuck Connors had cups of coffee with the Brooklyln Dodgers (1 AB in '49) and Chicago Cubs (201 ABs in '51), then starred in The Rifleman. No doubt his .229 lifetime average contributed to his career change.
Western teevee, which dominated the airwaves in the late 50s and early 60s, is one of the best forms of escapist entertainment. We usually know the heroes and the villains and, at least at first, there were few 'grey areas' in the story. Everyone was pretty much good or bad. Some of film and television's finest actors, writers and crew worked in or got their start in a Western, and to this day the plethora of fine classic television remains one of Y_r friendly blogger's favorite forms of relaxing entertainment. Let's mount up, move 'em out, and ride out on the range!
June 2017
The hot-pillow place.
When I returned to the East Coast from California in 1985, I soon moved to Bridgeport, Conn. The first order of business was business, got to find some work! I no longer remember how, but I found myself at a small motel by the side of the freeway in Connecticut. (I don't want to name it because I think it's still in business.) It was not a traditional stop over for weary travellers, however. It was what my father laughingly called a 'hot-pillow place' since most of the business was in 'short stays,' chunks of four hours so people could, in the main, have parties and trysts. What an education that was! Folks pretty much wanted to be left alone to get blitzed and do the secks. Lots of times I'd get calls to request rooms on the side away from the freeway, the better to hide the wheels from the missus, you see. The front office, which was enclosed in bullet-proof glass, by the way, was directly underneath two smaller rooms. During the week when it wasn't busy, I used to deliberately not rent them so I could have a buffer zone while I practiced guitar. I worked the third shift, 11.30-7.30, so with that empty space above me I could wail away on my Yamaha acoustic and not disturb anyone's beer drinking or coke snorting or bedtime fun. This was where I finally made some progress at learning how to play and sing at the same time. We had a German Shepherd who was trained to run up to the glass in the office and bark and growl at folks causing trouble on the signal of yelling his name.
There was a button under the counter than no one told me about, and one night I pushed it but nothing happened. I thought. In about two minutes, two local cops ran in, guns drawn and wanted to know the nature of the emergency. At that point I knew what it was for!
I used to have to call guest's rooms and let them know it was nearly time to check out, and was usually roundly ignored. Naturally during prime time on weekends, I dealt with a lot of, shall we say, impaired people, and every once in a while, the cops had to come and break up underage keg parties. Without being accidentally summoned by me!
We had two elderly gentlemen competing for the returnable empties concession. One had a bicycle and would pedal over at dawn and scour the grounds for empty beer and soda cans, of which there were usually many, and get a nickel back for each one. The other fellow didn't have a bicycle and would arrive later, only to find few if any cans. If he saw the other guy, he would curse him up and down, for he had been coming to the motel first and felt that it was sort of his gig. I used to say, get a bicycle, get here earlier, and make suggestions to try and help him but he just wanted to complain. There was a black and white teevee in the office and naturally I watched quite a bit of overnight programming. I really liked Ben Casey, the early-mid 60s doctor show, with Vince Edwards playing one of the surliest characters ever on the tube. Sure wish someone would release those on dvd! That set is where I saw the exciting Kansas City Royals championship over the whiny St. Louis Cardinals that October, their last gonfalon before they lost to the Giants in 2014, then beat the Mets in 2015.
I wasn't used to staying up all night (at least when work was involved!), and I soon discovered the dubious joys of caffeine. Not being a fan of coffee, I inhaled Coca-Cola copiously and sometimes I'd have too much and get the jitters. Once I finally got the hang of my stick shift, getting home was easy enough since I was going the opposite way during the morning rush hour, as mentioned previously on this blog. I'd usually stop on the way and pick up a couple of cans of beer to have for breakfast (I was in my 20s and could do stuff like that) and arriving home about eight o'clock, I'd crack one and settle in for my early morning television hour: The Flintstones and My Three Sons. The beer would make me sleepy and chunky and I'd hit the hay until the early afternoon. Sometimes I'd try to get a little extra sleep in the evening before leaving at eleven. Off on Mondays and Tuesdays, I'd revert back to a more or less normal waking/sleeping schedule, which made it all the harder to stay up during the work week.
The motel employed a staff of housekeepers to refresh each room after each guest, which was admittedly difficult at times due to the unholy mess that many a guest left behind. When someone checked out of a room, I'd say to whoever was available, can you do room 244? and then they'd let me know when it was ready for the next partier or tryster. Eventually they figured out that they could make more money waiting around the lobby and not lifting a finger until a prospective guest came in wanting a room. Then they would extort payment directly from them. Kind of like getting a tip before the fact. By that time I was sick of the third shift and sick of that nonsense and sick of the seamy side of humanity and sick of the low pay and so I left.
July 2017
There was a button under the counter than no one told me about, and one night I pushed it but nothing happened. I thought. In about two minutes, two local cops ran in, guns drawn and wanted to know the nature of the emergency. At that point I knew what it was for!
I used to have to call guest's rooms and let them know it was nearly time to check out, and was usually roundly ignored. Naturally during prime time on weekends, I dealt with a lot of, shall we say, impaired people, and every once in a while, the cops had to come and break up underage keg parties. Without being accidentally summoned by me!
We had two elderly gentlemen competing for the returnable empties concession. One had a bicycle and would pedal over at dawn and scour the grounds for empty beer and soda cans, of which there were usually many, and get a nickel back for each one. The other fellow didn't have a bicycle and would arrive later, only to find few if any cans. If he saw the other guy, he would curse him up and down, for he had been coming to the motel first and felt that it was sort of his gig. I used to say, get a bicycle, get here earlier, and make suggestions to try and help him but he just wanted to complain. There was a black and white teevee in the office and naturally I watched quite a bit of overnight programming. I really liked Ben Casey, the early-mid 60s doctor show, with Vince Edwards playing one of the surliest characters ever on the tube. Sure wish someone would release those on dvd! That set is where I saw the exciting Kansas City Royals championship over the whiny St. Louis Cardinals that October, their last gonfalon before they lost to the Giants in 2014, then beat the Mets in 2015.
I wasn't used to staying up all night (at least when work was involved!), and I soon discovered the dubious joys of caffeine. Not being a fan of coffee, I inhaled Coca-Cola copiously and sometimes I'd have too much and get the jitters. Once I finally got the hang of my stick shift, getting home was easy enough since I was going the opposite way during the morning rush hour, as mentioned previously on this blog. I'd usually stop on the way and pick up a couple of cans of beer to have for breakfast (I was in my 20s and could do stuff like that) and arriving home about eight o'clock, I'd crack one and settle in for my early morning television hour: The Flintstones and My Three Sons. The beer would make me sleepy and chunky and I'd hit the hay until the early afternoon. Sometimes I'd try to get a little extra sleep in the evening before leaving at eleven. Off on Mondays and Tuesdays, I'd revert back to a more or less normal waking/sleeping schedule, which made it all the harder to stay up during the work week.
The motel employed a staff of housekeepers to refresh each room after each guest, which was admittedly difficult at times due to the unholy mess that many a guest left behind. When someone checked out of a room, I'd say to whoever was available, can you do room 244? and then they'd let me know when it was ready for the next partier or tryster. Eventually they figured out that they could make more money waiting around the lobby and not lifting a finger until a prospective guest came in wanting a room. Then they would extort payment directly from them. Kind of like getting a tip before the fact. By that time I was sick of the third shift and sick of that nonsense and sick of the seamy side of humanity and sick of the low pay and so I left.
July 2017
By the time we got to Woodstock
Hello! It's been a while, hasn't it? So let's take a trip to yesteryear! Back in 1994, it was decided to hold a concert to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Woodstock Music Fair. It was going to be held at or near the site of the original, as I recall, in Saugerties, and the lineup was to be a mix of then-current popular acts and some rockers from yesteryear that were still around. A friend of mine and his sister were driving up there and were good enough to allow me the backseat of the car. So off we went, the three of us, over a weekend in August. They were keen to see Blues Traveller, with whom I wasn't familiar. On this trip I was also acquainted for the first time with dreadlocks. So we drove from Fairfield County to upstate New York; on the way, Sis, who we'll call 'Ann' spoke up and said, 'Hey, you guys don't have any dope or anything, do you?' One of the guys on my softball team had laid a couple of doobs on me and I admitted as much. Ann pretty much freaked out and said, 'Throw them out! Throw them out!' to which sentiment I demurred. I mean, even in 1994, well before the nascent legalization era, only the most hardassed cop would bother with something so picayune. But my protests fell upon deaf ears and she continued to insist that I ditch them, which I wasn't about to do. To be fair it WAS her car and I could see not wanting to have 'stuff' in it, especially since the car could have been confiscated by the cops in a particularly egregious legal theft program called asset forfeiture. So we compromised and I fired them both up, one after the other. As we rode on, Brother, who we'll call 'Gary,' kept turning around from the front seat and asking me if I was buzzed and how was it and how did I feel and did I need a doctor and on and on. Pretty annoying! But at least the car was now 'clean,' sort of, and so on we went and after a while we landed in the quaint village, full of antique shops and bed and breakfasts. As I recall now, it was nighttime when we got there, and the big field where most folks were gathering was filling up with music lovers and it must have rained recently, for the entire area was a sea of mud! Just like in '69, which I thought was pretty funny. So the three of us staked out a spot in the mud. We hadn't brought a tent or anything like that, just put a blanket down and waited for the dawn. I don't remember exactly but we must all have had to work or something because we got there pretty late. Anyway, next morning the music started and there were multiple stages so bands could play simultaneously. I remember feeling kind of bad for some of the lesser known acts, playing early in the morning usually isn't so good for attracting a fan base, and whosoever might have been watching or listening would be gone like a cool breeze if a headliner started to play on an adjoining stage. Gary and Ann, as mentioned, were keen to see Blues Traveller, I myself wanted to see Leslie West, the Round Mound Of Sound, with Noel Redding on bass, who were good. There was a rumor that Bob Dylan was to play but it was false. Actually some of the fun came from the crowd itself. One enterprising gentleman had a tub full of cans of beer that he was offering free to the festival-goers. Well, some of them anyway. The deal was, if a lady strolled by, she had but to flash the beer-givers with a quick lift of the shirt. Being a young, single guy (as opposed to the old single guy that I am now), this piqued my interest and I hung around the fringes to see what I could see. There were rather more women taking him up on the offer than I would have thought! So after I ogled some boobage for a while, I continued wandering around, as Ann and Gary and I had agreed to go our own ways until late in the day when we would begin the journey back home. I happened upon a sort of sledding run that some folks had fashioned out of the mud, where the bold would get a running start and then dive headfirst onto the 'tarmac' and slide along for quite some time. I wasn't quite bold enough to actually try it, not least because I hadn't brought a change of clothes and didn't want to be a caked, muddy mess the whole way home. Also I shuddered to think about what Ann would say if I bemudded her auto! But there wasn't much happening after the music ended and, tearing myself away from the impromptu mud slide ride, I found my fellow music travellers and it was homeward bound.
November 2017
November 2017
Family Traditions.
Every family has their own holiday traditions. Now, my own father was a bit set in his ways even though in the day I felt him old-fashioned. He was born in the twenties, you know! He liked it when supper was ready when he got home from work, whether with my mom or my stepmother. He hated margarine and had to have butter for his toast. But I digress. I was writing about Xhristmas. What we did was, we got a tree about two weeks before Xmas and every single year, I would get all excited about Putting Up the Tree and every single year I would be disappointed that we'd have to wait another day because we'd have to leave the piney tree on the porch overnight so the branches could drop so we could hang stuff on it. But then the next night we'd put it in the living room and decorate it. We never used tinsel because one year our cat Fred--or was it Doodles?--ate some of it and got sick. Out went the tinsel. I remember that I really liked the vivid reds on the colored light string, so glad we didn't use white lights like some families did. Once I was down cellar watching teevee and I must have seen some holiday special or other because I went roaring upstairs and in my ten-year-old way I exclaimed to Pop, sitting in the easy chair reading the paper, that I'd really and truly found the Xmas Spirit! I don't know at this juncture just what it was I'd felt but I guess Father thought I was just being a greedy kid and he just grinned and said, 'Sure, Mike.' And boy did that deflate me. It's no exaggeration to say that finished off for good whatever holiday spirit I may have hand and after all these years of observation it's clear that the whole thing is a racket intended to prop up the rotting corpse of corporate capitalism. I think I've mentioned earlier on this blog about the Abbey Road record my brother got for Xmas '69 and the time we went to Wildwood NJ to see the relations and Dad dropped Mom's present (a flannel bathrobe as usual) in a mud puddle. When I was a little older I wanted to do just about anything except be bored with the old folks so me and my chum went out looking for something to do. This is much easier nowadays, since in my neighborhood there are lots of folks who do not believe that a philosopher called Jebus was the son of G_d so lots of stuff is open but as a kid in staid Connecticut there was absolutely nothing to do on December 25. So we ended up at the Howard Johnson's off of I-95 and played video games. Kind of dull, but it makes a good story forty years later. And in time I developed my own traditions. I'll likely never marry and I don't eat much toast, but I always liked to watch Xmas television specials on dvd and live tv. Lately guilty pleasures are the Andy Williams specials and the one with Judy Garland and her family. This is just in the last few years; I also had a reliable batch of classic teevee to watch: very special episodes of the Brady Bunch, Father Knows Best, All In the Family, I Love Lucy (a clip show and not their best effort), The Flintstones, a favorite since childhood, and of course Chuck Brown. For years and years one of the networks ran CB and then the Grinch back to back a week or two before the big day and it just didn't feel like the holidays without it. Even Dragnet and Joe Friday were infected by the holiday spirit. The first, black and white, version of the show had a unexpectedly harsh ep wherein a kid's parents gave him a gun for a present, he found it ahead of time and accidentally killed his friend--they even showed the dead kid on screen! Yikes. But the better known story is from the color version a few years later with Harry Morgan where a kid takes a statue of the child Jebus for a ride in his new red wagon and then brings it back, enabling Joe and Bill to mark the case closed. Interestingly this show was a remake from the earlier version of the show and redone word for word and scene for scene. In the b&w shows they recycled radio scripts all the time, but this is something new to me. I think, as many do, that mid September is way too early to be thinking about the holidays so I always wait until December 1 to put the radio on to the station that plays all holiday music 24/7 until the 25th, that's the only time I can stomach it and that is another guilty pleasure. And in the end, isn't that what the holidays are all about?
December 2017
December 2017
Mike's thumbnail movie review--The Big Sick
I really liked that this film eschewed the happy sappy Hollywood ending and did not have the two erstwhile lovers do the happily ever after thing, especially after all the horrible things they said to each other. Must have been a difficult temptation to resist. Almost. Indeed, for a comedy it was pretty darn grim, the leading lady spends most of the film in a coma in hospital. The meet cute is between a waspy kind of woman and a Pakistani guy who is doing standup at a club and they are all right together at first, but then break up poorly. Just then the lady takes sick and nearly dies. Meanwhile the would-be comic is facing theoretical expulsion from his family, both for pursuing standup comedy instead of studying law and steadfastly refusing the numerous attempts at forcing him into an arranged marriage. At the same time he starts off poorly with his (ex) lady friend's parents, but is yeoman and stalwart in his devotion to keeping a vigil in the hospital and doing what he can to help. At last the doctors figure out what's wrong with her based, implausibly, on an offhand remark by the young Pakistani. The lady's dad, who has improbably but genuinely forged a relationship with the young man in the most awkward circumstance ever, lets him know that his daughter has at last awakened from her coma and will be ok now that they know what's wrong. So he jets to the hospital only to be told by his former inamorata to get lost. Residual of the bad breakup or the dope she's pumped full of, or both. So he follows through on his plan to move to New York from Chicago to pursue his career in standup but it seems the filmmakers (the actual standup guy and his wife, based on their own story) couldn't resist, or unwilling, or unable, to avoid the happy sappy and installed the young woman, now free of her coma, in the audience of his set at the New York comedy club, reprising their meet-cute, and there the story ends. I kind of wish they hadn't done that. It would have been more true to life if they'd gone their separate ways. Or am I just projecting my own romantic ineptitude onto a film? I wonder how much of professional film reviewers seep into their reviews?
January 2018
January 2018
Mike's thumbnail movie review--Darkest Hour
This film covers the time in May 1940 when Winston Churchill was elevated to the post of Prime Minister just as Hitler was consolidating his hold on Scandinavia and the German speaking parts of Europe. Great Britain was in his crosshairs and Churchill was tasked with running the country during the conflict which would inevitably come. But this reviewer was not drawn into the story, nor convinced that Gary Oldman, as good an actor as he is, was Churchill. It seemed that every surface thing we learned about Winston in school was stuffed into the script; all the keyword speeches, Dunkirk, battles with Parliament, the legacy of Neville 'Peace In Our Time' Chamberlain, and so on. An attractively shot period piece but not quite measuring up for all the cliches. January 2018
Mike's thumbnail movie review--Three Billboards
One of the best things about this film is one of the first things IN this film--no boring exposition or long-winded setup, and thank goodness no sappy Hallmark 'moments.' Nope, we get right to the action. Frances McDormand has lost her daughter to a heinous rape and murder seven months ago and there has been no progress in the investigation, but the cops seem to have lots of time to shoot black folk. Frances happens down a little used road and sees three old billboards right in a row, and gets the idea to maybe goad the police chief a bit by paying to put up messages asking why there hasn't been any progress in the investigation. Naturally this wins her no friends on the force and she faces the hostility of the townspeople as well. No one seems to be on her side except perhaps the man who put up the billboards in the first place. Given all this trouble, the veteran moviegoer might expect Frances to break down or scream and cry or find solace in a man or some such. But our leading lady is tougher than an old boot and takes no guff from man nor nature. How is this for excruciating? In a flashback, her daughter wants to borrow the car to go someplace, but Mom has someplace to go to and so withholds permission, saying, 'Why don't you walk?' Teen daughter, in high dudgeon, says. 'Ok, I will! And I hope I get raped on the way!' Mom: 'I hope you get raped on the way too!' Daughter never comes home. Now this must have eaten away at Mom bigtime, how could it not? But to the film's great credit, it shows this harrowing scene and moves on, not pushing our buttons but just showing matter-of-factly how things sometimes are: very very bad without rhyme nor reason. Meanwhile the chief of police has gotten exactly nowhere in finding the rapist/murderer but perhaps there are some extenuating circumstances, namely, that he is wracked with cancer and eventually comes to a gruesome end. A result of the billboard-induced guilt? The cancer pain? Both? Neither? Who knows? Who can know? And does it even matter? This film is so unrelentingly grim, but it is also unrelentingly human. There are even flashes of humor, dark as the inside of a pocket to be sure, but it's the cinematic equivalent of a page-turner novel; it will hold your interest from the first moment as it did mine. Topnotch acting from a stellar cast including quite a few Oscar types, a tough script that's as real as tomorrow's news, and a story with characters that will leave the viewer with that old reality television attraction: 'Sure glad that's not me!'
January 2018
January 2018
Bugs Bunny Spent the Summer On a Ranch...
Around 1960 or so, my folks and brother drove from our then home in Maryland to Florida for some reason. (I guess I should say 'their home' since I wasn't yet around.) My brother was about two years old, and to keep him entertained, Mom read to him from a Bugs Bunny book. She read it over and over and over again, and decades later she could still rattle off the first few pages...'Bugs Bunny spent the summer on a ranch. With him were his friends Daffy and Porky,' and so on. Once I got into the book business I thought it would be fun to track down a copy and give it to her. It sure took a long time but I finally did and did she ever get a kick out of it! Nothing would do but that she test her memory against the text and she still had it bang on! Of course, like me, it seemed easier to remember something that happened fifty years ago and harder to remember yesterday's lunch, but memory is such a tricky thing. How many times have we been certain of something from the past, only to find that someone else who had been on the scene recalls the same incident completely differently? Or worse yet, finding proof in the form of the written word or some such thing that the memory is faulty? For example, I'd have sworn that I recalled the details of a Mets game I saw in 1980 very clearly, but when I was able to look up the particulars, I found that I'd gotten quite a few wrong! Of course, I know better than to trust my memory as far as I can throw it (?) but beware of self-proclaimed memory certainty.
February 2018
February 2018
To Meat or not To Meat.
My first semester at university I had an English class in which we had this assignment: Write a paper explaining why you do or do not eat meat. As a callow teenager, I had about zero experience with self-examination or reflection as to why I did or did not do this or that. That would change profoundly, and I believe that assignment was the impetus. At the time I was indeed eating meat, it was kind of the norm then as now, and unsurprisingly I hadn't given the matter one moment of thought. Even if I had, there was a dearth of vegetarian options and the dorm food was meat and carb heavy in the extreme, which diet would send me into hospital in about two seconds if I tried it today! So I pondered the assignment and made whatever case I could for my carnivorous diet. How interesting it would be to see that essay again! I've got a sinking feeling that my rationalizations were pretty feeble, but it did get me to thinking--why did I eat meat? Why eat animals? The more I thought about it the more I wondered about the desirability and even the morality of doing so. This started a long, drawn-out process in my Stone-Age mind and very slowly I evolved my thinking and ceased eating animal flesh about five years later.
A few years earlier, we'd had a substitute teacher in English class who was going over some vocabulary words written on the blackboard. He was younger than most of our teachers, and had a sort of scruffy, tousled look about him. One of the vocabulary words was 'hue,' as in, varying shades of color, but he explained to us that it was pronounced hoo-AY and was a hamlet in Vietnam that was the scene of carnage during that sorry conflict. Us students looked at each other, puzzled. This was a new one! Finally a classmate spoke up, tentatively. 'Um...isn't it 'hue,' like a color?' Seems that never occurred to the sub. He allowed as to how that was probably the case but he did educate us a bit on Vietnam, which was then mercifully winding down. And it seems that I learned much more than literature, grammar, and spelling in English class!
Fast forward to my senior year at university and my roommate and still good friend was reading the WSJ and came upon an article about a nonbinding resolution before the UN that stated that apartheid in South Africa was bad. Nothing more than that, just that it was bad, no sanctions or anything, but the US still vetoed it. Outraged, Frank wondered what the hell was going on that we couldn't even bring ourselves to say that such segregation and discrimination was not a good thing. And I got to thinking, 'Hey, that is bad! Why can't we say so?' I forget now which specific administration official it was, but a spokesman said that we couldn't criticize the apartheid regime because that is where we got our diamonds from, and women in the US would be upset if they couldn't have their jewelry! Yes, the most asinine, sexist comment ever! And that is what activated my political conscience.
March 2018
A nostalgic trip down rookie card lane.
In the first half of the nineties, I used to go to a lot of the local sports card and memorabilia shows, as I was in the business at that time. I liked to go and see what folks were selling the latest stuff for, as opposed to what our shop's prices were, and sometimes there'd be an autograph guest there. The shows were small in scale, maybe twenty guys with folding tables displaying their wares. Now, twenty-five years later, I'm long out of the business but still usually go to the East Coast National in White Plains every August. I've got all but two Mets yearbooks from '62-'92 and nearly all the Baseball Digests from '75 to '99. When we had the shop I opened lots and lots of packs, even some vintage ones sometimes. I happened across the Sports Collectors' Digest website and their listings showed a show in Trumbull, Conn., near where I once lived in Bridgeport, so I knew the area a little. So, for nostalgia's sake, I took my holiday weekend Saturday and entrained to Bridgeport, intending first to walk to Beardsley Park from the train station and then the rest of the way to Trumbull. Then, thinking better of that idea, I decided to take the bus from downtown Bpt to the Hawley Lane Mall, not far from Huntington Turnpike, where the church was located that was hosting the show.
I thought I'd take a look at the tables, maybe get a pack or two of something I remember from back in the day, maybe see if they'd got any interesting printed matter. A real enjoyable trip down memory lane. Well, not quite. When I got to Bridgeport the train was just late enough that I'd missed the bus and had to wait an hour for the next one. Well, might was well hoof it like I planned. So I walked and walked and got to Beardsley Park and walked on. The map on the phone said one hour forty five minutes, and it was every bit of that! Started off at eleven and got to the church at one. And I was out of there at one oh nine! As I walked in, a loud, annoying guy was spouting loud, annoying opinions denouncing the shiftless freeloaders and calling Mr. Sanders a communist, and so on. The bozo across the aisle was tepidly agreeing with him. There were about four guys there with tables, everyone else, if anyone else there was, had packed and gone. I'd thought about leaving early all the previous night, as the 'show' was listed as going from nine to two. I tried to get up early to have a lot of time for walking, and I sure did, up at six to watch Superman, brekkie at 7 and I left at fifteen to eight, catching the 9.02 with ease and getting to Trumbull as mentioned, at one. But wanting to get away from the obnoxiousness, I got a box of '93 Fleer Ultra for ten, marked down from twelve, and got out of there. But not before I mentioned that the young and old people following Mr. Sanders just wanted to spend money on health care and good things rather than killing and handouts to billionaires, to which he sort of grudgingly agreed. I knew better than to engage, I just wanted some cheap packs and split. But it left a bad taste, and overall was disappointing and not worth the effort. Will still go to the national in Aug, but the locals are done. Still have the memories of Kranepool, Piersall, Foster, etc. For these small local shows, not much point to go for us retired collectors! And this time I did walk back to Hawley Lane and take the bus downtown and then the train back to GCT, thence the Path homewards. A bit of a dud, but it was hot and sunny and I did get some exercise. Early cards of Piazza and Pedro, various HoF cards among the stars of '93.
May 2018
I thought I'd take a look at the tables, maybe get a pack or two of something I remember from back in the day, maybe see if they'd got any interesting printed matter. A real enjoyable trip down memory lane. Well, not quite. When I got to Bridgeport the train was just late enough that I'd missed the bus and had to wait an hour for the next one. Well, might was well hoof it like I planned. So I walked and walked and got to Beardsley Park and walked on. The map on the phone said one hour forty five minutes, and it was every bit of that! Started off at eleven and got to the church at one. And I was out of there at one oh nine! As I walked in, a loud, annoying guy was spouting loud, annoying opinions denouncing the shiftless freeloaders and calling Mr. Sanders a communist, and so on. The bozo across the aisle was tepidly agreeing with him. There were about four guys there with tables, everyone else, if anyone else there was, had packed and gone. I'd thought about leaving early all the previous night, as the 'show' was listed as going from nine to two. I tried to get up early to have a lot of time for walking, and I sure did, up at six to watch Superman, brekkie at 7 and I left at fifteen to eight, catching the 9.02 with ease and getting to Trumbull as mentioned, at one. But wanting to get away from the obnoxiousness, I got a box of '93 Fleer Ultra for ten, marked down from twelve, and got out of there. But not before I mentioned that the young and old people following Mr. Sanders just wanted to spend money on health care and good things rather than killing and handouts to billionaires, to which he sort of grudgingly agreed. I knew better than to engage, I just wanted some cheap packs and split. But it left a bad taste, and overall was disappointing and not worth the effort. Will still go to the national in Aug, but the locals are done. Still have the memories of Kranepool, Piersall, Foster, etc. For these small local shows, not much point to go for us retired collectors! And this time I did walk back to Hawley Lane and take the bus downtown and then the train back to GCT, thence the Path homewards. A bit of a dud, but it was hot and sunny and I did get some exercise. Early cards of Piazza and Pedro, various HoF cards among the stars of '93.
May 2018
August In White Plains.
And so I did go to the White Plains National in August, as planned. I think the first one of them I went to must have been in the early 90s, but I may be wrong. This time I didn't have to walk two hours to get there, the convention center was right down the street from the train station, which is very handy. In the nineties I used to drive down from Connecticut. The train is easier. One of the main attractions for me is the autograph guests that are there; usually they have several big stars and Hall of Famers along with perhaps some lesser known players, the latter ofttimes free of charge. Now, it's easy to gripe at greedy players charging a lot to sign something, but it's the show promoters who set the prices, and some of the retired players, particularly those who are ineligible for a pension (for shame, MLB!), could use the dough. One of the most underrated Hall of Famers, I think, is Frank Robinson, and I sure would have liked to have a signed card of his but $99 dollars was more than I could do. But I don't blame Frank. The free guests that Saturday were Steve Traschel, who pitched for the Cubs and Mets, Jesse Orosco, best known as the Mets reliever who garnered the last out of the 1986 Series, and...Jose Canseco. I was surprised at that, feeling that there surely would be a charge for him, but no. Of course he's infamous, as the poster boy for juice, but I kind of like his unrepentant attitude about it, no mealy-mouthed, insincere apologies here, no finger-wagging or pretending not to understand English. I have a box of '91 Fleer that I use for signings of more current players, and I looked through the whole thing seeking cards of the three--but none were to be found! I was lukewarm on Traschel, and I figured there would be a long line for Canseco, but I was keen to add Jesse O to my collection. Did you know he pitched in more big league games than anyone else ever? But nary a card for any of the three in my collection! The only thing I had was the 1984 Mets yearbook which had Orosco, Keith Hernandez, and Darryl Strawberry on the cover, so I brought that. In '84 I'd just gotten out of school and was spending a lot of time at my father's place and that's what I think of when I see that yearbook, so I figured it would be cool to have signed. Since Jesse is pretty well known in the Metro NYC area and autos were free, the line was pretty long but presently we got to the front of it. I hate to gush over folks, and a lot of people were telling him where they were during that Series and this kind of thing, but I just handed him the book and said 'thanks' when he signed it and went out onto the sales floor to look around. These days my collecting is more printed matter than cards but I do like to get a pack or two of the current Topps cards to see what they are like. The last few years they have varied very little; they put me in mind of the first couple of years of Stadium Club cards, which set the collecting community on its ear in 1991 with sharp color photography on both sides, and no borders. Minor differences with the design on the rear is about the only variation that I can see over the last few years. And BOY, do they have a lot of chase cards now! There was a big long list of odds of getting them on the wrapper. Of course I didn't get any since I only got two packs, but I would offer the suggestions that the design should be varied more from year to year and that the player's complete major league record should be on the back. I guess they don't do that now since it's pretty easy to look up a career but I still think it would be handy.
I didn't see much this time that I wanted (and could afford) but I found a nifty 1960 season preview magazine that was pretty darn cool and only a few dollars. I thought about some vintage yearbooks; I have all of the Mets' up through 1993 except '62 and '64 and a handful of other teams but decided to stick with what I'd originally pulled. After Labor Day, I took my usual sojourn to the Jersey Shore, where there is a sports memorabilia shop that has books and cards and yearbooks and stuff, heavy on the Phightin' Phils, as you might imagine, but they had stuff from the Amazins and the Bombers as well and lo! I found a 1964 Mets yb for a reasonable price, as well as a 1972 Giants with the incomparable Willie Mays on the cover for an even more reasonable price. So now all I need is the '62, perhaps I can get an affordable one in lesser condition some day. There was a copy of a quickie memoir from the Boy Wonder, Bucky Harris, who led the Washington Senators to their one and only World Series title in 1924. I didn't get it then, but it was nagging at me and nagging at me and finally in order to shut the little voice in my head the heck up, went back the next day and got it. For what it is, it's pretty good read and I'm glad I listened to the nagging little voice for once. Also down the Shore I got a copy of Ralph Branca's book from 2011 in which he speaks candidly of his affinity for Durocher's competitiveness, his distaste for Burt Shotton's detachment, and his lack of respect for Dressen's mistakes, ego, and bullheadedness. He also weighs in on the Giants scheme for stealing signs via telescope, which isn't kosher as stealing them on the field would grudgingly be. It seems that The Shot Heard Round the World was aided and abetted by the fact that Bobby Thomson knew he was going to get a fastball, although the Scotsman denied it later in life. I don't go for stealing signs mechanically but it seems to me that that particular information would be of limited advantage; after all, Branca was a fastball pitcher and it doesn't seem a huge leap of logic that he be going with his best in that situation although of course he had other pitches as well. Still, I believe history has had its say and that moment will remain one of the most famous in the history of the Grand Old Game.
September 2018
I didn't see much this time that I wanted (and could afford) but I found a nifty 1960 season preview magazine that was pretty darn cool and only a few dollars. I thought about some vintage yearbooks; I have all of the Mets' up through 1993 except '62 and '64 and a handful of other teams but decided to stick with what I'd originally pulled. After Labor Day, I took my usual sojourn to the Jersey Shore, where there is a sports memorabilia shop that has books and cards and yearbooks and stuff, heavy on the Phightin' Phils, as you might imagine, but they had stuff from the Amazins and the Bombers as well and lo! I found a 1964 Mets yb for a reasonable price, as well as a 1972 Giants with the incomparable Willie Mays on the cover for an even more reasonable price. So now all I need is the '62, perhaps I can get an affordable one in lesser condition some day. There was a copy of a quickie memoir from the Boy Wonder, Bucky Harris, who led the Washington Senators to their one and only World Series title in 1924. I didn't get it then, but it was nagging at me and nagging at me and finally in order to shut the little voice in my head the heck up, went back the next day and got it. For what it is, it's pretty good read and I'm glad I listened to the nagging little voice for once. Also down the Shore I got a copy of Ralph Branca's book from 2011 in which he speaks candidly of his affinity for Durocher's competitiveness, his distaste for Burt Shotton's detachment, and his lack of respect for Dressen's mistakes, ego, and bullheadedness. He also weighs in on the Giants scheme for stealing signs via telescope, which isn't kosher as stealing them on the field would grudgingly be. It seems that The Shot Heard Round the World was aided and abetted by the fact that Bobby Thomson knew he was going to get a fastball, although the Scotsman denied it later in life. I don't go for stealing signs mechanically but it seems to me that that particular information would be of limited advantage; after all, Branca was a fastball pitcher and it doesn't seem a huge leap of logic that he be going with his best in that situation although of course he had other pitches as well. Still, I believe history has had its say and that moment will remain one of the most famous in the history of the Grand Old Game.
September 2018
Out of your cold dead hands.
Ok, I'm just going to say it--it's long past time to get rid of the fucking guns. A country and western bar in California got shot up the other day, and we all know that if the shooter had been a person of the Muslim faith, all one billion of them would be considered equally guilty and forced to answer for the crime. But it wasn't a Muslim, it was a former Marine. Therefore, all Marines are potential mass shooters and should be watched very carefully and maybe kicked out of the country altogether. Notice the double standard? Look, the Constitution does NOT give anybody and their uncle the right to pack a machine gun. Remember, it says A WELL REGULATED MILITIA. Pretty easy to understand, isn't it?
Your correspondent has had a presumably loaded pistol pointed at him twice. In the late eighties or so, I was between jobs and one night decided to go over to the local pub to play at their open mic night. So broke was I that I couldn't spare the gas to get there, so I walked. I was almost there when I heard a voice say, 'Yo, chill right there, yo,' which kind of sounded like another language, urban slang not having crossed over to the mainstream as yet. So I 'chilled' and some clown freely exercising his right to free speech or something was waving a pistol around while a couple of his miscreant buddies hovered in the background, eager to share the take. But there wasn't any take since I was broke; all I had on me was my keys and a capo, which is a gizmo you attach to the neck of a guitar to change the pitch of the strings without having to retune. Joe Mugger was mad at me for not providing enough ill-gotten loot, so went upside my head with the butt of the gun, just like in the movies. They scattered and I staggered the rest of the way to the bar and got a ride home from one of the other musicians. Shaken but uninjured, I had violent fantasies about giving those bastards their comeuppance for the next week or so, then I got over it. Reminds me of the time I believed in the death penalty for a whole week after John Lennon got murdered. Then I got over it.
The second time was a couple of years later. Every Thursday I would leave work early (a concession I extracted in return for working Saturdays) and would take the train to a nearby town to play softball with the gang. At this point I was in between cars, but employed. I got off the train holding a water bottle in one hand and a brown shopping bag with my mitt and some other stuff in the other. Walking down the platform, I heard 'Excuse me!' The diamond was only a couple of blocks away so I knew no one would bother to meet me, so I ignored the voice. Then I heard it again. And again. So I turned, and there was a cop in a shooting stance pointing his gun at me. Maybe you think I didn't almost swallow my tongue! Yikes! He shouted, 'Drop the bag!' so I did along with the water bottle for good measure. Then he shouted to me to drop trou, so I lowered my sweats, thinking that I was going to get molested by a homo copper and then he yelled to raise my shirt and by this time I realized that he wanted to make sure I wasn't packing heat and I also realized that I was probably at the end of the line. I remember wondering if my blood & brains were going to spatter the ad posters along the platform. After an eternity, he lowered his piece and told me as I was redressing that a local bank had been held up by a man wearing a similar kind of jacket as mine. So no harm done but it sure left me shaken. About twenty years ago there was a shooting in Australia which claimed over thirty lives, if I remember correctly. Then they enacted strong laws regulating weapons and they have had zero since. In 2018 alone the US has had over 300 shootings, defined as an incident where at least four people catch a bullet. Over 300! So let's stop pretending that the Bill of Rights confers an inalienable right to pack a rod and get rid of the fucking guns already. Before you're next. Or me.
November 2018
Your correspondent has had a presumably loaded pistol pointed at him twice. In the late eighties or so, I was between jobs and one night decided to go over to the local pub to play at their open mic night. So broke was I that I couldn't spare the gas to get there, so I walked. I was almost there when I heard a voice say, 'Yo, chill right there, yo,' which kind of sounded like another language, urban slang not having crossed over to the mainstream as yet. So I 'chilled' and some clown freely exercising his right to free speech or something was waving a pistol around while a couple of his miscreant buddies hovered in the background, eager to share the take. But there wasn't any take since I was broke; all I had on me was my keys and a capo, which is a gizmo you attach to the neck of a guitar to change the pitch of the strings without having to retune. Joe Mugger was mad at me for not providing enough ill-gotten loot, so went upside my head with the butt of the gun, just like in the movies. They scattered and I staggered the rest of the way to the bar and got a ride home from one of the other musicians. Shaken but uninjured, I had violent fantasies about giving those bastards their comeuppance for the next week or so, then I got over it. Reminds me of the time I believed in the death penalty for a whole week after John Lennon got murdered. Then I got over it.
The second time was a couple of years later. Every Thursday I would leave work early (a concession I extracted in return for working Saturdays) and would take the train to a nearby town to play softball with the gang. At this point I was in between cars, but employed. I got off the train holding a water bottle in one hand and a brown shopping bag with my mitt and some other stuff in the other. Walking down the platform, I heard 'Excuse me!' The diamond was only a couple of blocks away so I knew no one would bother to meet me, so I ignored the voice. Then I heard it again. And again. So I turned, and there was a cop in a shooting stance pointing his gun at me. Maybe you think I didn't almost swallow my tongue! Yikes! He shouted, 'Drop the bag!' so I did along with the water bottle for good measure. Then he shouted to me to drop trou, so I lowered my sweats, thinking that I was going to get molested by a homo copper and then he yelled to raise my shirt and by this time I realized that he wanted to make sure I wasn't packing heat and I also realized that I was probably at the end of the line. I remember wondering if my blood & brains were going to spatter the ad posters along the platform. After an eternity, he lowered his piece and told me as I was redressing that a local bank had been held up by a man wearing a similar kind of jacket as mine. So no harm done but it sure left me shaken. About twenty years ago there was a shooting in Australia which claimed over thirty lives, if I remember correctly. Then they enacted strong laws regulating weapons and they have had zero since. In 2018 alone the US has had over 300 shootings, defined as an incident where at least four people catch a bullet. Over 300! So let's stop pretending that the Bill of Rights confers an inalienable right to pack a rod and get rid of the fucking guns already. Before you're next. Or me.
November 2018
Just what do they mean by 'Turkey Day,' anyway?
I mean, it's kind of a strange way to speak of a beloved day, isn't it?
Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to take a look at Thanksgivings past!
In 1973, y_r blogger, a dopey, affected nitwit, had a small bruise or cut on a knee and shamelessly or cluelessly milked it for sympathy when we went up to Boston to visit Mom’s father and stepmother. But sometimes I forgot to ‘hobble’ which put the kibosh on the entire ruse.
In 1974 we hosted Mom’s brother and sister in law. This time y_r blogger’s affectation was to still be hungry after dinner--which I probably was! I went into the kitchen and made a huge ham and cheese sandwich and promptly devoured it, much to the astonishment of my uncle. Which presumably was the whole point of the episode.
In 1978 the folks had split and in the aftermath I was left to my own devices. What to do? My closest chum was in the same boat and so we devoted our time to find something to do. At that time just about all businesses were closed on Thanksgiving, Xmas, and New Year’s Day so there weren’t many options. But video games had just come out--Space Invaders, Asteroids, and the like--and one or the other of us got the bright idea to go to the Howard Johnson’s restaurant near the freeway to play out the day in their game room. Or maybe we just stumbled across the option while aimlessly driving around, one of us had access to a car as I recall. It’s hard to remember, what with being over forty years ago and all!
From the mid-80s to the mid-90s, I would usually have holiday suppers at my father and stepmother’s place. Usually we would be joined by the latter’s father, in whose home I rented rooms for some years. I had stopped eating meat by then (no more Dagwood sandwiches!) but they’d always have plentiful side dishes and sometimes a delicious vegetarian lasagna waiting for me, which was nice. I’d take home a saran wrap of ham slices for the cat, and one memorable evening, when I got home, I was unwrapping it, intending to give Fluffy one (one!) slice and save the rest, but I dropped it, and by the time I bent down to pick it up, each and every slice had been inhaled. No wonder she was a big kitty!
After Dad died, I would usually just sleep all day and enjoy the day off, but in 1997 my voice teacher Lois asked me what I was doing for Thanksgiving, I replied, ‘Sleeping all day and enjoying the day off.’ She was aghast that I was not taking it more seriously, she insisted that I come over to her place and dine with she and her husband and their various relatives. I demurred, but nothing would do but that I come over, and so, lured by the siren song of free grub, over I went for a pleasant day of stuffing face. Lois and DH called themselves born again and claimed to live their lives according to the teachings of Jesus, so imagine my surprise when they joined the chorus applauding then-President Clinton’s bombing of Iraq, because we had to ‘show’ Saddam Hussein something, or something. I couldn’t help but ask how they could reconcile their support for the murder of thousands of people at the very least with their stated fealty to the peace and love doctrine to which Christianity pays lip service, but they couldn’t understand how anyone could question the determination of the USA to kill people of color in faraway countries any more than I could understand how anyone could support such crimes.
The following year I got a letter from them and I was expecting another invite to Thanksgiving dinner, but to my dismay, it was an invite to a memorial service for Lois, who had died of kidney failure. She’d been undergoing dialysis for some time, and showed me articles about treatment for the same which was being suppressed because it wasn’t patentable and therefore profitable. I certainly shared her dismay and mourned her loss; she helped me a great deal in improving my voice and piano techniques which I still use to this day. RIP.
We’d had a family reunion in ‘93 at the Jersey shore, where much of my father’s family lived, and ten years later, had a more modest get-together for T-Day. It was very nostalgic to dine at Auntie’s home again after some years, and it was good to see some of the relations who lived farther away. That big house is still in the family.
About ten years ago, a coworker pulled a ‘Lois’ on me and wouldn’t hear of me spending the holiday alone. So up I went to Connecticut to enjoy the day with my homie, his wife and in-laws and a couple of neighbors. I don’t believe they had had their children yet, although they have two boys now. Another pleasant day, but I find myself unused to the usual large or larger family gatherings that are the norm for the fourth Thursday in November. Still, my social skills still existed to the point where I could politely converse on a number of different topics, and, as at Dad’s, there were enough side dishes without meat so that I had plenty to eat. I must say that, since I had my last bit of flesh in 1985, everyone I dined with was always keen to make sure I had enough and that I wouldn’t have to go without. Not likely! And no one ever tried to get me to have any turkey or anything like that, although sometimes I’d get asked if I missed it. (Answer: no.)
In 2016, I went up to Connecticut again to visit & eat with some old friends from school. Now, them I saw on the regular, so it was nothing unusual for me to be there. Very comfy. I’d brought a batch of books to give away, which the guests accepted graciously. Let’s face it, when you give stuff away you don’t make too many enemies!
Soon we’ll talk about Xmas!
January 2019
Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to take a look at Thanksgivings past!
In 1973, y_r blogger, a dopey, affected nitwit, had a small bruise or cut on a knee and shamelessly or cluelessly milked it for sympathy when we went up to Boston to visit Mom’s father and stepmother. But sometimes I forgot to ‘hobble’ which put the kibosh on the entire ruse.
In 1974 we hosted Mom’s brother and sister in law. This time y_r blogger’s affectation was to still be hungry after dinner--which I probably was! I went into the kitchen and made a huge ham and cheese sandwich and promptly devoured it, much to the astonishment of my uncle. Which presumably was the whole point of the episode.
In 1978 the folks had split and in the aftermath I was left to my own devices. What to do? My closest chum was in the same boat and so we devoted our time to find something to do. At that time just about all businesses were closed on Thanksgiving, Xmas, and New Year’s Day so there weren’t many options. But video games had just come out--Space Invaders, Asteroids, and the like--and one or the other of us got the bright idea to go to the Howard Johnson’s restaurant near the freeway to play out the day in their game room. Or maybe we just stumbled across the option while aimlessly driving around, one of us had access to a car as I recall. It’s hard to remember, what with being over forty years ago and all!
From the mid-80s to the mid-90s, I would usually have holiday suppers at my father and stepmother’s place. Usually we would be joined by the latter’s father, in whose home I rented rooms for some years. I had stopped eating meat by then (no more Dagwood sandwiches!) but they’d always have plentiful side dishes and sometimes a delicious vegetarian lasagna waiting for me, which was nice. I’d take home a saran wrap of ham slices for the cat, and one memorable evening, when I got home, I was unwrapping it, intending to give Fluffy one (one!) slice and save the rest, but I dropped it, and by the time I bent down to pick it up, each and every slice had been inhaled. No wonder she was a big kitty!
After Dad died, I would usually just sleep all day and enjoy the day off, but in 1997 my voice teacher Lois asked me what I was doing for Thanksgiving, I replied, ‘Sleeping all day and enjoying the day off.’ She was aghast that I was not taking it more seriously, she insisted that I come over to her place and dine with she and her husband and their various relatives. I demurred, but nothing would do but that I come over, and so, lured by the siren song of free grub, over I went for a pleasant day of stuffing face. Lois and DH called themselves born again and claimed to live their lives according to the teachings of Jesus, so imagine my surprise when they joined the chorus applauding then-President Clinton’s bombing of Iraq, because we had to ‘show’ Saddam Hussein something, or something. I couldn’t help but ask how they could reconcile their support for the murder of thousands of people at the very least with their stated fealty to the peace and love doctrine to which Christianity pays lip service, but they couldn’t understand how anyone could question the determination of the USA to kill people of color in faraway countries any more than I could understand how anyone could support such crimes.
The following year I got a letter from them and I was expecting another invite to Thanksgiving dinner, but to my dismay, it was an invite to a memorial service for Lois, who had died of kidney failure. She’d been undergoing dialysis for some time, and showed me articles about treatment for the same which was being suppressed because it wasn’t patentable and therefore profitable. I certainly shared her dismay and mourned her loss; she helped me a great deal in improving my voice and piano techniques which I still use to this day. RIP.
We’d had a family reunion in ‘93 at the Jersey shore, where much of my father’s family lived, and ten years later, had a more modest get-together for T-Day. It was very nostalgic to dine at Auntie’s home again after some years, and it was good to see some of the relations who lived farther away. That big house is still in the family.
About ten years ago, a coworker pulled a ‘Lois’ on me and wouldn’t hear of me spending the holiday alone. So up I went to Connecticut to enjoy the day with my homie, his wife and in-laws and a couple of neighbors. I don’t believe they had had their children yet, although they have two boys now. Another pleasant day, but I find myself unused to the usual large or larger family gatherings that are the norm for the fourth Thursday in November. Still, my social skills still existed to the point where I could politely converse on a number of different topics, and, as at Dad’s, there were enough side dishes without meat so that I had plenty to eat. I must say that, since I had my last bit of flesh in 1985, everyone I dined with was always keen to make sure I had enough and that I wouldn’t have to go without. Not likely! And no one ever tried to get me to have any turkey or anything like that, although sometimes I’d get asked if I missed it. (Answer: no.)
In 2016, I went up to Connecticut again to visit & eat with some old friends from school. Now, them I saw on the regular, so it was nothing unusual for me to be there. Very comfy. I’d brought a batch of books to give away, which the guests accepted graciously. Let’s face it, when you give stuff away you don’t make too many enemies!
Soon we’ll talk about Xmas!
January 2019
Time For the Serious.
Now that we're in the deep freeze, what better topic than--y_r friendly blogger's personal history of the World Series! Spring training '19 will start soon and here's the tale of the Fall Classic from my jaundiced perspective.
In the fall of 1969, I, as a little kid, got some exciting news--a day out of school! Yes, on Tuesday, October 14, 1969, myself and my brother were to be excused from classes, O happy day, to attend with the folks Game Three of the 1969 World Series between the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles. The teams had split the first two games in Baltimore and a packed house was expected at Shea Stadium in Queens for the first Series game in Mets history. It sure must have been a tough ticket, but somehow my father's mother, who lived the year round at the Jersey Shore, had gotten hold of four seats and gave them to us. From the distance of nearly fifty years, I can't remember exactly where we were sitting, but I recall they were decent seats, not nosebleeds, and somewhere down the first base line. Trouble was, I was a scrawny, short kid, and every time anything happened everyone would stand up for a better look. By the time I clambered up on my seat, the play was over and I was too late! My father would always call out, 'All right, folks, sit down, play's over' to the fans in our vicinity, to our mortification. Deft center fielder Tommie Agee started things off with a bang in the top of the first, though, he drilled a homer, and that was the first time the crowd jumped to their feet, blocking y_r correspondent's view. Gary Gentry and Nolan Ryan (in the only Series appearance of his career) blanked the O's 5-0; Ed Kranepool went yard in the eighth, and Gentry pitched in with a two run double. After the Series, several Orioles expressed surprise at how hard he threw. They knew all about Seaver and Koosman and Ryan, but add Gentry to the mix, and you've got a daunting task indeed in scoring runs! Family lore has it that a man approached Mom at the hot dog stand and offered to bet her $800 that Baltimore would win. Naturally we all said she should take it, but really none of us was or is into gambling so that $800 was destined to remain uncollected. Heck, he probably would have welshed anyway. My brother recalls shrimpy Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson getting into a shoving match with Orioles behemoth first baseman Boog Powell, but that must have happened as I was climbing my seat. Mom gave me her ticket stub and of course I held onto mine for dear life, but unfortunately they were stolen some years later.
So that was it--an impressionable youngster turned into an incurable fan of our National Pastime and the Amazin' Mets forever.
The following year was a short Series of five games, and is well known as the Brooks Robinson show. The Oriole third sacker put on a clinic with incredible play after incredible play, and did some damage with the bat, too, as the O's took the measure of the Redlegs in five.
Similarly, 1971 showed this writer and the country just how great a player was Roberto Clemente. (Even then, I wondered why his Topps cards usually called him 'Bob.') What a player! In every aspect of the game, 'Momen' put on a clinic, throwing, baserunning, hitting, fielding--never saw the like of it. Right up there with Willie Mays as the best player y_r correspondent ever saw. Fun fact: Clemente played in two World Series, 1960 and 1971, both went seven games, and he got at least one hit in all seven! 1971 was the year that the first Series game was played at night, prompting me, a grumpy old traditionalist even then, to mutter darkly about what the game was coming to. I believe it's been about thirty-five years since the last day game in the Series; I distinctly remember one in '83, but there may have been one in '84 and/or '85, all of the Mets-BoSox tilts in '86 were under the lights.
Come 1972, the Swingin' A's met the button-down Redlegs after hard fought league championship series in which the Oaklands beat a tenacious Tigers team in the full five games, losing Reggie Jackson to injury in the process. The Detroits sort of backed in to the NL East title, as a players strike had wiped out part of the schedule in the early going. These games were not to be replayed, resulting in an uneven schedule where the division winners played one more game than the runner-up Red Sox, winning it, and thus the division by a half game, which seems unfair. Meanwhile, the Reds went into the final inning of the final game of their series against defending champ Pittsburgh trailing by one run against relief ace Dave Giusti, which didn't last long as John Bench drilled one over the wall to tie the game. Eventually future Met George Foster worked his way around to third, where he scored on a wild pitch by Bob Moose to end the game and win the series for Cincinnati. What a way to win (or lose)!
This was the year that A's owner Charles Finley hit upon the idea of a promotion wherein he paid each member of his club $300 to grow a mustache in time for Father's Day. That was significant money to players at that time; as pitcher Ken Holtzman said, 'For $300, I'd grow hair on my feet.' Many of the A's had longish hair as well, in contrast the clean-shaven and crew cut Redlegs, so the Series was billed as the Hairs versus the Squares. And what a Series! All but Game Six were decided by one run, interestingly, that game, an 8-1 Reds win to send it to Game Seven, featured a save earned by Cincy hurler Tom Hall. As this writer has been yapping about for years, the save rule is ridiculously easy, and here's a good example. Not for me is the fragile flower who can only throw one pitch a couple of times a week to rack up cheap saves; give me your McGraws, your Carrolls, your Hillers, your Gossages, your Fingers', and your Marshalls who could go multiple innings and REALLY save a game. Meanwhile, with Jackson out, the Series started off with an unlikely power source: Gene Tenace hit home runs his first two at bats and would hit two more in the Series for a total of four, this after a regular season in which he hit five. He had nine RBIs in the Series, no other Oakland player had more than one! Game Two was the Joe Rudi show, as the Oakland outfielder drilled a homer and made one of the most spectacular catches in Series history on a drive by Denis Menke in the ninth, saving the game for Catfish Hunter. But those Reds weren't the NL champs for their good looks; they came storming back with a taught 1-0 victory in Game Three behind Billingham and Carroll, with a rare relief appearance by 1971's sensation Vida Blue. Undaunted, the Athletics stormed back in Game Four to win a thriller with a two-run last of the ninth, which featured three pinch-hit singles. (Note: the official time of Game Four was listed as two hours and six minutes! Tow hours in nowadays is along about the fourth inning.)
With a commanding 3-1 lead, Oakland was in the driver's seat, but the best laid plans...
With single runs in the eighth and ninth, Cincinnati grabbed still another one run victory in Game Five and then broke the string of one run contests with an 8-1 rout in Game Six, sending the shindig to a winner-take-all Game Seven.
Game Seven! Is there a more exciting phrase in all of baseball? Hurlers Hunter, Holtzman, and Fingers made a two-run sixth stand up for the California club, with the Ohioans throwing a scare with one run in the eighth. But that's the way it ended, with the A's scoring their first championship since 1930. Some Series!
That's all for now, next time we'll start with the brash young upstart Mets against the defending champs!
February 2019
In the fall of 1969, I, as a little kid, got some exciting news--a day out of school! Yes, on Tuesday, October 14, 1969, myself and my brother were to be excused from classes, O happy day, to attend with the folks Game Three of the 1969 World Series between the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles. The teams had split the first two games in Baltimore and a packed house was expected at Shea Stadium in Queens for the first Series game in Mets history. It sure must have been a tough ticket, but somehow my father's mother, who lived the year round at the Jersey Shore, had gotten hold of four seats and gave them to us. From the distance of nearly fifty years, I can't remember exactly where we were sitting, but I recall they were decent seats, not nosebleeds, and somewhere down the first base line. Trouble was, I was a scrawny, short kid, and every time anything happened everyone would stand up for a better look. By the time I clambered up on my seat, the play was over and I was too late! My father would always call out, 'All right, folks, sit down, play's over' to the fans in our vicinity, to our mortification. Deft center fielder Tommie Agee started things off with a bang in the top of the first, though, he drilled a homer, and that was the first time the crowd jumped to their feet, blocking y_r correspondent's view. Gary Gentry and Nolan Ryan (in the only Series appearance of his career) blanked the O's 5-0; Ed Kranepool went yard in the eighth, and Gentry pitched in with a two run double. After the Series, several Orioles expressed surprise at how hard he threw. They knew all about Seaver and Koosman and Ryan, but add Gentry to the mix, and you've got a daunting task indeed in scoring runs! Family lore has it that a man approached Mom at the hot dog stand and offered to bet her $800 that Baltimore would win. Naturally we all said she should take it, but really none of us was or is into gambling so that $800 was destined to remain uncollected. Heck, he probably would have welshed anyway. My brother recalls shrimpy Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson getting into a shoving match with Orioles behemoth first baseman Boog Powell, but that must have happened as I was climbing my seat. Mom gave me her ticket stub and of course I held onto mine for dear life, but unfortunately they were stolen some years later.
So that was it--an impressionable youngster turned into an incurable fan of our National Pastime and the Amazin' Mets forever.
The following year was a short Series of five games, and is well known as the Brooks Robinson show. The Oriole third sacker put on a clinic with incredible play after incredible play, and did some damage with the bat, too, as the O's took the measure of the Redlegs in five.
Similarly, 1971 showed this writer and the country just how great a player was Roberto Clemente. (Even then, I wondered why his Topps cards usually called him 'Bob.') What a player! In every aspect of the game, 'Momen' put on a clinic, throwing, baserunning, hitting, fielding--never saw the like of it. Right up there with Willie Mays as the best player y_r correspondent ever saw. Fun fact: Clemente played in two World Series, 1960 and 1971, both went seven games, and he got at least one hit in all seven! 1971 was the year that the first Series game was played at night, prompting me, a grumpy old traditionalist even then, to mutter darkly about what the game was coming to. I believe it's been about thirty-five years since the last day game in the Series; I distinctly remember one in '83, but there may have been one in '84 and/or '85, all of the Mets-BoSox tilts in '86 were under the lights.
Come 1972, the Swingin' A's met the button-down Redlegs after hard fought league championship series in which the Oaklands beat a tenacious Tigers team in the full five games, losing Reggie Jackson to injury in the process. The Detroits sort of backed in to the NL East title, as a players strike had wiped out part of the schedule in the early going. These games were not to be replayed, resulting in an uneven schedule where the division winners played one more game than the runner-up Red Sox, winning it, and thus the division by a half game, which seems unfair. Meanwhile, the Reds went into the final inning of the final game of their series against defending champ Pittsburgh trailing by one run against relief ace Dave Giusti, which didn't last long as John Bench drilled one over the wall to tie the game. Eventually future Met George Foster worked his way around to third, where he scored on a wild pitch by Bob Moose to end the game and win the series for Cincinnati. What a way to win (or lose)!
This was the year that A's owner Charles Finley hit upon the idea of a promotion wherein he paid each member of his club $300 to grow a mustache in time for Father's Day. That was significant money to players at that time; as pitcher Ken Holtzman said, 'For $300, I'd grow hair on my feet.' Many of the A's had longish hair as well, in contrast the clean-shaven and crew cut Redlegs, so the Series was billed as the Hairs versus the Squares. And what a Series! All but Game Six were decided by one run, interestingly, that game, an 8-1 Reds win to send it to Game Seven, featured a save earned by Cincy hurler Tom Hall. As this writer has been yapping about for years, the save rule is ridiculously easy, and here's a good example. Not for me is the fragile flower who can only throw one pitch a couple of times a week to rack up cheap saves; give me your McGraws, your Carrolls, your Hillers, your Gossages, your Fingers', and your Marshalls who could go multiple innings and REALLY save a game. Meanwhile, with Jackson out, the Series started off with an unlikely power source: Gene Tenace hit home runs his first two at bats and would hit two more in the Series for a total of four, this after a regular season in which he hit five. He had nine RBIs in the Series, no other Oakland player had more than one! Game Two was the Joe Rudi show, as the Oakland outfielder drilled a homer and made one of the most spectacular catches in Series history on a drive by Denis Menke in the ninth, saving the game for Catfish Hunter. But those Reds weren't the NL champs for their good looks; they came storming back with a taught 1-0 victory in Game Three behind Billingham and Carroll, with a rare relief appearance by 1971's sensation Vida Blue. Undaunted, the Athletics stormed back in Game Four to win a thriller with a two-run last of the ninth, which featured three pinch-hit singles. (Note: the official time of Game Four was listed as two hours and six minutes! Tow hours in nowadays is along about the fourth inning.)
With a commanding 3-1 lead, Oakland was in the driver's seat, but the best laid plans...
With single runs in the eighth and ninth, Cincinnati grabbed still another one run victory in Game Five and then broke the string of one run contests with an 8-1 rout in Game Six, sending the shindig to a winner-take-all Game Seven.
Game Seven! Is there a more exciting phrase in all of baseball? Hurlers Hunter, Holtzman, and Fingers made a two-run sixth stand up for the California club, with the Ohioans throwing a scare with one run in the eighth. But that's the way it ended, with the A's scoring their first championship since 1930. Some Series!
That's all for now, next time we'll start with the brash young upstart Mets against the defending champs!
February 2019
Let's Go To The Serious!
In 1973, the Swingin' A's were keen to defend their title, and they matched up against...the Mets? Wracked with injuries and left for dead after falling with a thud into last place in August, they got some players back and went on a tear, outlasting the Pirates and Cards to win the division with a rather ordinary 82-79 record. Now the Mets were the brash young upstarts, just like the A's were in '72. Naturally absolutely no one gave them a chance against defending NL champ Cincinnati, but the Amazing Mets 2.0 had other ideas! In a league championship series that went the limit and featured brawls, near-riots, pleas for order, fistfights at second base, in-your-face home runs, and all manner of mayhem, the Mets won it with their superior pitching and advanced to the Serious against the Mustache Gang, who were trying to repeat. No one--but no one--gave the Mets a ghost of a chance this time either, but after Game Five, Berra's men were one game away! Manager Berra took some heat at this point for choosing ace Tom Seaver on short rest instead of relatively soft-tossing George Stone, whose off-speed stuff was theorized to baffle the A's hitters who were used to heat. But Seaver got beat, so it was up to Jon Matlack to bring home the bacon, but the Mets fell behind early (with some help from the hitting of pitcher Ken Holtzman, as good an argument against the loathsome dh as you'll hear in a long day's march) but did bring the tying run to the plate in the ninth in the person of Wayne Garrett...who popped out to end it. A gallant effort!
And so the Amazing A's set about their quest to become the only team other than the Yanks to win at least three Series in a row. And so they did! In a relatively easy victory over an excellent Dodgers squad, led by reliever and Cy Young Award winner Mike Marshall, who to this day holds the season records for appearances and innings by a reliever. But during a delay in one game, Marshall simply stood on the mound without keeping warm, and when play resumed, the hitter, who y_r blogger thinks was Joe Rudi but is too lazy to look up, was looking for a fastball on the first pitch, got it, and deposited it over the fence. And that was that for the Trolley Dodgers.
Much has been written about the 1975 Series, some still claim that it was the best ever. Other candidates: 1912, 1924, 1947, 1955 (for you Brooklynites), 1967, 1986, 1991, and most Series in the 21st century as we have given ourselves over to hyperbole. Next time we'll take a look at that epic from the perspective of this then-teenaged fan.
March 2019
And so the Amazing A's set about their quest to become the only team other than the Yanks to win at least three Series in a row. And so they did! In a relatively easy victory over an excellent Dodgers squad, led by reliever and Cy Young Award winner Mike Marshall, who to this day holds the season records for appearances and innings by a reliever. But during a delay in one game, Marshall simply stood on the mound without keeping warm, and when play resumed, the hitter, who y_r blogger thinks was Joe Rudi but is too lazy to look up, was looking for a fastball on the first pitch, got it, and deposited it over the fence. And that was that for the Trolley Dodgers.
Much has been written about the 1975 Series, some still claim that it was the best ever. Other candidates: 1912, 1924, 1947, 1955 (for you Brooklynites), 1967, 1986, 1991, and most Series in the 21st century as we have given ourselves over to hyperbole. Next time we'll take a look at that epic from the perspective of this then-teenaged fan.
March 2019
The Fall Classic, continued.
Back in 1975, more than a few folks felt that the Oakland A's would make it four straight, but the loss of Catfish Hunter put the kibosh to that, as they were beaten in the playoffs by the Boston Red Sox. Hunter had a clause in his contract that specified owner Charlie Finley was to make certain payments, into an annuity if I recall right, but this was not done. This was a pretty clear breach of contract and it was ruled by an arbitrator that Hunter was a free agent. Immediately there were teams that fell all over themselves offering Jimmy H. the sun, the moon, and all the stars to pitch for them. This proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that ballplayers were horrendously underpaid, as Hunter was unprecedentedly offered millions for his services over the next few years, in a preview of free agency, which was imminent. Anyhow, it's the Red Sox versus the Redlegs for all the marbles. Since the Cincinnatis had lost to the Amazin' Mets in a contentious playoff series two years before, your then-teenaged correspondent was pulling for the Sox, but it was not to be. At this remove, two plays stand out; the Ed Armbrister/Carlton Fisk interference non-call, and of course Fisk's epic home run in the 12th inning of Game Six. Clearly, Armbrister interfered with the play, but it wasn't called as such, much to the Bostonians chagrin. As a grumpy old traditionalist, I do not like replay, but I wonder if that non-call would have been changed had it been in place at that time. Today, as we near the third decade of the 21st century, there is talk of replacing the umpiring crews with machines, and I can tell you that if that happens, and I think it will, that's the last mlb will ever see of me. Also if they insist on foisting the loathsome ploy on the National League, which at this point still plays real baseball. At least the K/HR feast-or-famine version of today! But I digress. As I was in high school at the time, my folks were less concerned with my staying up till all hours, even then I was a night owl, and so I was glued to the teevee when Fisk hit his blast. Did you know that famous camera shot of Fisk's body english was made possible by a rat? The center field camera was inside the musty old scoreboard in the outfield, and as Fisk came up to hit, the cameraman was frozen by a giant rat that materialized in his vicinity. Understandably not wishing to move, the camera remained on Fisk throughout his AB, leading to the shot heard 'round the world, so to speak. So that meant a Game Seven at Fenway, a fitting conclusion to a close, hard-fought Series. Interestingly, with all the ballyhoo surrounding Fisk's epic blast, it's sometimes forgotten that the Redlegs actually won the durn thing! A close, hard-fought Game Seven for the ages was only decided in the ninth when Joe Morgan's blooper brought in the lead run. Certainly a contender for the Best Series Ever.
On the other hand, the most exciting moment of the 1976 season, besides the rise and fall of the one and only Mark Fidrych, occurred in the playoffs, when another very hard fought, evenly matched series between the Kansas City Royals and the Bronx Bombers only ended on a sayonara home run in the last inning of the last game. Of course, the Yanks didn't really win the pennant that year, for the field was overrun by unruly fans and home run hitter Chris Chambliss never got close to home plate, so how could the run count? Poor Freddy Merkle must have been spinning in his two-year-old grave. Why does he get branded for life for not touching a base, but no one even mentions the great missing winning run in '76? Granted, different circumstances to be sure, but still...
Royals fans wonder to this day what would have happened had outfield star Amos Otis not been injured at the very beginning of the '77 playoff series; indeed one could ask the same question about Jim Rice and the '75 Bosox, but it's really a roll of the dice, isn't it? Just like life itself.
1977 and 1978 were kind of carbon copies of one another when the Bombers bounced back from being beaten by Cincy to take the measure of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Controversy seemed to follow outfield star Reggie Jackson, though, some of it self-inflicted. As a baserunner, he thrust his hip in the way of a throw which prevented an out and kept a rally going. Dodgers manager Tom LaSorda hollered loud and long to no avail and for the second year in a row the former Brooklyn club lost in six.
Your correspondent sure got sick of that stupid song! The 1979 champion Pittsburgh Pirates had a theme song of sorts, a disco number referencing 'family,' that was adopted by the elder statesman of the club, Hall of Famer Wilver Stargell. Boy, did everyone I know get sick of the durn thing! But today that's about all anyone remembers about that club, which overcame a strong Baltimore team's 3-1 advantage to take three straight and win it. Stargell came up with a rewards system involving placing stars on the cap of the player or players who had made noteworthy contributions to victory; I don't know if that would fly today, since such a program might negatively impact sales of merchandise. Can't have that! Having lost to the Pittsburghs in '71 and now in '79, the O's must have been fit to be tied, although they did win it all in 1970 thanks largely to the efforts of third baseman nonpareil Brooks Robinson and in 1966 thanks largely to really good pitching and a weak LA offense. Still, they must have been smarting, losing the Series in '69, '71, and '79 and in the playoffs in '73 and '74.
Anyroad, this brings us through the 70s! Next time we'll start the decade of the 1980s, in which a venerable team wins the crown for the first time ever (and in only their third Series appearance!), a poorly thought out split season pleases no one except fans in LA, and a team suffers yet another excruciating loss after being one strike away more than once!
April 2019
On the other hand, the most exciting moment of the 1976 season, besides the rise and fall of the one and only Mark Fidrych, occurred in the playoffs, when another very hard fought, evenly matched series between the Kansas City Royals and the Bronx Bombers only ended on a sayonara home run in the last inning of the last game. Of course, the Yanks didn't really win the pennant that year, for the field was overrun by unruly fans and home run hitter Chris Chambliss never got close to home plate, so how could the run count? Poor Freddy Merkle must have been spinning in his two-year-old grave. Why does he get branded for life for not touching a base, but no one even mentions the great missing winning run in '76? Granted, different circumstances to be sure, but still...
Royals fans wonder to this day what would have happened had outfield star Amos Otis not been injured at the very beginning of the '77 playoff series; indeed one could ask the same question about Jim Rice and the '75 Bosox, but it's really a roll of the dice, isn't it? Just like life itself.
1977 and 1978 were kind of carbon copies of one another when the Bombers bounced back from being beaten by Cincy to take the measure of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Controversy seemed to follow outfield star Reggie Jackson, though, some of it self-inflicted. As a baserunner, he thrust his hip in the way of a throw which prevented an out and kept a rally going. Dodgers manager Tom LaSorda hollered loud and long to no avail and for the second year in a row the former Brooklyn club lost in six.
Your correspondent sure got sick of that stupid song! The 1979 champion Pittsburgh Pirates had a theme song of sorts, a disco number referencing 'family,' that was adopted by the elder statesman of the club, Hall of Famer Wilver Stargell. Boy, did everyone I know get sick of the durn thing! But today that's about all anyone remembers about that club, which overcame a strong Baltimore team's 3-1 advantage to take three straight and win it. Stargell came up with a rewards system involving placing stars on the cap of the player or players who had made noteworthy contributions to victory; I don't know if that would fly today, since such a program might negatively impact sales of merchandise. Can't have that! Having lost to the Pittsburghs in '71 and now in '79, the O's must have been fit to be tied, although they did win it all in 1970 thanks largely to the efforts of third baseman nonpareil Brooks Robinson and in 1966 thanks largely to really good pitching and a weak LA offense. Still, they must have been smarting, losing the Series in '69, '71, and '79 and in the playoffs in '73 and '74.
Anyroad, this brings us through the 70s! Next time we'll start the decade of the 1980s, in which a venerable team wins the crown for the first time ever (and in only their third Series appearance!), a poorly thought out split season pleases no one except fans in LA, and a team suffers yet another excruciating loss after being one strike away more than once!
April 2019
Hey, who's playing in the Serious?
It had only happened twice before. But now, in 1980, lightning had struck a third time, following 1915 and 1950. Know where I'm coming from yet? Grover Alexander won the only Philadelphia victory over the Red Sox in the '15 tilt, while the Whiz Kids were swept by the Bronx Bombers in '50. But the Phightin' Phils never say die, and only thirty years later won their third pennant, winning their division and then taking the measure of the Houston Astros in a taught best of five playoff series that went the full length, back when Houston was in the National League where they belong. The Kansas City Royals, led by eventual Hall stalwart George Brett, at last overcame the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series after having lost to the New Yorkers in 1976-77-78. But as it turned out the Serious was a bit of an anticlimax, won for the very first time ever by the squad from the City Of Brotherly Love in six.
Now it was a whole different ball game in 1981, so to speak. Another attempt at reigning in free agency and destroying the players' union led to a strike which took a pretty big chunk out of the '81 season. In their infinite tomfoolery, the owners decided to implement a split-season format in which the teams in first place at the time of the labor stoppage were guaranteed a place in the playoffs, leading to predictably humdrum play from those teams in the second half. The division winners in the second half were similarly welcomed into the post-season, which led to some gnashing of teeth when neither of the two teams with the best overall records were in the playoffs, as neither finished first in either half. At any rate, the die was cast, and when the smoke cleared, it was again the New Yorks and the Trolley Dodgers. What started out as a hard-fought battle fizzled somewhat, as Yanks' hurler George Frazier ignominiously lost three games in the Series, a feat only done once before, by Claude (Lefty) Williams in the infamous 1919 tilt, and one of course might question Williams' commitment to actually winning. So the Dodgers got a measure of revenge for '77 and '78 and were the winners in the second Series of the 80s.
For 1982, a couple of newcomers to the Fall Classic entertained fans with a real back-and-forth contest--the St. Louis Cardinals, who hadn't played in October since 1968, took the measure of the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs, while the Milwaukee Brewers broke poor Gene Mauch's heart again by beating the California Angels in the American League tilt. A bitter seven-game battle was the result, with the St. Louisians coming out on top. Some say that if Milwaukee relief star Rollie Fingers hadn't been out with an injury, the result would have been different, but we'll never know, will we?
Three years after their first World's Championship, the Phightin' Phils were back, this time with the team known as the 'Wheeze Kids,' for they had several older players on their roster; this nickname was a play on the 'Whiz Kids' pennant winner of 1950, in which the lineup was populated by fuzzy-cheeked youngsters. But they didn't put up much fight against a powerful Baltimore Orioles team, whose longtime Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver had retired following the '82 season, in which he'd come thisclose to beating out the Brewers for the division crown. Wonder if he'd wished he'd hung on for another year? Probably so, for he came back to run the club again in '85 and '86 with less than stellar results. But Joe Altobelli's O's, after losing the first game to the Phils, came roaring back to take the last four in a row and win themselves a ring
If ever a season could be said to never be in doubt, it is 1984. The powerhouse Detroit Tigers were first in the National League East each and every day of the season, swept the Kansas City Royals in the playoffs, and graciously allowed the San Diego Padres, in their first of (so far) two appearances in the Serious, to win the second game, but overall it wasn't that close. Standouts for the Detroits included Kirk Gibson and Jack Morris, both of whom would go on to other memorable moments in the Classic, albeit with other teams.
1985 found the '82 champ Cards back in the playoffs, on the verge of dropping the gonfalon to the '81 champ Dodgers, but Saint Looie came back behind Ozzie Smith and Jack Clark and a stellar bullpen to take it. The KC Royals, bridesmaids in '84, didn't care to be denied the Serious in 1985, beating a tough Toronto club, still a few years away from their own glory. Come the Classic, the Royals lost the first two games, at home no less, before recovering to win Game 3. But losing Game 4 put them in a hole from which they battled mightily to escape. And escape they did, winning Game 5 handily in St. Louis, then heading back to KC for Game 6 and (they hoped) Game 7. Game 6 was a corker! To this day, Cardinals fans curse the name of umpire Don Denkinger, who was at first base for Game 6. Scoreless through seven, St. Louis eked out a tally to go ahead 1-0 headed into the ninth. Then, disaster. Three outs from winning it all, ace closer Todd Worrell faced pinch-hitter Jorge Orta , who hit a ground ball to first, where Jack Clark gobbled it up and tossed to Worrell covering in time for the out. But wait! Denkinger called him safe! As this was years before umpire's functions were turned over to machines, the call stood, despite the apoplectic reaction of Whitey Herzog and his squad. But Denkinger can not fairly be blamed for losing the game or the Series for St. Louis--his erroneous call allowed the potential tying run aboard to be sure, but a passed ball on Darrell Porter and Jack Clark's egregious misplay of a catchable foul pop set the stage for hero of the moment Garth Iorg, who dropped a single into right field to score two and stun the Cards. The next night the visitors fell apart completely, as Kansas City had Cardinal starter John Tudor on the ropes from the start; he didn't last through the third, as the Royals piled on with two in the second, three in the third, and six in the fifth as the Cards whined and argued about Game 6, completely losing their focus. Oh, and a five-hit shutout from Series MVP Bret Saberhagen helped, too.
Next time we will take a look at the most incredible game comeback in Serious history--don't miss it, even if you can!
April 2019
Now it was a whole different ball game in 1981, so to speak. Another attempt at reigning in free agency and destroying the players' union led to a strike which took a pretty big chunk out of the '81 season. In their infinite tomfoolery, the owners decided to implement a split-season format in which the teams in first place at the time of the labor stoppage were guaranteed a place in the playoffs, leading to predictably humdrum play from those teams in the second half. The division winners in the second half were similarly welcomed into the post-season, which led to some gnashing of teeth when neither of the two teams with the best overall records were in the playoffs, as neither finished first in either half. At any rate, the die was cast, and when the smoke cleared, it was again the New Yorks and the Trolley Dodgers. What started out as a hard-fought battle fizzled somewhat, as Yanks' hurler George Frazier ignominiously lost three games in the Series, a feat only done once before, by Claude (Lefty) Williams in the infamous 1919 tilt, and one of course might question Williams' commitment to actually winning. So the Dodgers got a measure of revenge for '77 and '78 and were the winners in the second Series of the 80s.
For 1982, a couple of newcomers to the Fall Classic entertained fans with a real back-and-forth contest--the St. Louis Cardinals, who hadn't played in October since 1968, took the measure of the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs, while the Milwaukee Brewers broke poor Gene Mauch's heart again by beating the California Angels in the American League tilt. A bitter seven-game battle was the result, with the St. Louisians coming out on top. Some say that if Milwaukee relief star Rollie Fingers hadn't been out with an injury, the result would have been different, but we'll never know, will we?
Three years after their first World's Championship, the Phightin' Phils were back, this time with the team known as the 'Wheeze Kids,' for they had several older players on their roster; this nickname was a play on the 'Whiz Kids' pennant winner of 1950, in which the lineup was populated by fuzzy-cheeked youngsters. But they didn't put up much fight against a powerful Baltimore Orioles team, whose longtime Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver had retired following the '82 season, in which he'd come thisclose to beating out the Brewers for the division crown. Wonder if he'd wished he'd hung on for another year? Probably so, for he came back to run the club again in '85 and '86 with less than stellar results. But Joe Altobelli's O's, after losing the first game to the Phils, came roaring back to take the last four in a row and win themselves a ring
If ever a season could be said to never be in doubt, it is 1984. The powerhouse Detroit Tigers were first in the National League East each and every day of the season, swept the Kansas City Royals in the playoffs, and graciously allowed the San Diego Padres, in their first of (so far) two appearances in the Serious, to win the second game, but overall it wasn't that close. Standouts for the Detroits included Kirk Gibson and Jack Morris, both of whom would go on to other memorable moments in the Classic, albeit with other teams.
1985 found the '82 champ Cards back in the playoffs, on the verge of dropping the gonfalon to the '81 champ Dodgers, but Saint Looie came back behind Ozzie Smith and Jack Clark and a stellar bullpen to take it. The KC Royals, bridesmaids in '84, didn't care to be denied the Serious in 1985, beating a tough Toronto club, still a few years away from their own glory. Come the Classic, the Royals lost the first two games, at home no less, before recovering to win Game 3. But losing Game 4 put them in a hole from which they battled mightily to escape. And escape they did, winning Game 5 handily in St. Louis, then heading back to KC for Game 6 and (they hoped) Game 7. Game 6 was a corker! To this day, Cardinals fans curse the name of umpire Don Denkinger, who was at first base for Game 6. Scoreless through seven, St. Louis eked out a tally to go ahead 1-0 headed into the ninth. Then, disaster. Three outs from winning it all, ace closer Todd Worrell faced pinch-hitter Jorge Orta , who hit a ground ball to first, where Jack Clark gobbled it up and tossed to Worrell covering in time for the out. But wait! Denkinger called him safe! As this was years before umpire's functions were turned over to machines, the call stood, despite the apoplectic reaction of Whitey Herzog and his squad. But Denkinger can not fairly be blamed for losing the game or the Series for St. Louis--his erroneous call allowed the potential tying run aboard to be sure, but a passed ball on Darrell Porter and Jack Clark's egregious misplay of a catchable foul pop set the stage for hero of the moment Garth Iorg, who dropped a single into right field to score two and stun the Cards. The next night the visitors fell apart completely, as Kansas City had Cardinal starter John Tudor on the ropes from the start; he didn't last through the third, as the Royals piled on with two in the second, three in the third, and six in the fifth as the Cards whined and argued about Game 6, completely losing their focus. Oh, and a five-hit shutout from Series MVP Bret Saberhagen helped, too.
Next time we will take a look at the most incredible game comeback in Serious history--don't miss it, even if you can!
April 2019
Halloweens I have knew.
Goodness, has it been six months? The time really got away from me, that's for sure! We're going to take a break from our short history of the Serious even as we congratulate the late Montreal Expos for their first championship. It's Halloween, and what are your and my favorite memories of that chocolate-dipped holiday? Early on, when my fam lived in Hamden, Connecticut is the earliest one I can bring to mind; I can't recall what my costume was, but I remember my brother commenting on how anxious I was to get out there and get me some of what I understood was free chocolate! Not bad. When we moved to Stamford in '68, I trick-or-treated like anyone else but can't recall much of it. Did I have store bought costumes? Probably. I remember as a slightly older kid running into a grown man who wanted to know about me and my neighbor Billy, what our fathers did and such, which would probably ring alarm bells now but which didn't faze us then. I remember his older brother, who must surely have been in high school, opining that he felt hungry and wanted some sustenance, then walking bold as brass up to the nearest house and cadging a candy bar, which impressed the hell out of us youngsters. A year or two later I made the rounds of the neighborhood, only to find that an apple had apparently exploded in my bag, ruining most of my delicious chocolate. I sat in the playground of the local elementary school,where I had spent a miserable sixth grade, still in costume, and sorting and tossing the bad stuff. This was when disturbed people had started putting razor blades in apples, so the story went, and so our folks were very wary of fruit on all hallows eve. One of the other kids in the hood was there, alternately laughing at my plight and trying to make time with a girl neighbor and giving me the side-eye, wishing I would go the hell away. Around that time, I was taken along by some of the older kids and was stoked, for I had finally made it to the big time! Alas, all they wanted was a punching bag/scapegoat, one kid in particular giving me such a hard time that I wanted to belt him one. I didn't, though, because I was a scrawny, shy kid and eventually I just went home. Later still my mom made me a Batman costume which I wore proudly---at university! Went to class in it and that was memorable because the novelty made a couple of co-eds actually talk to me.
In 1995 I went to a costume party and this is what I did: Wore a white shirt and blue trou; covered my head in orange/yellow greasepaint; taped three strips of black yarn to my coconut. Can you guess who I was? That's right, Homer Simpson! That one went over pretty well; although I was chunky at the time I did have a pillow for a Homerbelly! I remember watching the Atlanta-Cleveland Serious that night, the only one in that period that Atlanta dominated the NL East in which they won the championship. I remember being quite inebriated on one thing and another and vaguely remember steaming up the windows in my car with a girl in a devil costume that was sufficiently lit or desperate to give me a whirl. But I might have dreamed that one! The last few years I usually went to work in costume; I have a Beatle wig of sorts and used that to dress up as a rock star; today I wanted something easy and comfy so I put on my game-used Cubs jersey and scotch tape darkened with a sharpie under my eyes for eyeblack and went as a ballplayer to commemorate the recent Serious, not forgetting my Montreal Expos T-shirt underneath! That's all I can recall at the moment, what was your best or worst memory?
October 2019
In 1995 I went to a costume party and this is what I did: Wore a white shirt and blue trou; covered my head in orange/yellow greasepaint; taped three strips of black yarn to my coconut. Can you guess who I was? That's right, Homer Simpson! That one went over pretty well; although I was chunky at the time I did have a pillow for a Homerbelly! I remember watching the Atlanta-Cleveland Serious that night, the only one in that period that Atlanta dominated the NL East in which they won the championship. I remember being quite inebriated on one thing and another and vaguely remember steaming up the windows in my car with a girl in a devil costume that was sufficiently lit or desperate to give me a whirl. But I might have dreamed that one! The last few years I usually went to work in costume; I have a Beatle wig of sorts and used that to dress up as a rock star; today I wanted something easy and comfy so I put on my game-used Cubs jersey and scotch tape darkened with a sharpie under my eyes for eyeblack and went as a ballplayer to commemorate the recent Serious, not forgetting my Montreal Expos T-shirt underneath! That's all I can recall at the moment, what was your best or worst memory?
October 2019
Early '76
As the long, cold, lonely winter of 1975-76 faded into a dim memory, y_r friendly blogger was as usual awaiting another baseball season, but this year there was something new in the mix. I had gotten pretty much obsessed with records, blowing every dime from my paper route and various after-school employment on LPs. No more baseball cards (until I got into the business in 1990) or comic books (until I got out of school a few years later and started working full time). What was I listening to on the family stereo in the living room? The first Bad Company album (how often I pretended to be a rocker to that record!), The Song Remains the Same by the Mighty Zeppelin (found the film playing in a theater right across the border in New York and bugged my poor mom to drop me off. At that time you could, if you wanted, pay your admission price and sit there all day and night and see the movie ten times if you wanted. I wanted. Eventually the usherette came in and whispered that mom was here to pick me up. Only saw it two and a third times--what a gyp!), A Night At the Opera by Queen (really liked I’m In Love With My Car and You’re My Best Friend and Death On Two Legs), A Night On the Town by Rod Stewart (favorite track: The First Cut Is the Deepest), Fly Like An Eagle by the Steve Miller Band (I went downtown with ten dollars, six to buy the record and four to see the new remake of King Kong. I went to the movie house first, but neglected to take my six bucks change, and when I realized this and went back to the box office, the lady there said, ‘what change?’ Hope she enjoyed my six dollars. No Steve Miller record for me. Although I got it eventually.), the fourth Led Zeppelin record (lent itself well to air drums-Bonzo!-and what a voice on that Sandy Denny!), and the big hit record of ‘76--Frampton Comes Alive! I saw Pete at the Garden in Sept ‘19 and it was a terrific show! A shame he’s got a neurological disorder that will eventually rob him of his ability to play guitar, but I’m glad I got to see him, and now I have added I’ll Give You Money to my repertoire. One of the first songs I ever learned on guitar, about that time, was I Love Your Way although I was some years away from attempting to sing, probably mercifully. Never saw Bad Company or Queen or even Paul Rodgers, but LZ was my very first show, and I’ve never been the same! Not much desire to see Rod the Mod, although I recently read his memoir which was quite candid, witty and enjoyable. Like most teenagers I was rabid to get my license and start driving but the folks were going through an acrimonious divorce and I had to wait another whole year until I was seventeen before me mum showed me how to operate the big boat of a Buick we had then. Then I got wind of a big concert at the Meadowlands in Jersey, I think, with Carlos Santana and none other than Steve Miller and a classmate had an extra ticket! Problem: No way to get there! But maybe if I could borrow the car? But...I’d only just learned to drive, was none too confident, and had barely even cruised around Stamford, never mind all the way to the Jersey swamps. It would have been all on the freeway too, which would have rendered me a nervous wreck. Couldn’t figure out a way to get there nohow and so skipped it. In 1980, Santana played at the outdoor venue in Shelton Conn which name escapes me now, and me and the gang piled into one of our member’s Allman Brothers themed painted car, with a peach on one side and a fireball on the other, and off we went. In the summer, a scorching hot day. At last we glommed on to a parking space, and then this writer was enlisted to sit in the space while everyone else went off to the deli to get luncheon. Tossing my Dickey Betts T-shirt in the back, I sat and sat…..and sat and sat. Pretty soon the show started, and finally someone I knew came over and said my friends had been busted and that I should go to the cop shop and see if I could have them sprung. I walked over and saw the car in the impound lot, and reached in the open window to get my lunch and my shirt, but before I could a cop came over yelling and threatening me with arrest if I didn’t get lost. So back I went to the concert, and just as it was ending here came the bedraggled gang. Turns out that, on the way to the deli, there was a roadblock for some reason, and, having booze and dope in the car, it was thought prudent to run it. Bad idea. And boy did I get a sunburn. Hungry, too. But I was the only one who saw the show.
January 2020
January 2020
Cardland
Around 1989, I needed some dough, so I walked around the corner from my place in Bridgeport, Conn, where a sports card shop had opened. It was the height of the card boom and I had collected a fair amount of 1986 Fleer cards from Green’s downtown. Used to go over there after work and I think packs were less than a dollar so I had quite a few. The hotshot of the moment was Jose Canseco so I brought it over to the fellow running the place who was called John. He pointed out a faint line across the photo, a printing error that made it radioactive for collectors. Live and learn! Presently I saw an ad in the paper looking for someone in the shop and found that John was leaving to start his own shop and so over I went to talk to the guys who owned it, Stuart Rosenberg and Bill McCarthy. They said ok and so I started on I think May 10, 1990. Hard to believe it’s thirty years ago! A part timer was there, Joe Lisko, who was in his sixties and who was a nice guy but who never ever stopped talking. He was a Giants fan from their days in NYC and would sarcastically talk about ‘the GREAT Ma Williams,’ referring to Matt Williams (that’s how his name was abbreviated in the box scores) and who was a pretty good player and probably not deserving of light scorn. Joe showed me how to sort cards by number, which was important because it made them much easier to find when collectors came in to fill in holes in their collection. These were mostly what are called ‘commons,’ in other words neither stars nor rookies. He also introduced me to Beckett’s which did a lot of harm to the hobby in my view. Dr. James Beckett was a statistician type doctor who gathered up prices cards sold for around the country and collected them in a monthly magazine. This codified the notion that cards and collectibles were ‘worth’ something. And so many people wanted to know why I couldn’t pay $50 for that ‘89 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. when that’s what it’s worth, Beckett’s says so! Hundreds of times I explained supply and demand and the fact that something is worth what someone is willing to pay and the fact that I had to pay the bills (or Stu and Bill did) and how could I do that if I bought & sold everything for the same price? Also that selling below Becketts became about the only way I could sell anything! But a lot of the time I got paid to talk baseball and there can’t be much better than that!
Another part timer who worked on Saturdays was Ricardo Concepcion, who didn’t like it when I called him Ricardo, as he wanted to be seen as white. He left eventually to study law and take the bar. I told him he’d make a great lawyer because he could look you in the eye and lie with a straight face and he didn’t have any scruples. He didn’t even get mad! I wonder if he ever went into politics? Ken Burns’ PBS baseball special aired in the 90s and I taped the episodes. Ricardo asked me to borrow them and I lent them and that was the last I saw of them! I bugged him repeatedly to return them but he made so many excuses that I finally said, ‘I’m coming over to get them, just leave them in the mailbox if you don’t want me in the house,’ but he freaked out and said, ‘NO! NO!’ and I thought, jeez, if he’s that upset he must have damaged them or lost them or something, so eventually I let it go.
We had two large glass cases on the counter with hinged lids where we kept nice stuff on display. They locked, but I never bothered to do so. One day a weaselly looking fellow came in, a regular, and he looked around some, several people in at that moment. Suddenly I looked and there was an empty space where the ‘86 Donruss Canseco was. Retail price then: $125. Retail price now: 25c. I asked him did he have it and he denied it but when the Bridgeport cop who was a regular and who had a heavy limp came in, he passed me a note that said, ‘If I give it back, will it be ok,’ so I hollered at him but good and banished him permanently. Since then I’ve often wondered whether I should have turned him over to the officer. Didn’t, though. I asked the cop if the call for a lunch break was Code 7 like on Adam-12 and he said in Bridgeport it was 17 or 70 or something, I’ve forgotten exactly.
We had another regular who was a gun nut and carried a pistol in a holster. I politely pointed out that this wasn’t the Old West and would he kindly leave his firearm in the car but he refused. I mentioned that the second amendment specified a well regulated militia and his wife said, yeah we’re our own militia. Deliberate misinterpretation of that amendment is not a new thing. They stopped coming around eventually. Another guy who came in a lot was a small time thug called Junior who had a wicked scar right across his neck and who occasionally would pester me to give him free packs, presumably to sell. I always declined and he would say, aw, c’mon, man, who’s gonna know? But no freebies! We had a blackboard behind the counter and I used to write a trivia question and if a young customer answered it correctly I’d forgive the sales tax on their purchase which was and remains 6% in Conn. The ones I remember best were in what year did World War Two start (slight trick question, 1939 in Europe, 1941 here) and in what year did women first vote in the US? It really troubled me that no kid who tried to answer even came close. They would usually just make wild guesses without even thinking about it. I’m pleased to be part of the last generation of American children to be educated properly.
We had a big baseball-shaped neon sign in one front window, and for some reason I went to adjust it one day and almost electrocuted myself. After that I left it alone.
So eventually Ricardo left and Joe Lisko left as his health was poor; he stayed in touch and called often to commiserate but he was so talkative it was really hard to get him off the phone and if I said, I got customers, Joe, call me back, he would always say, When? And I would say, when I’m not busy any more, jokingly, and he’d say, when will that be, as if I could give him an exact time! But he was a good guy and was nice enough to gift me some stuff when he downsized. So then I was it and while I wasn’t super keen on working six days a week but in return for Saturdays I negotiated half-days on Thursdays when I took the train to Darien to play softball which I did for years and years. By then I’d proven that I could do the job and could be trusted so they accommodated me. Although the pay sure wasn’t much! I remember thinking that if I could get a raise to $250 a week take home I’d be doing all right. Today I’d starve pretty quick on that! I used to walk to the train station and go down to Darien to play ball, which is a fond memory and the only time I could ever be convinced to drink Budweiser. Swill.
One day I got off the train and started to walk to the ballfield, which was at the local middle school, and was walking along the platform when I heard, ‘Excuse me!’ None of the guys were meeting me since the field was so close so I didn’t think anything of it until I heard, ‘EXCUSE ME!’ and I turned to see a Darien cop planted on the platform holding his gun with both hands pointed right at me! Yikes! He shouted to drop my glove & bag which I did and then shouted to lift my shirt and drop my sweats. I remember thinking l was going to be raped in public by a homo cop and wondering what my brains would look like splattered all over the advertising signs. Happily it didn’t come to that, I satisfied him as to my identity and it turned out that a guy had stuck up a local bank who was wearing a jacket just like mine. All’s well that ends well, a saying Bill Shakespeare got from me.
I knew a guy called Bobby Jones then who was a fellow Mets fan (and there were not one but two Mets pitchers by that name at various times, a fact for which I gave him endless amounts of guff); in 1993 I got tix to Opening Day at Shea, where the Colorado Rockies were making their debut. I got that Monday off and Bobby & me went and Dwight Gooden shut ‘em out! Only Opening Day I ever saw. Me & Bobby would go for pizza every Wednesday but I haven’t seen him in a long time, according to his Facebook posts he’s gone tinfoil hat nuts on us. He did introduce me to his friend Joe who became the drummer in my band 1996-98, though.
As the world’s worst morning person, I really liked opening up at noon, one in the winter, and the fact that the place was right around the corner, five minutes walk. Used to watch Bob Barker and the Price Is Right every morning at eleven, then stroll over.
Among the memorable cards we had in the case were a 1933 or 34 Babe Ruth Goudey Gum card, asking price $1200 if I recall right. One day Bill & Stu made a deal for it, though, and I wasn’t involved in that one. We had a Rickey Henderson rookie card from 1980, one of the most overrated players I ever saw, and one day I traded it for an early Nolan Ryan and a bunch of other stuff but ownership chastised me for making a bad deal, but I walked them through my thinking about we can sell the Ryan and the other stuff for this much and that much a lot quicker than we’ll sell the Henderson, and so we did. Chalk one up for me!
We had a 1953 Topps Satchell Paige, which misspelled ‘Satchel’ but was a pretty nifty card. In the late 50s and early 60s a company called Heartland made statues of current players and we had a Mickey Mantle in the case. I thought it overpriced, though, as it had been broken and poorly repaired and did not have the original bat that the Mick was holding. Mantle nostalgia has reached epidemic proportions nowadays and I’ll bet we could move it now despite the defects.
Some interesting characters in the neighborhood included the guys at the variety store next door one of whom wanted to play trivia all the time. But it wasn’t much fun because he would ask questions like ‘What did Bill Dickey hit in 1927?’ And I’d say, ‘Well, he was a pretty good hitter, so maybe .310?’ And he’d say, ‘HA! Dickey’s first year was 1928!’ Now what kind of way is that to play trivia? Down the street was a record store that specialized in vintage rock and roll and I could be found there quite often. Tony the proprietor and I discussed the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds in great detail and he came down to Darien now & then to play ball with us, as did Bobby Jones.
There was an apartment upstairs that they rented to a young guy and his girlfriend, but he was a crook and a thief. He broke into the shop at least once and stole what meager cash was in the register, and one day he came in (through the front door this time) with a great big bag of change and started bugging me to give him bills. I explained that I couldn’t, since A) I didn’t have enough bills at that moment, and B) what was I to do if I had to make change for a customer--give him all nickels? This did not deter him and he kept on and on until at last he gave up. Eventually they kicked him out and good riddance.
Next door on the other side was a produce stand run by Downtown Larry Brown who was a good guy and who used to give me a deal as I was a good regular customer, and even gave me freebies on my birthday. How did he know it was my birthday? Did I tell him? I wouldn’t put it past me!
One guy we worked with that I absolutely couldn’t stand was called Nick who had an account with the card companies and could get some stuff that was hard for us to get otherwise. He had a really annoying habit of coming up behind me and starting to rub my neck and shoulders and he must have been close to sixty at the time, to my late twenties. One sharp elbow to the breadbasket took care of that! He also expressed a wish that Richard Nixon was still president, for Tricky would have really showed those crazy Arabs what killing really was!
We had a plastic case with sliding doors to house individual packs; basketball was really popular at the time, especially this Jordan fellow, who I understand was nearly as good as Oscar Robertson. Hockey enjoyed some popularity, especially when Upper Deck came out with a bilingual set, the Pavel Bure card was hot. In fact I still have one in my own collection. Around that time, card companies really ramped up the ‘chase card,’ the limited quantity that would randomly be ‘seeded’ in packs and that customers would presumably buy lots of packs to ‘chase.’ Along with Beckett’s price guides, these factors exponentially ramped up the greed motivation, for now the reason that many folks ‘collected,’ or purchased, was because of greed and the perception that they may pull a card that was ‘worth’ more than they paid for the pack. So prevalent did this mentality quickly become that I saw more than one young person buy a pack, look through it, see nothing but base set cards, and leave the whole thing on the counter, wrapper and all, as they left. And people would buy a sealed box, intending to leave it that way and stash it and ask me, ‘this is the way to collect, right?’ and I would always say no, that’s no fun, open them and enjoy them!’ I don’t know if anyone ever listened. And chase cards are still all the rage: in their 2020 base set, Topps has quoted odds on at least 90 chase card variations! The odds range from one in four packs to one in one hundred eighty four thousand four hundred and twenty eight packs.
By the time of my tenure at Cardland, the industry had undergone a sea change. Topps had lost their monopoly on card production, with Fleer and Donruss producing sets starting in 1981. In 1989 the new kid on the block, Upper Deck, introduced nifty color action shots on the front and portraits on the reverse, with thicker, coated card stock and supposedly tamper proof packaging. The other companies saw the sales figures and by 1991 had introduced their own premium lines, Topps with Stadium Club, Fleer with Ultra, Donruss with Leaf, while around the same time Pro Set came out with a new football series. Today all the cards produced would have been considered premium thirty years ago; the downside of the beautiful photography is the lack of year to year design changes that us kids used to look forward to. Check out the changes in the layout of the cards during this writer’s prime collecting years 1970-73 plus just a little in ‘74 before discovering rock and roll. There’s something for everyone, really, from basic to psychedelic and always with the stats on the back. Except for 1971, which disappointingly only had the previous year and career hauls. I particularly like the final card of a player in the cases where the entire career record was on the reverse, like the ‘69 Mantle or, tragically, the ‘73 Clemente.
For a while we did carry comic books also, in the early 90s several writers and artists became disgruntled with the deals offered by Marvel and DC and branched out to form creator-controlled comic publishers. These were all the rage for a while but didn’t do all that well for us--most folks that asked about them were looking for one or two hot titles only. We did all right with one or two as I recall but eventually it got to be a hassle and more trouble than it was worth. We installed a couple of video games at one point, but the neighborhood youngsters wanted the one hot game of the moment which we didn’t have, so most of the action from the baseball video game was from this writer and Bobby Jones! I used to win because he didn’t know how to throw a wobble ball. Much better in terms of sales was the collector’s trade paper, Sports Collectors Digest, which was chock full of ads for complete sets, vintage stuff, and the like. Note that this was way before grading services; this was done with an experienced eyeball like mine. A lot of collectors were really picky, condition being the single most important factor in any collectible. So it behooved me to be objective and honest about it, while unfortunately many dealers and private sellers had, shall we say, blinders on regarding condition. SCD, which still exists, used to have articles on old-time players and would frequently print addresses if they were amenable to autograph requests by mail. In this way your correspondent acquired many a signature, including Elmer Valo, one of my father’s favorite players, Sudden Sam McDowell, Dick Williams, Larry Dierker, Charlie Hough, and lots more. Also, there were many promoter types who would rent a hall and invite dealers and have a show, ofttimes with guests. In this way was acquired Jim Piersall, George Foster, Ed Kranepool, Enos Slaughter, Hoyt Wilhelm, and more.
Latterly the main source is the big National show in White Plains NY each August. Highlights there include Bobby Shantz, another fave of Dad’s, Joe Pepitone, Luis Tiant, Dave Kingman, Fritz Peterson, and more.
Around 1992 noted Canadian troubador Neil Young was playing in NYC backed by Booker T and the MGs and boy did I want to go. And my pal Tim had tickets! But I had to work! Oh, how I waffled on leaving early and blowing off the last couple hours of the day. The owners were only in intermittently and probably wouldn’t have known, but I just couldn’t do it. I sure wish I had now!
The local university had a radio station which was publicly supported, this writer donated and volunteered to staff the fundraising phone sometimes, although I never DJ’d. They had a REALLY eclectic playlist and I had my boombox perched on one of the video games and had it tuned to WPKN all the time. Most often I heard, ‘What the HELL are you listening to?’ but therein was the one and so far only time I ever heard a song of mine own on the radio. I’d made some demos at home and sent them to the station; one of the DJs there had a club where he booked live music and I wanted to get a gig there, but he played one of the tracks over the air instead! Wasn’t expecting that! I ran over to press ‘record’ on the machine, but tripped and fell and only got part of it. And wouldn’t you know it, the box picked that day to malfunction and the tape was running at much too high a speed. I sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks! (ask your parents)
There’s no question that the baseball strike of ‘94 hurt us, but not as much as one might think, as by then we sold more basketball anyway. But we had some pretty bad days, and the owners always used to say, why are sales so bad, the strike? And I would always say, no, it’s because you won’t advertise or do anything at all to promote the business, which was true. So they said, ok, do one thing every day to promote the shop, but don’t spend any money. Good luck with that! Eventually they decided, certainly correctly, that they could make more money busting down the wall and expanding the variety store, which they did. And that was that. Game called.
April 2020
Another part timer who worked on Saturdays was Ricardo Concepcion, who didn’t like it when I called him Ricardo, as he wanted to be seen as white. He left eventually to study law and take the bar. I told him he’d make a great lawyer because he could look you in the eye and lie with a straight face and he didn’t have any scruples. He didn’t even get mad! I wonder if he ever went into politics? Ken Burns’ PBS baseball special aired in the 90s and I taped the episodes. Ricardo asked me to borrow them and I lent them and that was the last I saw of them! I bugged him repeatedly to return them but he made so many excuses that I finally said, ‘I’m coming over to get them, just leave them in the mailbox if you don’t want me in the house,’ but he freaked out and said, ‘NO! NO!’ and I thought, jeez, if he’s that upset he must have damaged them or lost them or something, so eventually I let it go.
We had two large glass cases on the counter with hinged lids where we kept nice stuff on display. They locked, but I never bothered to do so. One day a weaselly looking fellow came in, a regular, and he looked around some, several people in at that moment. Suddenly I looked and there was an empty space where the ‘86 Donruss Canseco was. Retail price then: $125. Retail price now: 25c. I asked him did he have it and he denied it but when the Bridgeport cop who was a regular and who had a heavy limp came in, he passed me a note that said, ‘If I give it back, will it be ok,’ so I hollered at him but good and banished him permanently. Since then I’ve often wondered whether I should have turned him over to the officer. Didn’t, though. I asked the cop if the call for a lunch break was Code 7 like on Adam-12 and he said in Bridgeport it was 17 or 70 or something, I’ve forgotten exactly.
We had another regular who was a gun nut and carried a pistol in a holster. I politely pointed out that this wasn’t the Old West and would he kindly leave his firearm in the car but he refused. I mentioned that the second amendment specified a well regulated militia and his wife said, yeah we’re our own militia. Deliberate misinterpretation of that amendment is not a new thing. They stopped coming around eventually. Another guy who came in a lot was a small time thug called Junior who had a wicked scar right across his neck and who occasionally would pester me to give him free packs, presumably to sell. I always declined and he would say, aw, c’mon, man, who’s gonna know? But no freebies! We had a blackboard behind the counter and I used to write a trivia question and if a young customer answered it correctly I’d forgive the sales tax on their purchase which was and remains 6% in Conn. The ones I remember best were in what year did World War Two start (slight trick question, 1939 in Europe, 1941 here) and in what year did women first vote in the US? It really troubled me that no kid who tried to answer even came close. They would usually just make wild guesses without even thinking about it. I’m pleased to be part of the last generation of American children to be educated properly.
We had a big baseball-shaped neon sign in one front window, and for some reason I went to adjust it one day and almost electrocuted myself. After that I left it alone.
So eventually Ricardo left and Joe Lisko left as his health was poor; he stayed in touch and called often to commiserate but he was so talkative it was really hard to get him off the phone and if I said, I got customers, Joe, call me back, he would always say, When? And I would say, when I’m not busy any more, jokingly, and he’d say, when will that be, as if I could give him an exact time! But he was a good guy and was nice enough to gift me some stuff when he downsized. So then I was it and while I wasn’t super keen on working six days a week but in return for Saturdays I negotiated half-days on Thursdays when I took the train to Darien to play softball which I did for years and years. By then I’d proven that I could do the job and could be trusted so they accommodated me. Although the pay sure wasn’t much! I remember thinking that if I could get a raise to $250 a week take home I’d be doing all right. Today I’d starve pretty quick on that! I used to walk to the train station and go down to Darien to play ball, which is a fond memory and the only time I could ever be convinced to drink Budweiser. Swill.
One day I got off the train and started to walk to the ballfield, which was at the local middle school, and was walking along the platform when I heard, ‘Excuse me!’ None of the guys were meeting me since the field was so close so I didn’t think anything of it until I heard, ‘EXCUSE ME!’ and I turned to see a Darien cop planted on the platform holding his gun with both hands pointed right at me! Yikes! He shouted to drop my glove & bag which I did and then shouted to lift my shirt and drop my sweats. I remember thinking l was going to be raped in public by a homo cop and wondering what my brains would look like splattered all over the advertising signs. Happily it didn’t come to that, I satisfied him as to my identity and it turned out that a guy had stuck up a local bank who was wearing a jacket just like mine. All’s well that ends well, a saying Bill Shakespeare got from me.
I knew a guy called Bobby Jones then who was a fellow Mets fan (and there were not one but two Mets pitchers by that name at various times, a fact for which I gave him endless amounts of guff); in 1993 I got tix to Opening Day at Shea, where the Colorado Rockies were making their debut. I got that Monday off and Bobby & me went and Dwight Gooden shut ‘em out! Only Opening Day I ever saw. Me & Bobby would go for pizza every Wednesday but I haven’t seen him in a long time, according to his Facebook posts he’s gone tinfoil hat nuts on us. He did introduce me to his friend Joe who became the drummer in my band 1996-98, though.
As the world’s worst morning person, I really liked opening up at noon, one in the winter, and the fact that the place was right around the corner, five minutes walk. Used to watch Bob Barker and the Price Is Right every morning at eleven, then stroll over.
Among the memorable cards we had in the case were a 1933 or 34 Babe Ruth Goudey Gum card, asking price $1200 if I recall right. One day Bill & Stu made a deal for it, though, and I wasn’t involved in that one. We had a Rickey Henderson rookie card from 1980, one of the most overrated players I ever saw, and one day I traded it for an early Nolan Ryan and a bunch of other stuff but ownership chastised me for making a bad deal, but I walked them through my thinking about we can sell the Ryan and the other stuff for this much and that much a lot quicker than we’ll sell the Henderson, and so we did. Chalk one up for me!
We had a 1953 Topps Satchell Paige, which misspelled ‘Satchel’ but was a pretty nifty card. In the late 50s and early 60s a company called Heartland made statues of current players and we had a Mickey Mantle in the case. I thought it overpriced, though, as it had been broken and poorly repaired and did not have the original bat that the Mick was holding. Mantle nostalgia has reached epidemic proportions nowadays and I’ll bet we could move it now despite the defects.
Some interesting characters in the neighborhood included the guys at the variety store next door one of whom wanted to play trivia all the time. But it wasn’t much fun because he would ask questions like ‘What did Bill Dickey hit in 1927?’ And I’d say, ‘Well, he was a pretty good hitter, so maybe .310?’ And he’d say, ‘HA! Dickey’s first year was 1928!’ Now what kind of way is that to play trivia? Down the street was a record store that specialized in vintage rock and roll and I could be found there quite often. Tony the proprietor and I discussed the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds in great detail and he came down to Darien now & then to play ball with us, as did Bobby Jones.
There was an apartment upstairs that they rented to a young guy and his girlfriend, but he was a crook and a thief. He broke into the shop at least once and stole what meager cash was in the register, and one day he came in (through the front door this time) with a great big bag of change and started bugging me to give him bills. I explained that I couldn’t, since A) I didn’t have enough bills at that moment, and B) what was I to do if I had to make change for a customer--give him all nickels? This did not deter him and he kept on and on until at last he gave up. Eventually they kicked him out and good riddance.
Next door on the other side was a produce stand run by Downtown Larry Brown who was a good guy and who used to give me a deal as I was a good regular customer, and even gave me freebies on my birthday. How did he know it was my birthday? Did I tell him? I wouldn’t put it past me!
One guy we worked with that I absolutely couldn’t stand was called Nick who had an account with the card companies and could get some stuff that was hard for us to get otherwise. He had a really annoying habit of coming up behind me and starting to rub my neck and shoulders and he must have been close to sixty at the time, to my late twenties. One sharp elbow to the breadbasket took care of that! He also expressed a wish that Richard Nixon was still president, for Tricky would have really showed those crazy Arabs what killing really was!
We had a plastic case with sliding doors to house individual packs; basketball was really popular at the time, especially this Jordan fellow, who I understand was nearly as good as Oscar Robertson. Hockey enjoyed some popularity, especially when Upper Deck came out with a bilingual set, the Pavel Bure card was hot. In fact I still have one in my own collection. Around that time, card companies really ramped up the ‘chase card,’ the limited quantity that would randomly be ‘seeded’ in packs and that customers would presumably buy lots of packs to ‘chase.’ Along with Beckett’s price guides, these factors exponentially ramped up the greed motivation, for now the reason that many folks ‘collected,’ or purchased, was because of greed and the perception that they may pull a card that was ‘worth’ more than they paid for the pack. So prevalent did this mentality quickly become that I saw more than one young person buy a pack, look through it, see nothing but base set cards, and leave the whole thing on the counter, wrapper and all, as they left. And people would buy a sealed box, intending to leave it that way and stash it and ask me, ‘this is the way to collect, right?’ and I would always say no, that’s no fun, open them and enjoy them!’ I don’t know if anyone ever listened. And chase cards are still all the rage: in their 2020 base set, Topps has quoted odds on at least 90 chase card variations! The odds range from one in four packs to one in one hundred eighty four thousand four hundred and twenty eight packs.
By the time of my tenure at Cardland, the industry had undergone a sea change. Topps had lost their monopoly on card production, with Fleer and Donruss producing sets starting in 1981. In 1989 the new kid on the block, Upper Deck, introduced nifty color action shots on the front and portraits on the reverse, with thicker, coated card stock and supposedly tamper proof packaging. The other companies saw the sales figures and by 1991 had introduced their own premium lines, Topps with Stadium Club, Fleer with Ultra, Donruss with Leaf, while around the same time Pro Set came out with a new football series. Today all the cards produced would have been considered premium thirty years ago; the downside of the beautiful photography is the lack of year to year design changes that us kids used to look forward to. Check out the changes in the layout of the cards during this writer’s prime collecting years 1970-73 plus just a little in ‘74 before discovering rock and roll. There’s something for everyone, really, from basic to psychedelic and always with the stats on the back. Except for 1971, which disappointingly only had the previous year and career hauls. I particularly like the final card of a player in the cases where the entire career record was on the reverse, like the ‘69 Mantle or, tragically, the ‘73 Clemente.
For a while we did carry comic books also, in the early 90s several writers and artists became disgruntled with the deals offered by Marvel and DC and branched out to form creator-controlled comic publishers. These were all the rage for a while but didn’t do all that well for us--most folks that asked about them were looking for one or two hot titles only. We did all right with one or two as I recall but eventually it got to be a hassle and more trouble than it was worth. We installed a couple of video games at one point, but the neighborhood youngsters wanted the one hot game of the moment which we didn’t have, so most of the action from the baseball video game was from this writer and Bobby Jones! I used to win because he didn’t know how to throw a wobble ball. Much better in terms of sales was the collector’s trade paper, Sports Collectors Digest, which was chock full of ads for complete sets, vintage stuff, and the like. Note that this was way before grading services; this was done with an experienced eyeball like mine. A lot of collectors were really picky, condition being the single most important factor in any collectible. So it behooved me to be objective and honest about it, while unfortunately many dealers and private sellers had, shall we say, blinders on regarding condition. SCD, which still exists, used to have articles on old-time players and would frequently print addresses if they were amenable to autograph requests by mail. In this way your correspondent acquired many a signature, including Elmer Valo, one of my father’s favorite players, Sudden Sam McDowell, Dick Williams, Larry Dierker, Charlie Hough, and lots more. Also, there were many promoter types who would rent a hall and invite dealers and have a show, ofttimes with guests. In this way was acquired Jim Piersall, George Foster, Ed Kranepool, Enos Slaughter, Hoyt Wilhelm, and more.
Latterly the main source is the big National show in White Plains NY each August. Highlights there include Bobby Shantz, another fave of Dad’s, Joe Pepitone, Luis Tiant, Dave Kingman, Fritz Peterson, and more.
Around 1992 noted Canadian troubador Neil Young was playing in NYC backed by Booker T and the MGs and boy did I want to go. And my pal Tim had tickets! But I had to work! Oh, how I waffled on leaving early and blowing off the last couple hours of the day. The owners were only in intermittently and probably wouldn’t have known, but I just couldn’t do it. I sure wish I had now!
The local university had a radio station which was publicly supported, this writer donated and volunteered to staff the fundraising phone sometimes, although I never DJ’d. They had a REALLY eclectic playlist and I had my boombox perched on one of the video games and had it tuned to WPKN all the time. Most often I heard, ‘What the HELL are you listening to?’ but therein was the one and so far only time I ever heard a song of mine own on the radio. I’d made some demos at home and sent them to the station; one of the DJs there had a club where he booked live music and I wanted to get a gig there, but he played one of the tracks over the air instead! Wasn’t expecting that! I ran over to press ‘record’ on the machine, but tripped and fell and only got part of it. And wouldn’t you know it, the box picked that day to malfunction and the tape was running at much too high a speed. I sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks! (ask your parents)
There’s no question that the baseball strike of ‘94 hurt us, but not as much as one might think, as by then we sold more basketball anyway. But we had some pretty bad days, and the owners always used to say, why are sales so bad, the strike? And I would always say, no, it’s because you won’t advertise or do anything at all to promote the business, which was true. So they said, ok, do one thing every day to promote the shop, but don’t spend any money. Good luck with that! Eventually they decided, certainly correctly, that they could make more money busting down the wall and expanding the variety store, which they did. And that was that. Game called.
April 2020
And so, I've played my last game of ball.
Thus spake Joe DiMaggio on the occasion of his retirement from the game after the 1951 season. Wonder if he, like so many American boys, and not a few girls, started out in baseball simply by playing catch with his father, or in the case of DiMag, his older brothers. It’s said that Papa DiMaggio disliked baseball, thought it frivolous in the extreme, felt it got in the way of making a living. Luckily for me, my dad enjoyed baseball and took every opportunity to toss a ball around with his two sons. In the spring of 1970, after we’d all gone to Shea Stadium the previous fall to attend the third game of the 1969 World Series, Dad figured I had better have my own mitt, so he gifted me with a Wilson brand Nelson Fox model fielder’s glove, left-handed model. This was before Fox’s non-power-hitting contributions were recognized by fans at large and over a quarter century before he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. And even then it struck me as strange that a player retired for five years and not really a household name would still have a signature model glove. Maybe they couldn’t get rid of them? As I found out over the years, it wasn’t always so easy to find left-handed gloves. But that was my appendage for the next several years and I still have it, too. The following year, having expressed a desire to man the initial sack, I got a first baseman’s glove; this one wasn’t a signature model but I used it until it about wore out. I still have that one, too. So in our relatively roomy back yard Dad showed me how to throw, extending the arm to fully use the shoulder. I never could throw real hard, but I could usually put it where I wanted to.
For young gentlemen in Stamford, Connecticut in the late sixties and early seventies, it was de rigeur to join a team and play Little League ball. I seem to recall having some kind of event at the YMCA the night before and the next morning I’d nearly forgotten that we had League tryouts that day! So over we went to the ballfield and one of the local dads who volunteered hit us some grounders and we got a couple of swings in the cage and that was pretty much it. Of course, it wasn’t difficult to discern the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and I got shunted off to one of the ‘minor league’ teams. I didn’t like Little League all that much, though. I wasn’t a very good player for one thing. I recall pestering my ‘coach’ (why weren’t these guys called ‘managers’ like they should?) to let me play second base despite being left handed. So he sent me out there to shut me up more than anything else, and here comes a ground ball! And there it goes again, right through the wickets! End of second base. There was always a lanky left-handed kid who got to play first like I wanted to, so when I played at all I was shunted to the outfield. I recall circling uncertainly under a towering fly ball, well, as towering as a nine year old can manage, anyway, and completely lost sight of it when my cap fell over my eyes, and marveling when somehow it fell into my glove. Outstanding! I wasn’t much of a hitter, to be sure, and in the back yard one day, in response to my efforts to switch hit, Dad pointed out that I couldn’t hit left-handed, so switching probably wasn’t a good idea. I wonder if any dad would say that to his kid now, the current wisdom being that you don’t ever discourage a kid about anything. But Dad was right, way back then I couldn’t hit. Anyway I found just playing in the ‘hood a lot more fun than the stupid organized league. Think about it--would you rather have a couple of hundred ABs a day with the gang, or one or two per week and leave yourself open to ridicule after leaving the bases loaded? Nope, the fun I had was one on one with my chum Mark, who was a rabid Mets fan like I was. So we used to commandeer our back yard and pitch to each other when the ‘Mets’ were up. I’d be the Amazins left handed hitters, Ken Boswell, Ed Kranepool, and then Tug McGraw and Jerry Koosman when the ‘Mets’ were in the field. We’d have a radio outside to listen to the broadcasts with Bob, Lindsey, and Ralph. For some reason our favorite player not on the Mets was Al Gallagher, third sacker with San Francisco, possibly because his nickname was ‘Dirty Al,’ and possibly because he had like four middle names. Mark and I had ‘property of NY Mets’ t shirts with Bud Harrelson’s number 3 on the back, which caused us no end of jollity pointing out that for the first time in history, two players on the same team wore the same number!
In the summertime we’d play from can’t see to can’t see and just pitch and catch with each other for hours on end. But sometimes we’d get the other guys together and play in the street, not that much traffic on side roads, or sometimes at the ball field at the elementary school down the street, which had just opened. One day playing in the street I really got ahold of one and sent it into orbit, a rare occurrence. This meant the guys on my team shouted for another ‘blast’ whenever I’d come up after that. For a few ABs, anyway!
For a few years afterward my focus was on my burgeoning interest in rock and roll music and I didn’t play much--I didn’t have opportunity anyway. But when I got to university I joined our dorm’s intramural team and played first like I’d always wanted to. We had a pretty good team & made it all the way to the champeenship game, which, alas, we lost. My roommate/teammate and still good friend likes to tell the story of a late lab I had on the day of a game. I finished my work and dashed to the field, threw my books down in foul territory, and ran up to the plate, for it was my turn at bat! Selecting a choice pitch, I drilled a line shot up the gap which went one hop off the math building. Flannel shirttails flying, ersatz Mets batting helmet perched precariously upon long hair, I dashed for third and made a long hook slide. Safe! I remember chasing a pop fly over my head into short right, dashing away from the plate, catching it over my shoulder like Willie Mays, and whirling and throwing a twenty-hopper to second to double up the runner. Sweet. And not only that but I was playing first base with the glove I'd gotten as a ten-year-old! It was way too small for softball but it made me focus more.
After eight or nine years of college intramural games, I ventured out into the real world. Some of the guys had started playing in Darien every Thursday night, and from the mid 80s to the mid 90s I arranged my schedule, to the extent I could, so I could roll into the field around 5-5.30 to play pickup, beer-soaked ball. We’d pick teams pretty much at random and play until it got dark, no one really paying attention to innings or the score. Eventually, children, nagging wives, and life in general put the kibosh to that and I miss it still.
In the mid-to-late 90s I joined up with a couple of local leagues and played in a men’s league and a co-ed league. The latter was sometimes uneasy, as quite a few of the fellows were none too keen about playing with women, some of whom were shaky and some of whom were terrific players. The only problem I had was trying to play well when I was crushing on some teammates! I’ll bet Nellie Fox never had to deal with that! One year I was going along pretty well and even made the All-Star team! I started in left field, and up to bat comes their second baseperson, a petite woman younger than myself. So I chauvinistically moved in closer to the infield, foolishly thinking that she couldn’t possibly hit that ball for power. Could she? I was disabused of that notion when she powdered a liner over my head, and like a dope, I backpedaled instead of running to the spot where the pellet would drop. I backed up and backed up and jumped and just did manage to grab it before it went into the street, which meant a home run. Whew! When that lady came up next I played way back, thinking she was just going to drop a single in front of me. And so she did. But less damage than an extra base hit!
Then I moved out of Connecticut and playing opportunities were scarce, although I did try out for the Screen Actors Guild team. It was March and it had just snowed, so we were slipping and sliding in a few inches of slush at Central Park. Conditions weren’t ideal, but I picked everything they sent me at first base, and hit a few good ones in BP but didn’t make the team. If I can’t play better than a bunch of actors, well…
Around that time I started battling tendonitis in both shoulders so that was that for playing for a while. By 2016 that had finally cleared up, and as I hadn’t played in quite a while, I thought I’d give softball another go with one of the leagues here in Jersey. So I took the field again only to find that the layoff had done me no favors. Every running step was uphill, my left shoulder felt as though it was made out of guacamole, and at the plate I could barely get the ball out of the infield. I was still good defensively, in fact, in every situation I’ve played, I was always the best fielding first baseman in the league. I did, however, have a disturbing tendency to circle uncertainly under popups. And by this time I'd actually bought myself a proper softball glove, probably years too late. But I figured, all right, one year to scrape off ten years’ of rust and I’ll come back strong next season. So in 2017 I reconvened with a new team and during our first practice someone said, ‘Who wants to pitch?’ to the sound of crickets. But to me, much older than everyone else on the squad, pitching sounded pretty good. A lot less running around! They had a first sacker left over from last season, and I wasn’t keen to go into the outfield what with all that running around. Also it looked frankly like our club wasn’t going to be all that good. So I was the pitcher, and I found that I quite liked being the head cheese--nothing could happen until I made the pitch! And then things happened, all right! One of our first games a batter hit one off of the light standard of the adjacent football field, and I just stood on the mound, glove on hip, and wondered how anyone could hit a softball so far. I had decent control but the characteristic common to all the league’s umpires was a little bitty strike zone-boy did I get squeezed! Having to throw through the eye of a needle to get a called strike was daunting, but I learned and pitched just well enough to lose. They were seven game seasons and we had lost our first six. I was clearly coming to the end of the line--I just wasn’t physically able to play well any more.
The last game, June 1, 2017, our opponents were battling for the playoffs--win and they’re in, lose and they’re out. Not only that, but we sure wanted to win one for a change! So we battled through the middle of the fifth tied at three when yours truly came up with a couple on, and wonder of wonders, whacked one past short for a base hit and two runs! But could I hold it? I allowed a couple of baserunners, or perhaps the sacks were drunk, I forget now, but in the sixth I went to 3-and-2 on their power bruiser, and after psyching myself up to throw the Perfect Pitch, I threw one at least a foot outside. Oy! I’d either walked in a run or loaded them up, and now who knows? But, my goodness, the hitter reached across the plate and tapped the easiest ground ball you ever saw right down to first. Inning over. Just about dancing off that mound, I mowed down the rest of their lineup until two out in the last inning. The last hitter was a tough one, and at last I induced him or her to hit a routine fly ball to center, which was squeezed. We win! What a feeling! Dancing off the mound again, I knew this was a good time to call it a ‘career.’ Driven in the eventual winning runs and pitching a complete game victory--a good place to go out. I was saddened over the loss of my kitty, who had passed the week before, so I dedicated the victory to the memory of Simpkins and walked off a ball field for the last time.
August 2020--Happy tenth anniversary to Chocolate Frosted Bloggos!
For young gentlemen in Stamford, Connecticut in the late sixties and early seventies, it was de rigeur to join a team and play Little League ball. I seem to recall having some kind of event at the YMCA the night before and the next morning I’d nearly forgotten that we had League tryouts that day! So over we went to the ballfield and one of the local dads who volunteered hit us some grounders and we got a couple of swings in the cage and that was pretty much it. Of course, it wasn’t difficult to discern the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and I got shunted off to one of the ‘minor league’ teams. I didn’t like Little League all that much, though. I wasn’t a very good player for one thing. I recall pestering my ‘coach’ (why weren’t these guys called ‘managers’ like they should?) to let me play second base despite being left handed. So he sent me out there to shut me up more than anything else, and here comes a ground ball! And there it goes again, right through the wickets! End of second base. There was always a lanky left-handed kid who got to play first like I wanted to, so when I played at all I was shunted to the outfield. I recall circling uncertainly under a towering fly ball, well, as towering as a nine year old can manage, anyway, and completely lost sight of it when my cap fell over my eyes, and marveling when somehow it fell into my glove. Outstanding! I wasn’t much of a hitter, to be sure, and in the back yard one day, in response to my efforts to switch hit, Dad pointed out that I couldn’t hit left-handed, so switching probably wasn’t a good idea. I wonder if any dad would say that to his kid now, the current wisdom being that you don’t ever discourage a kid about anything. But Dad was right, way back then I couldn’t hit. Anyway I found just playing in the ‘hood a lot more fun than the stupid organized league. Think about it--would you rather have a couple of hundred ABs a day with the gang, or one or two per week and leave yourself open to ridicule after leaving the bases loaded? Nope, the fun I had was one on one with my chum Mark, who was a rabid Mets fan like I was. So we used to commandeer our back yard and pitch to each other when the ‘Mets’ were up. I’d be the Amazins left handed hitters, Ken Boswell, Ed Kranepool, and then Tug McGraw and Jerry Koosman when the ‘Mets’ were in the field. We’d have a radio outside to listen to the broadcasts with Bob, Lindsey, and Ralph. For some reason our favorite player not on the Mets was Al Gallagher, third sacker with San Francisco, possibly because his nickname was ‘Dirty Al,’ and possibly because he had like four middle names. Mark and I had ‘property of NY Mets’ t shirts with Bud Harrelson’s number 3 on the back, which caused us no end of jollity pointing out that for the first time in history, two players on the same team wore the same number!
In the summertime we’d play from can’t see to can’t see and just pitch and catch with each other for hours on end. But sometimes we’d get the other guys together and play in the street, not that much traffic on side roads, or sometimes at the ball field at the elementary school down the street, which had just opened. One day playing in the street I really got ahold of one and sent it into orbit, a rare occurrence. This meant the guys on my team shouted for another ‘blast’ whenever I’d come up after that. For a few ABs, anyway!
For a few years afterward my focus was on my burgeoning interest in rock and roll music and I didn’t play much--I didn’t have opportunity anyway. But when I got to university I joined our dorm’s intramural team and played first like I’d always wanted to. We had a pretty good team & made it all the way to the champeenship game, which, alas, we lost. My roommate/teammate and still good friend likes to tell the story of a late lab I had on the day of a game. I finished my work and dashed to the field, threw my books down in foul territory, and ran up to the plate, for it was my turn at bat! Selecting a choice pitch, I drilled a line shot up the gap which went one hop off the math building. Flannel shirttails flying, ersatz Mets batting helmet perched precariously upon long hair, I dashed for third and made a long hook slide. Safe! I remember chasing a pop fly over my head into short right, dashing away from the plate, catching it over my shoulder like Willie Mays, and whirling and throwing a twenty-hopper to second to double up the runner. Sweet. And not only that but I was playing first base with the glove I'd gotten as a ten-year-old! It was way too small for softball but it made me focus more.
After eight or nine years of college intramural games, I ventured out into the real world. Some of the guys had started playing in Darien every Thursday night, and from the mid 80s to the mid 90s I arranged my schedule, to the extent I could, so I could roll into the field around 5-5.30 to play pickup, beer-soaked ball. We’d pick teams pretty much at random and play until it got dark, no one really paying attention to innings or the score. Eventually, children, nagging wives, and life in general put the kibosh to that and I miss it still.
In the mid-to-late 90s I joined up with a couple of local leagues and played in a men’s league and a co-ed league. The latter was sometimes uneasy, as quite a few of the fellows were none too keen about playing with women, some of whom were shaky and some of whom were terrific players. The only problem I had was trying to play well when I was crushing on some teammates! I’ll bet Nellie Fox never had to deal with that! One year I was going along pretty well and even made the All-Star team! I started in left field, and up to bat comes their second baseperson, a petite woman younger than myself. So I chauvinistically moved in closer to the infield, foolishly thinking that she couldn’t possibly hit that ball for power. Could she? I was disabused of that notion when she powdered a liner over my head, and like a dope, I backpedaled instead of running to the spot where the pellet would drop. I backed up and backed up and jumped and just did manage to grab it before it went into the street, which meant a home run. Whew! When that lady came up next I played way back, thinking she was just going to drop a single in front of me. And so she did. But less damage than an extra base hit!
Then I moved out of Connecticut and playing opportunities were scarce, although I did try out for the Screen Actors Guild team. It was March and it had just snowed, so we were slipping and sliding in a few inches of slush at Central Park. Conditions weren’t ideal, but I picked everything they sent me at first base, and hit a few good ones in BP but didn’t make the team. If I can’t play better than a bunch of actors, well…
Around that time I started battling tendonitis in both shoulders so that was that for playing for a while. By 2016 that had finally cleared up, and as I hadn’t played in quite a while, I thought I’d give softball another go with one of the leagues here in Jersey. So I took the field again only to find that the layoff had done me no favors. Every running step was uphill, my left shoulder felt as though it was made out of guacamole, and at the plate I could barely get the ball out of the infield. I was still good defensively, in fact, in every situation I’ve played, I was always the best fielding first baseman in the league. I did, however, have a disturbing tendency to circle uncertainly under popups. And by this time I'd actually bought myself a proper softball glove, probably years too late. But I figured, all right, one year to scrape off ten years’ of rust and I’ll come back strong next season. So in 2017 I reconvened with a new team and during our first practice someone said, ‘Who wants to pitch?’ to the sound of crickets. But to me, much older than everyone else on the squad, pitching sounded pretty good. A lot less running around! They had a first sacker left over from last season, and I wasn’t keen to go into the outfield what with all that running around. Also it looked frankly like our club wasn’t going to be all that good. So I was the pitcher, and I found that I quite liked being the head cheese--nothing could happen until I made the pitch! And then things happened, all right! One of our first games a batter hit one off of the light standard of the adjacent football field, and I just stood on the mound, glove on hip, and wondered how anyone could hit a softball so far. I had decent control but the characteristic common to all the league’s umpires was a little bitty strike zone-boy did I get squeezed! Having to throw through the eye of a needle to get a called strike was daunting, but I learned and pitched just well enough to lose. They were seven game seasons and we had lost our first six. I was clearly coming to the end of the line--I just wasn’t physically able to play well any more.
The last game, June 1, 2017, our opponents were battling for the playoffs--win and they’re in, lose and they’re out. Not only that, but we sure wanted to win one for a change! So we battled through the middle of the fifth tied at three when yours truly came up with a couple on, and wonder of wonders, whacked one past short for a base hit and two runs! But could I hold it? I allowed a couple of baserunners, or perhaps the sacks were drunk, I forget now, but in the sixth I went to 3-and-2 on their power bruiser, and after psyching myself up to throw the Perfect Pitch, I threw one at least a foot outside. Oy! I’d either walked in a run or loaded them up, and now who knows? But, my goodness, the hitter reached across the plate and tapped the easiest ground ball you ever saw right down to first. Inning over. Just about dancing off that mound, I mowed down the rest of their lineup until two out in the last inning. The last hitter was a tough one, and at last I induced him or her to hit a routine fly ball to center, which was squeezed. We win! What a feeling! Dancing off the mound again, I knew this was a good time to call it a ‘career.’ Driven in the eventual winning runs and pitching a complete game victory--a good place to go out. I was saddened over the loss of my kitty, who had passed the week before, so I dedicated the victory to the memory of Simpkins and walked off a ball field for the last time.
August 2020--Happy tenth anniversary to Chocolate Frosted Bloggos!
Present and Future Passed
Your correspondent recalls some years ago reading about how in the future folks will be shopping via the gizmo and having these little machines do a lot of other things for them, or to them, in the comfort of their own homes. Little did we know that computers small and large would have pretty much taken over everything as we say good riddance to 2020. (Of course, I’m still waiting for the hovercrafts and cities on the moon, as were also promised!)
Thirty or forty years ago, I probably would have marveled at the various possibilities being bandied about, and here I am in 2020 using a thing smaller than a package of cigarettes to play music, check messages, and look stuff up. And even that’s hardly a fraction of the various things I could be doing, although I don’t care to be surveilled any more than I am already, nor do I want to pay any more dough for a service that’s mediocre by First World standards. But even though I’m not glued to the thing 24/7 like most people are nowadays, it is a useful tool and goodness knows I’m used to it now. Back then I reckon I would have thought, ‘Cool! When I get one of these things I’m going to do this and that and the other thing!’ but most folks use smart phones for shopping, which I don’t, or for insulting strangers on social media, which I don’t, or playing video games, which I don’t since I got bored with the one game that was on my first cell phone way back in 2007. Haven’t had a land line since 2011 and come to think about it--
Has it really been ten years or even less since I abandoned:
Pizza, cheese, The Price Is Right, MAD magazine, softball, pets, tennis, comics, video tapes, booze, soft drinks, newspapers, potatoes in various forms,
All of which used to be regular bits in my life! Where did they go?
What would I have said in ‘90, ‘00, or ‘10 upon being told what would be going on in the third decade of the 21st century? I don’t know if I’d have even believed it, but probably would have been surprised and happy that I would still be alive and working in thirty years! (I don’t care to speculate upon my grim reaction had I been told what was to come in MLB and DC.) Wonderment as well probably, that I’d been living & working in the Metro NYC area for nearly twenty of those years! I also might have thought that I’d have attracted a woman by 2020, but my last failed extremely short-lived interlude is over a dozen years in the past. Sadly that would not have surprised me then or now.
How would 2020 look from back then? I’ve often bantered with my former roommate from the 80s, and still good friend, about how horrified we’d have been upon being told what would be going on, particularly the ongoing popularity of bigotry and hate. But we also predicted many of the dismal results of these decades of misrule by the hard right. Even by 1990, we could see danger down the road. I was working in a sports memorabilia shop and, while doing a lot of home recording, was not yet acting or writing anything other than songs, of which there were a lot then.
In the 20th century, we always said, ‘the year 2000’ with a kind of reverence. What was going on when that year finally rolled around? Five years into my bookselling career, and I was doing a fair amount of acting, I did The Tempest that year, and Henry IV, as well as a handful of short films.
About to get another furry pal, Mets in the Series, mourning demise of the late power trio Caribou Gone, debating the stolen election and possible widespread computer glitches, just getting used to home computers, getting long overdue work on choppers, the rise of forced hyper-patriotism, and the usual trouble in the Middle East.
In 2010 I was a little more than halfway through my tenure at Complete Traveller, doing stage work and putting up some of my own stuff. Lost a lot of weight, trip to WWC, 21 days in Europe, upon my return and after ten years, Simpkins is now a lap kitty.
It took 25 years after I rang up my first book sale, but I finally made it to the top--a well known place in Manhattan!
So what’s the bottom line? In looking at 2020 me, I would have overestimated the possibility of keeping company with a woman and underestimated my ability/desire to move on from things and let go. I’d have been pleased at my improvement in not bothering with trivia and as a musician, looked wryly at my lessening Jones to act, admiringly at my ability to discipline enough to write a novel and just about done with the first draft of a second, and with interest at my embrace of solitude and peace and quiet, all the while following G Washington’s advice and steering clear of entangling alliances.
December 2020
2021 Film Review
Your correspondent got the usual pile of DVD screeners by virtue of my membership in the Screen Actors Guild. So, here are my quick impressions:
Bridgerton: Affected performances and just couldn't get into it.
The Little Things: Run of the mill procedural.
The Father: Anthony Hopkins was very good playing a man whose faculties are slipping, but my goodness, why are all the films so depressing this year?
Dead To Me: More affectations and just bad.
The Crown: Dull dull dull.
Minari: Not bad, the usual depressing story but wacky grandma and the kids were good.
Promising Young Woman: Leading lady excellent, apparently there are really guys like that who actually think that they are being attentive and nice when they are manipulating women to get what they want. I wanted to resign from the fraternity of males!
Ozark: OK acting but the story didn't engage me.
It's probably a good thing that I don't review films for a living, eh?
Now, some recent book reviews:
Tom Seaver by Bill Madden: Good but felt a bit slapped together & rushed. Knew most of the facts of his career but not much about his life afterwards. Must agree that he got shafted by the Mets who never should have traded him, never should have left him unprotected in the draft, and never should have let him go crosstown to the Bombers to broadcast. Can you imagine? The Franchise!
Do You Feel Like I Do by Peter Frampton: Enjoyed reading about his younger days and especially about Humble Pie, one of my favorite bands as a youth. He speaks well of Steve Marriott, and the two were beginning a collaboration when Marriott died in a fire. In a way that's a bit of a problem with the book--Pete is so nice he can't bring himself to say anything bad about anyone, even his former manager who stole millions from him!
In a way it's the same with Let's Play Two by Doug Wilson, about Ernie Banks. Ol' Mr Cub would never deviate an inch from his sunny act. Was it an act or was he really like that? Maybe a little of both, but it's an enjoyable and even-handed read. And there is a fair amount of after-the-fact insight into the tribulations of players of color in the early days of MLB integration, a sorry subject which most fans have no clue about. The guff they took! The indignities they were forced to live with every day! Mind-boggling, although that kind of crap is less tolerated now.
Our Team by Luke Epplin is about the 1948 World Champion Cleveland Indians and how Larry Doby, Bob Feller, Bill Veeck, and Leroy 'Satchel' Paige led the team to the title despite the vicious bigotry prevalent then as now.
Not Dark Yet by Peter Robinson took a while to get going but is revealed as a top notch procedural starring DCI Banks. A good ongoing series.
One Tough Out by Rod Carew: The Hall of Famer takes an interesting look at his career as a stellar hitter but much of the book focuses on his health issues later in life and his various charities which are very worthy but do not make for particularly interesting reading. This reader would have devoured more insights into the career and the game but these were not forthcoming.
March 2021
Bridgerton: Affected performances and just couldn't get into it.
The Little Things: Run of the mill procedural.
The Father: Anthony Hopkins was very good playing a man whose faculties are slipping, but my goodness, why are all the films so depressing this year?
Dead To Me: More affectations and just bad.
The Crown: Dull dull dull.
Minari: Not bad, the usual depressing story but wacky grandma and the kids were good.
Promising Young Woman: Leading lady excellent, apparently there are really guys like that who actually think that they are being attentive and nice when they are manipulating women to get what they want. I wanted to resign from the fraternity of males!
Ozark: OK acting but the story didn't engage me.
It's probably a good thing that I don't review films for a living, eh?
Now, some recent book reviews:
Tom Seaver by Bill Madden: Good but felt a bit slapped together & rushed. Knew most of the facts of his career but not much about his life afterwards. Must agree that he got shafted by the Mets who never should have traded him, never should have left him unprotected in the draft, and never should have let him go crosstown to the Bombers to broadcast. Can you imagine? The Franchise!
Do You Feel Like I Do by Peter Frampton: Enjoyed reading about his younger days and especially about Humble Pie, one of my favorite bands as a youth. He speaks well of Steve Marriott, and the two were beginning a collaboration when Marriott died in a fire. In a way that's a bit of a problem with the book--Pete is so nice he can't bring himself to say anything bad about anyone, even his former manager who stole millions from him!
In a way it's the same with Let's Play Two by Doug Wilson, about Ernie Banks. Ol' Mr Cub would never deviate an inch from his sunny act. Was it an act or was he really like that? Maybe a little of both, but it's an enjoyable and even-handed read. And there is a fair amount of after-the-fact insight into the tribulations of players of color in the early days of MLB integration, a sorry subject which most fans have no clue about. The guff they took! The indignities they were forced to live with every day! Mind-boggling, although that kind of crap is less tolerated now.
Our Team by Luke Epplin is about the 1948 World Champion Cleveland Indians and how Larry Doby, Bob Feller, Bill Veeck, and Leroy 'Satchel' Paige led the team to the title despite the vicious bigotry prevalent then as now.
Not Dark Yet by Peter Robinson took a while to get going but is revealed as a top notch procedural starring DCI Banks. A good ongoing series.
One Tough Out by Rod Carew: The Hall of Famer takes an interesting look at his career as a stellar hitter but much of the book focuses on his health issues later in life and his various charities which are very worthy but do not make for particularly interesting reading. This reader would have devoured more insights into the career and the game but these were not forthcoming.
March 2021
The State Of the Game 2021
It's been something over a half century since your correspondent began following MLB, although we didn't call it 'MLB' back then, it was just 'baseball,' or perhaps 'OB' for 'Organized Baseball,' which encompassed the minor leagues as well. Gentle reader, it's a much different landscape now, and it seems now's the time to take stock. All signs point to the ruination of the National League after one hundred and forty-five years with the upcoming adoption of the miserable damned dh, and when watching a game is more aggravating than enjoyable it may be time to stop. It's not just that loathsome ploy that's turning your correspondent off, though, it's several other things as well. The murder of the minor leagues comes to mind! A two-headed Hydra scam--even the municipalities that gave handouts to team owners in the form of gifted stadia courtesy of the taxpayers are no longer sure if they'll even have a team. And now players are expected to play for nothing. What do they think this is, college?
This writer has the 1987 Sports Illustrated preview edition in which they select the long-hapless Cleveland Indians as the AL pennant winner. That seemed reasonable until the Tribe finished dead last with 100 losses! Prognosticators can't always be right! Fast forward thirty-four years and what's in store for baseball in '21, according to SI? Like most predictions for this year, they are handing the Dodgers the trophy--and they might win, they do have a hell of a team. But not much screams '21st century ball' like the photo of new Mets star Lindor, in which he is wearing a ring on his throwing hand as well as necklaces and assorted other jewelry. If I were commissioner I would issue an edict against the wearing of ornaments on the field. If your superstition--oops! I mean religion--says you've got to, why then tuck it in your shirt, or keep it in a pocket. It's all very impressive until an eye gets put out, and the way some of these heavy necklaces fly around, it's going to happen one of these days.
Today catchers are rated on how well they can 'frame' pitches. This means catching a pitch that's out of the strike zone and hauling it back in. Umpires never used to fall for such a cheap dodge, but now it happens all the time. Poor training? Who knows? When the men in blue are replaced by machines, will 'framing' still be a thing?
One of the main differences between the '87 issue and the '21 issue is that the former had much more writing and the latter, many more images and graphics. And so much stats! They have really gone overboard with the impossibly arcane statistics and many writers and fans still haven't realized that there are many things which simply can't be quantified. How can you tell what's in a player's heart? Do they want to be up when the game's on the line? Do they want the ball hit to them in a clutch situation? Numbers can't tell you!
Thus one of the things turning your correspondent off is the way that the machines tell the managers what to do and they do it.
Let's see more hunches and less cya with the numbers. Let's get rid of the jewelry. Let's get rid of the replay--let the umps do their job! Train them properly and, if an ump is shown to be below par, send him on down to Triple-A and bring up the best. Thus, incentive to improve and excel. Do not replace them with machines, although this writer will smile upon seeing video of a frustrated hitter smashing the ump machine with his bat after being called out on strikes.
Let's make sure that only the best of the best get into the playoffs--surely we can agree that ten out of thirty is too many. One of these days a team that plays below .500 ball during the regular year is going to get hot at the right time and won't it be a disgrace when a 77-85 club wins all the marbles? Prediction: Two more teams added to make 32 in the next few years.
Just once your correspondent would like to see someone pointing to the ground instead of the sky after scoring a run. Why not give Satan some credit once in a while? And wouldn't it be refreshing if a player said, 'Well, G_d helped me hit that home run the other day, so G_d also gets the blame for when I whiffed with the sacks drunk!' The story goes that a batter stepping into the box against former Red Sock and Expo Bill Lee crossed himself, whereupon Lee came down off the mound, crossed HIMself, and yelled, 'We're all even with the Lord, now let's see who's the better ballplayer!'
But most players don't have the guts to do anything like that. Might hurt the brand, you know.
Just finished a new biography of Ernie Banks, and when he hit HR #500, there were all of 5,624 fans at Wrigley that afternoon. Of course now there would be endless hype and promotion but to be fair, it's tough then and now to get a big crowd to a weekday day game. But even back in 1970 it shouldn't have been all that tough to get folks to come out to see Ernie go for 500, but today so much is ballyhooed to death. For example, Player Jones has set a new 'postseason' record of this or that, but it's never mentioned that the maximum number of postseason games has gone from 7 to 12 to 14 to 19 to 20 and more to come, I reckon. So a 'postseason' record requires some qualification. Above and beyond that, there is really a reach for some seriously obscure thing no one ever noticed before to be a new 'record.' Why does each and every thing have to be the best or the most or what have you?
Your correspondent stopped watching the All-Star game a few years back when, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF AN AT-BAT, the hitter pulled a phone out of his pocket and took a pic with the umpire. I know it's just an exhibition, but the buddy-buddy trend is too much, as are the rules mandating a runner tippy-toe into second and home. We certainly don't want to see anyone get hurt, but it might be an interesting addition to the question of how players of yesteryear would fare today. There's no question that ballplayers now are bigger and stronger, throw harder and run faster, but are they tougher? Do they know the fundamentals? Fifty years ago and more, it was quite common for big leaguers to put in several seasons in the minors learning their craft, which is rarely the case today. And plowing over an infielder to break up a double play was once considered a desirable trait in a player; today he'd face charges.
Looks like the grand old game is changing for the worse and just isn't much fun any more, at least according to this grumpy old man. To close on a better note, your correspondent was watching one of the few games on broadcast tv, and one of the cardboard cutouts behind the plate was a giant close up of a cat. Every time the camera went over there, this viewer couldn't help but chuckle. One more time--Play Ball!
April 2021
This writer has the 1987 Sports Illustrated preview edition in which they select the long-hapless Cleveland Indians as the AL pennant winner. That seemed reasonable until the Tribe finished dead last with 100 losses! Prognosticators can't always be right! Fast forward thirty-four years and what's in store for baseball in '21, according to SI? Like most predictions for this year, they are handing the Dodgers the trophy--and they might win, they do have a hell of a team. But not much screams '21st century ball' like the photo of new Mets star Lindor, in which he is wearing a ring on his throwing hand as well as necklaces and assorted other jewelry. If I were commissioner I would issue an edict against the wearing of ornaments on the field. If your superstition--oops! I mean religion--says you've got to, why then tuck it in your shirt, or keep it in a pocket. It's all very impressive until an eye gets put out, and the way some of these heavy necklaces fly around, it's going to happen one of these days.
Today catchers are rated on how well they can 'frame' pitches. This means catching a pitch that's out of the strike zone and hauling it back in. Umpires never used to fall for such a cheap dodge, but now it happens all the time. Poor training? Who knows? When the men in blue are replaced by machines, will 'framing' still be a thing?
One of the main differences between the '87 issue and the '21 issue is that the former had much more writing and the latter, many more images and graphics. And so much stats! They have really gone overboard with the impossibly arcane statistics and many writers and fans still haven't realized that there are many things which simply can't be quantified. How can you tell what's in a player's heart? Do they want to be up when the game's on the line? Do they want the ball hit to them in a clutch situation? Numbers can't tell you!
Thus one of the things turning your correspondent off is the way that the machines tell the managers what to do and they do it.
Let's see more hunches and less cya with the numbers. Let's get rid of the jewelry. Let's get rid of the replay--let the umps do their job! Train them properly and, if an ump is shown to be below par, send him on down to Triple-A and bring up the best. Thus, incentive to improve and excel. Do not replace them with machines, although this writer will smile upon seeing video of a frustrated hitter smashing the ump machine with his bat after being called out on strikes.
Let's make sure that only the best of the best get into the playoffs--surely we can agree that ten out of thirty is too many. One of these days a team that plays below .500 ball during the regular year is going to get hot at the right time and won't it be a disgrace when a 77-85 club wins all the marbles? Prediction: Two more teams added to make 32 in the next few years.
Just once your correspondent would like to see someone pointing to the ground instead of the sky after scoring a run. Why not give Satan some credit once in a while? And wouldn't it be refreshing if a player said, 'Well, G_d helped me hit that home run the other day, so G_d also gets the blame for when I whiffed with the sacks drunk!' The story goes that a batter stepping into the box against former Red Sock and Expo Bill Lee crossed himself, whereupon Lee came down off the mound, crossed HIMself, and yelled, 'We're all even with the Lord, now let's see who's the better ballplayer!'
But most players don't have the guts to do anything like that. Might hurt the brand, you know.
Just finished a new biography of Ernie Banks, and when he hit HR #500, there were all of 5,624 fans at Wrigley that afternoon. Of course now there would be endless hype and promotion but to be fair, it's tough then and now to get a big crowd to a weekday day game. But even back in 1970 it shouldn't have been all that tough to get folks to come out to see Ernie go for 500, but today so much is ballyhooed to death. For example, Player Jones has set a new 'postseason' record of this or that, but it's never mentioned that the maximum number of postseason games has gone from 7 to 12 to 14 to 19 to 20 and more to come, I reckon. So a 'postseason' record requires some qualification. Above and beyond that, there is really a reach for some seriously obscure thing no one ever noticed before to be a new 'record.' Why does each and every thing have to be the best or the most or what have you?
Your correspondent stopped watching the All-Star game a few years back when, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF AN AT-BAT, the hitter pulled a phone out of his pocket and took a pic with the umpire. I know it's just an exhibition, but the buddy-buddy trend is too much, as are the rules mandating a runner tippy-toe into second and home. We certainly don't want to see anyone get hurt, but it might be an interesting addition to the question of how players of yesteryear would fare today. There's no question that ballplayers now are bigger and stronger, throw harder and run faster, but are they tougher? Do they know the fundamentals? Fifty years ago and more, it was quite common for big leaguers to put in several seasons in the minors learning their craft, which is rarely the case today. And plowing over an infielder to break up a double play was once considered a desirable trait in a player; today he'd face charges.
Looks like the grand old game is changing for the worse and just isn't much fun any more, at least according to this grumpy old man. To close on a better note, your correspondent was watching one of the few games on broadcast tv, and one of the cardboard cutouts behind the plate was a giant close up of a cat. Every time the camera went over there, this viewer couldn't help but chuckle. One more time--Play Ball!
April 2021
I Like To Be Here When I Can
Your correspondent lived in the borough of Queens from 2004 to 2011. Just near the train is an eye doctors where I have been going for over fifteen years now. I like having the continuity over the years and always found it interesting that they didn't take appointments, you just arrive and wait to be seen. So this past Saturday since I was due for a checkup in anticipation of seeing a new doctor next week, I went up to Queens from my current place in Jersey--only to find that they now require appointments! Of course they didn't have anything open for that day, and even the following Saturday, so I told them I'd call like I should have in the first place. But they said that they'd had to begin appointments during the pandemic and I wonder about that because last year at this time, I waltzed in and got my checkup without having called, so it must be a pretty recent development. Since I wasn't going to get dilated or anything, I walked over to the park and 'chilled,' as the young people say, or said. Then I went over to the bookshop by the freeway but it was no longer there. Then I went to the bakery by the train station to get some delicious cookies, but they no longer carried them. Then I walked across the street to go to the grocery. Can you guess? It wasn't there. No, it wasn't closed--the entire building was gone! Just a crater remained! Now that I think of it, last time they did tell me they were closing up shop, but I didn't think they'd take the entire dwelling with them!
So maybe Thomas Wolfe was right--You Can't Go Home Again. On the other hand, I was in my actual home town last month and that was a nice visit, allowing for the inevitable changes. So maybe Wolfe was wrong. Or maybe, as so often happens, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
August 2021
So maybe Thomas Wolfe was right--You Can't Go Home Again. On the other hand, I was in my actual home town last month and that was a nice visit, allowing for the inevitable changes. So maybe Wolfe was wrong. Or maybe, as so often happens, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
August 2021
Deutschland 2021
It is said that travel broadens one's horizons. This is one of the few old sayings that is actually true. Like everyone else, your correspondent was keen to get away from it all once it became feasible to do so, even when it wasn’t really, my gosh, I would have thought that by October 2021 we’d be past it but we’re not and here we are. But with proof of vaccination and not one but two negative tests from the last two days and a valid passport, I was Deutschland-bound!
And a good thing, too--just in the nick of time I wanted to get away and visit my friends and stroll along rivers and sit under shady trees in nice parks, and I don’t know if I could have lasted another minute without them! I have friends in Hamburg and was determined to go, virus be damned. I was happily able to avoid the heavy touristy stuff, since I've been there before and seen many of the sights, and did the kind of visit that I like best. You know what I mean--a gracious invitation to stay at a home instead of a hotel gives one a chance to live the life & see what it's actually like to be somewhere instead of visit somewhere.
My friend Constantine was kind enough to meet me at the airport and for the fourth time out of so far five visits to Germany, my phone declined to work so keeping in touch was tricky but eventually he found me and we set off for the pleasant, well-appointed home just outside Hamburg. We took the U-Bahn and the bus (that’s ‘U’ for Underground and pronounced, ‘Ooo.’ Just so you know.). And we said hello to Constantine’s brother Henrik and then cheekily sat at the piano that I knew was there and that indeed I'd played in their previous apartment in Hamburg. Wasn’t quite used to the weighted keys and so banged out an awful mess, but a most excellent feature was that the external sound could be muted and simply sent through headphones, enabling the jet-lagged visitor to practice late at night without waking up the whole house. I'm regretting now my silly choice not to play for my hosts, but I wasn't feeling confident about my extremely limited keyboard skills and let it go. I wish now that I had played for them--it wouldn't have been so bad!
My Hamburger friends Gisa (hard 'G', accent on the first syllable), Constantine, and Henrik moved from the central part of the City to this area just outside the city limits just at the beginning of the pandemic, and it is a very nice enclave of peace & quiet, yet easily accessible to the bus and thence to the U-Bahn.
Naturally come the following morning I had forgotten just where the correct bus stop was and rashly decided to simply walk to the Steinfurther Allee train stop, curious to see how long it would take. I found out! One hour forty-five, but I did stop a couple of times, once for a snack and once to examine a particularly interesting shop window.
So finally at the train..but wait! No trains here! Due to construction the next couple of stops were closed, so back on to the shuttle bus to Billstedt, where the train ran properly for the rest of the line. If only I could remember where I was going! Decided to get a day pass for about ten euro which was good until daybreak on the trains and busses and just ride around and if someplace looked interesting, stop & disembark and see what’s what. Being accustomed to public transport is helpful, goodness knows there are disruptions in service in NY & NJ too.
Although I did take a couple of very very short rides on the newly limited train before I figured out where to go and where not to go!
Stopped at the Hauptbanhof (main train station) to scope out the details for my day trip to Bremen the following day and fulfilled my desire for a Hamburg T-shirt. Then caught some wi-fi from somewhere (decided not to bother with getting a German sim card after I had the phone unlocked, just leech off of local wi-fi) and noted that I was near the book shop run by a British expat which I had visited the last time I was here, in ‘16. So naturally I had to go in. The gentleman was lying on a chaise lounge and watching a German soap opera on a laptop. He wearily said, ‘Need anything? Say no!” so of course I said, ‘No!’ and commenced to browse among the piles of titles strewn helter skelter on shelves, on the floor, piled on tables along with the various kinds of English breakfast foods that are also a speciality of the house. Found just the right thing for holiday reading--Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson, in which the author travels the length and breadth of the Sceptered Isle and writes of his adventures in his inimitable style.
In the 70s there was a massively popular television show, All In the Family, which had been adapted from a UK show, Till Death Us Do Part. In between the single serving sizes of Weetabix and Nutella, there was a mass market paperback of scripts adapted into short story form. Having never seen (or read) any of the precursor series to AITF, this was interesting indeed! One can certainly see the antecedents of Carroll O’Connor’s brilliant portrayal of Archie Bunker and the memorable family dynamic.
Meanwhile the shop proprietor regaled me with tales from the soap opera he was still watching, as if your correspondent had a clue about the characters or what was going on! Then he discussed the youth of Hamburg’s dim prospects for the future, told me that he didn’t have any books on rock and roll (untrue, I myself found two books on the Beatles. I’d have got ‘em if I didn’t have ‘em already.).
So I coughed up six Euro for my two books and, getting my usual German lunch of egg salad, blueberries, and yogurt from the supermarket right down the street, set off for the local park, (and there are local parks all over the place around here) and sat a while to eat & read.
Then the siren call of Hamburg’s many bookshops became too tempting to resist and off I went seeking but didn’t see anything that I wanted, and the chocolatier didn’t have anything ohne zucker anyway, darn.
It didn’t take long for your correspondent’s wizened old body to adjust to European time, sleeping well while here, until 9 or so this morning. Inhaled modest breakfast and again forgot where the bus stop was from the previous night so rashly decided to go in the other direction opposite the road construction that I was using as a landmark until I found a bus stop that had either the 133 or the 333 which could get me back and forth to the U-Bahn. But again I did the same thing that I did yesterday and took the train two stops to its current temporary terminus and only then did I realize that I was repeating history until I retraced my two train stops and finally got on the shuttle to Billstedt.
Your correspondent has just a few basic phrases in Deutsch but for some reason the language barrier, i.e., the fact that I can’t understand a word anyone says, is annoying me more than it used to. Resolve to take some lessons before next visit! Summer ‘22? Goodness knows!
Most larger cities in Germany and on the Continent in general, have an ‘Altstadt,’ or Old Town, in which the Way It Used To Be is preserved in the form of the old buildings. Since Bremen is no exception, and it has a nice looking Altstadt, and it’s right on a river for strolling, and it was only an hour and a quarter by train from Hamburg...next thing you know, here we are!
Lucky with the weather! It was sunny and nice every day. In Northern Germany. In Mid-October. Unprecedented! So, another nice day to wander around, eat by the river, and enjoy the nice day. Local bookshop browsed, but nothing I wanted. Not having much luck with shops this trip!
Next day on the bus I decided to be clever, and I’ve done this whenever I’ve gone overseas. I learned how to say, “Ein fahrkarte nach Steinfurther-Allee, bitte.” And what did I get in return? Why, a paragraph in German of which I understood exactly none! And what did I expect? Of course if I ask a question in German, the assumption will be that I’ll understand the answer, also in German. So, defeated, I held out some coins in my palm and let the driver take what he wanted. Greater Hamburg is divided into districts called rings for public transport, and the fare depends on how many rings you’d like to cross, and it was at this point that it dawned on me that it was usually 2 rings to get from the house to the downtown and other interesting areas, so at least I could plan my fares a little better if I didn’t go the route of a day pass.
Thence to Bremen. It was difficult getting a wi-fi signal, was only able to connect for a couple of minutes but that was enough to find a grocery and the Altstadt and inhale lunch by the river.
Found three bookshops but still didn’t see anything that I wanted to add to my collection. It was such a nice day, how wonderful to relax by the river, eating and watching the world pass by. Thence to the Altstadt to ogle the old buildings. Luckily all of this was close to the station, the map function wasn't working today so I made darn good and sure I knew the direction that I was travelling!
Upon my return to Hamburg, I remembered that I needed to grab a U-Bahn/bus ticket to get the rest of the way. At the ticket machine, after slipping in a puddle of spilt soda and nearly face-planting on the floor of the station, I noticed I had exact change in coins (Note that 1- and 2- euro notes have long since been retired in favor of coins. Many more coins are used than is the norm here.) but the stupid machine wasn’t accepting my coinage. Meanwhile some young clown in a blue coat was hovering around the machine, yakking away in German and purporting to show me how to work the machine, no doubt in return for a tip. But wait! It’s even more heinous!
Nearly slipping and falling had caused a bunch of my change to fall into my shopping bag, and while retrieving it I decided to just go to another machine. So I did, but lo! There is Mr. Annoying Blue Coat, still jabbering away despite my clear statements to go away. And now this machine isn’t accepting coins either! At this point I gave up and put a 10-spot in the machine. I thought that all of the change would come in coins, but now here came a fiver out of the slot, where Blue Coat was hovering. He stuffed it casually in his pocket, to my outraged howls of, “Gimme my money, you thieving fuck!” and other such pleasantries. He reached into a different pocket and held out three coins and a ball of steel wool for some reason, and I shouted that I didn’t give a good goddam about his steel wool and where’s my five? Whereupon he took off running. And so did I, shouting, “Stop, thief!” just like in the movies. He dashed up the stairs and out into the night, being much younger and faster than your correspondent, and there was nothing for it but to shout a few more curses and go back and take the train home for supper. Constantine later told me that the local precinct is right there in the station and expressed surprise that there wasn’t a handy cop around. But from my near-spill, to the theft, to my chase, to my shouted admonishments, no one reacted at all.
And that’s some way to close out my fifties, for now it is Saturday morning and your correspondent’s sixtieth birthday! What to do? Was thinking about going to the English language theater or a museum. But right near the Steinfurther Allee stop was a huge park called Ojsterberg Park that had its own mini lake and everything so I stopped there first and, it being another lovely day, set there and gazed out over the water and it was so peaceful and relaxing. Having been here before I’d seen most of the sights and landmarks so now could concentrate on de-stressing, so long as I wasn’t pretending to understand the language or getting ripped off in train stations.
To the Reeperbahn! Been here a couple of times before but couldn’t resist another look at where the Fab 4 completed their apprenticeship. Saw the Kaiserkeller and the Top Ten etc. and also went down to the River Elbe, recalling where I’d dropped my camera right to the bottom of its muddy depths in 2008. And where I’d encountered my first German panhandler; couldn’t understand what he was saying in words, but the actions were crystal clear!
As a long term rabid Beatles fan, I figured there’s no better way to celebrate than hanging out in Beatles-platz with the Fabs! Although my ‘selfie’ didn’t turn out all that well, that night Gisa & Constantine & Henrik all stood at supper and sang Happy Birthday to me, which was awfully nice.
It wasn’t so easy trying to find something for lunch in the Reeperbahn, although I remembered the area reasonably well, there weren’t too many markets around, just kebab places and KFC. Nearly had frites, and nearly had pizza but it looked none too appetizing. Ducked into a place and got a bag of cashews to tide me over and eventually found a small grocery. I did have a third of a glass of champagne to celebrate and my first kase (cheese--had a bad reaction twice last fall and stopped) in nearly one year--I was advised ahead of time about Constantine’s world-class homemade cheesecake so I 'cheesed up' a couple of times as a test run but had no reaction and I was glad, as I didn’t want to miss it--it was all it was cracked up to be! Best I have ever had; mentioned the famous cheesecake place--Weston's, is it?-- on 47th and it turns out he’d studied with those people to learn their method! The man learned well.
Next day the lady of the house returns from a public speaking workshop, and she & your correspondent take a short drive to stroll in a lovely wooded area and take in a museum dedicated to old train cars and their routes in Hamburg. It was really interesting, they let you climb into the cars, and near as I could tell it was free!
Next day Gisa had work stuff and so I walked back out to Steinfurther Allee for the exercise and to see if I could shave a little off the time (1:30) and because I didn’t have any change for the bus! I reckon that the driver would have been happy to make change but by this time the language barrier was really getting to me and besides it was a really nice day, again, so good for a nice walk.
So back to St Pauli for the Hamburg History Museum, which had many exhibits on shipping and the port and how all that evolved. There was a recreation of a third class cabin for passage to the New World, which looked crowded, noisy, and grim. There was a room display tracing the development of music & instruments in the City, including a trombone from 1679 and a piano or clavichord or something with a panorama of Hh painted on the inside of the lid. Also, rooms depicting life in the City at various times from the 1890s to now. They didn’t flinch from WWI and WW2 or the big flood of ‘62 in which 20% of Hh was under water and hundreds died.
Examples of clothing through the ages, a firefighting display (fire burned down half the city in 1842) and one about the huge relatively recent population growth in the City.
That night I had planned to be home earlier than usual to have supper all together but went off in search of food and found an antiquairiat, in which I dawdled for quite a while. Didn’t see anything I wanted and got home 7.15 or so, after everyone had eaten, missing a call of G’s for good measure, had the ringer off.
Next morning off w/G to pick up & drop off caviar & see the brand new concert hall, the Elbphilarmonie, which is very grand and has great views, too bad it ended up costing 10x the original estimate! G told me of having worked in the surrounding area well before it was all built up.
Then we rode around the City seeing some of the sights and then she had an appointment so dropped me off at the Bathaus where I circumnavigated the Keine Alther then rested halfway around the big one for a while. Another nice day for sitting in the park! But didn’t want to be late for supper--and more cheesecake--so I left in plenty of time and indeed got to the house right on the stroke of 6. After supper we had movie night, Joe’s Apartment which wa about a yokel who comes to NYC from Iowa, only to luck into a downtown apartment--that he shares with a few thousand talking, singing roaches. They give what for to the devious landlords's henchmen, but ruin Joe's nascent love life very efficiently. Very funny.
So now it’s time to reluctantly leave for home. One simply couldn't ask for more from a holiday--I had the most gracious, generous hosts anyone could ask for, and as noted I was able to do exactly what I wanted, which was to see my friends, sit in parks, stroll along rivers, play the piano, browse bookshops, and just generally enjoy not having to be anywhere I didn't want to be or to think too hard about anything.
So, to my friends Gisa, Constantine, and Henrik--and to Hamburg herself--Vielen Danke! Bis Bald!
October 2021
And a good thing, too--just in the nick of time I wanted to get away and visit my friends and stroll along rivers and sit under shady trees in nice parks, and I don’t know if I could have lasted another minute without them! I have friends in Hamburg and was determined to go, virus be damned. I was happily able to avoid the heavy touristy stuff, since I've been there before and seen many of the sights, and did the kind of visit that I like best. You know what I mean--a gracious invitation to stay at a home instead of a hotel gives one a chance to live the life & see what it's actually like to be somewhere instead of visit somewhere.
My friend Constantine was kind enough to meet me at the airport and for the fourth time out of so far five visits to Germany, my phone declined to work so keeping in touch was tricky but eventually he found me and we set off for the pleasant, well-appointed home just outside Hamburg. We took the U-Bahn and the bus (that’s ‘U’ for Underground and pronounced, ‘Ooo.’ Just so you know.). And we said hello to Constantine’s brother Henrik and then cheekily sat at the piano that I knew was there and that indeed I'd played in their previous apartment in Hamburg. Wasn’t quite used to the weighted keys and so banged out an awful mess, but a most excellent feature was that the external sound could be muted and simply sent through headphones, enabling the jet-lagged visitor to practice late at night without waking up the whole house. I'm regretting now my silly choice not to play for my hosts, but I wasn't feeling confident about my extremely limited keyboard skills and let it go. I wish now that I had played for them--it wouldn't have been so bad!
My Hamburger friends Gisa (hard 'G', accent on the first syllable), Constantine, and Henrik moved from the central part of the City to this area just outside the city limits just at the beginning of the pandemic, and it is a very nice enclave of peace & quiet, yet easily accessible to the bus and thence to the U-Bahn.
Naturally come the following morning I had forgotten just where the correct bus stop was and rashly decided to simply walk to the Steinfurther Allee train stop, curious to see how long it would take. I found out! One hour forty-five, but I did stop a couple of times, once for a snack and once to examine a particularly interesting shop window.
So finally at the train..but wait! No trains here! Due to construction the next couple of stops were closed, so back on to the shuttle bus to Billstedt, where the train ran properly for the rest of the line. If only I could remember where I was going! Decided to get a day pass for about ten euro which was good until daybreak on the trains and busses and just ride around and if someplace looked interesting, stop & disembark and see what’s what. Being accustomed to public transport is helpful, goodness knows there are disruptions in service in NY & NJ too.
Although I did take a couple of very very short rides on the newly limited train before I figured out where to go and where not to go!
Stopped at the Hauptbanhof (main train station) to scope out the details for my day trip to Bremen the following day and fulfilled my desire for a Hamburg T-shirt. Then caught some wi-fi from somewhere (decided not to bother with getting a German sim card after I had the phone unlocked, just leech off of local wi-fi) and noted that I was near the book shop run by a British expat which I had visited the last time I was here, in ‘16. So naturally I had to go in. The gentleman was lying on a chaise lounge and watching a German soap opera on a laptop. He wearily said, ‘Need anything? Say no!” so of course I said, ‘No!’ and commenced to browse among the piles of titles strewn helter skelter on shelves, on the floor, piled on tables along with the various kinds of English breakfast foods that are also a speciality of the house. Found just the right thing for holiday reading--Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson, in which the author travels the length and breadth of the Sceptered Isle and writes of his adventures in his inimitable style.
In the 70s there was a massively popular television show, All In the Family, which had been adapted from a UK show, Till Death Us Do Part. In between the single serving sizes of Weetabix and Nutella, there was a mass market paperback of scripts adapted into short story form. Having never seen (or read) any of the precursor series to AITF, this was interesting indeed! One can certainly see the antecedents of Carroll O’Connor’s brilliant portrayal of Archie Bunker and the memorable family dynamic.
Meanwhile the shop proprietor regaled me with tales from the soap opera he was still watching, as if your correspondent had a clue about the characters or what was going on! Then he discussed the youth of Hamburg’s dim prospects for the future, told me that he didn’t have any books on rock and roll (untrue, I myself found two books on the Beatles. I’d have got ‘em if I didn’t have ‘em already.).
So I coughed up six Euro for my two books and, getting my usual German lunch of egg salad, blueberries, and yogurt from the supermarket right down the street, set off for the local park, (and there are local parks all over the place around here) and sat a while to eat & read.
Then the siren call of Hamburg’s many bookshops became too tempting to resist and off I went seeking but didn’t see anything that I wanted, and the chocolatier didn’t have anything ohne zucker anyway, darn.
It didn’t take long for your correspondent’s wizened old body to adjust to European time, sleeping well while here, until 9 or so this morning. Inhaled modest breakfast and again forgot where the bus stop was from the previous night so rashly decided to go in the other direction opposite the road construction that I was using as a landmark until I found a bus stop that had either the 133 or the 333 which could get me back and forth to the U-Bahn. But again I did the same thing that I did yesterday and took the train two stops to its current temporary terminus and only then did I realize that I was repeating history until I retraced my two train stops and finally got on the shuttle to Billstedt.
Your correspondent has just a few basic phrases in Deutsch but for some reason the language barrier, i.e., the fact that I can’t understand a word anyone says, is annoying me more than it used to. Resolve to take some lessons before next visit! Summer ‘22? Goodness knows!
Most larger cities in Germany and on the Continent in general, have an ‘Altstadt,’ or Old Town, in which the Way It Used To Be is preserved in the form of the old buildings. Since Bremen is no exception, and it has a nice looking Altstadt, and it’s right on a river for strolling, and it was only an hour and a quarter by train from Hamburg...next thing you know, here we are!
Lucky with the weather! It was sunny and nice every day. In Northern Germany. In Mid-October. Unprecedented! So, another nice day to wander around, eat by the river, and enjoy the nice day. Local bookshop browsed, but nothing I wanted. Not having much luck with shops this trip!
Next day on the bus I decided to be clever, and I’ve done this whenever I’ve gone overseas. I learned how to say, “Ein fahrkarte nach Steinfurther-Allee, bitte.” And what did I get in return? Why, a paragraph in German of which I understood exactly none! And what did I expect? Of course if I ask a question in German, the assumption will be that I’ll understand the answer, also in German. So, defeated, I held out some coins in my palm and let the driver take what he wanted. Greater Hamburg is divided into districts called rings for public transport, and the fare depends on how many rings you’d like to cross, and it was at this point that it dawned on me that it was usually 2 rings to get from the house to the downtown and other interesting areas, so at least I could plan my fares a little better if I didn’t go the route of a day pass.
Thence to Bremen. It was difficult getting a wi-fi signal, was only able to connect for a couple of minutes but that was enough to find a grocery and the Altstadt and inhale lunch by the river.
Found three bookshops but still didn’t see anything that I wanted to add to my collection. It was such a nice day, how wonderful to relax by the river, eating and watching the world pass by. Thence to the Altstadt to ogle the old buildings. Luckily all of this was close to the station, the map function wasn't working today so I made darn good and sure I knew the direction that I was travelling!
Upon my return to Hamburg, I remembered that I needed to grab a U-Bahn/bus ticket to get the rest of the way. At the ticket machine, after slipping in a puddle of spilt soda and nearly face-planting on the floor of the station, I noticed I had exact change in coins (Note that 1- and 2- euro notes have long since been retired in favor of coins. Many more coins are used than is the norm here.) but the stupid machine wasn’t accepting my coinage. Meanwhile some young clown in a blue coat was hovering around the machine, yakking away in German and purporting to show me how to work the machine, no doubt in return for a tip. But wait! It’s even more heinous!
Nearly slipping and falling had caused a bunch of my change to fall into my shopping bag, and while retrieving it I decided to just go to another machine. So I did, but lo! There is Mr. Annoying Blue Coat, still jabbering away despite my clear statements to go away. And now this machine isn’t accepting coins either! At this point I gave up and put a 10-spot in the machine. I thought that all of the change would come in coins, but now here came a fiver out of the slot, where Blue Coat was hovering. He stuffed it casually in his pocket, to my outraged howls of, “Gimme my money, you thieving fuck!” and other such pleasantries. He reached into a different pocket and held out three coins and a ball of steel wool for some reason, and I shouted that I didn’t give a good goddam about his steel wool and where’s my five? Whereupon he took off running. And so did I, shouting, “Stop, thief!” just like in the movies. He dashed up the stairs and out into the night, being much younger and faster than your correspondent, and there was nothing for it but to shout a few more curses and go back and take the train home for supper. Constantine later told me that the local precinct is right there in the station and expressed surprise that there wasn’t a handy cop around. But from my near-spill, to the theft, to my chase, to my shouted admonishments, no one reacted at all.
And that’s some way to close out my fifties, for now it is Saturday morning and your correspondent’s sixtieth birthday! What to do? Was thinking about going to the English language theater or a museum. But right near the Steinfurther Allee stop was a huge park called Ojsterberg Park that had its own mini lake and everything so I stopped there first and, it being another lovely day, set there and gazed out over the water and it was so peaceful and relaxing. Having been here before I’d seen most of the sights and landmarks so now could concentrate on de-stressing, so long as I wasn’t pretending to understand the language or getting ripped off in train stations.
To the Reeperbahn! Been here a couple of times before but couldn’t resist another look at where the Fab 4 completed their apprenticeship. Saw the Kaiserkeller and the Top Ten etc. and also went down to the River Elbe, recalling where I’d dropped my camera right to the bottom of its muddy depths in 2008. And where I’d encountered my first German panhandler; couldn’t understand what he was saying in words, but the actions were crystal clear!
As a long term rabid Beatles fan, I figured there’s no better way to celebrate than hanging out in Beatles-platz with the Fabs! Although my ‘selfie’ didn’t turn out all that well, that night Gisa & Constantine & Henrik all stood at supper and sang Happy Birthday to me, which was awfully nice.
It wasn’t so easy trying to find something for lunch in the Reeperbahn, although I remembered the area reasonably well, there weren’t too many markets around, just kebab places and KFC. Nearly had frites, and nearly had pizza but it looked none too appetizing. Ducked into a place and got a bag of cashews to tide me over and eventually found a small grocery. I did have a third of a glass of champagne to celebrate and my first kase (cheese--had a bad reaction twice last fall and stopped) in nearly one year--I was advised ahead of time about Constantine’s world-class homemade cheesecake so I 'cheesed up' a couple of times as a test run but had no reaction and I was glad, as I didn’t want to miss it--it was all it was cracked up to be! Best I have ever had; mentioned the famous cheesecake place--Weston's, is it?-- on 47th and it turns out he’d studied with those people to learn their method! The man learned well.
Next day the lady of the house returns from a public speaking workshop, and she & your correspondent take a short drive to stroll in a lovely wooded area and take in a museum dedicated to old train cars and their routes in Hamburg. It was really interesting, they let you climb into the cars, and near as I could tell it was free!
Next day Gisa had work stuff and so I walked back out to Steinfurther Allee for the exercise and to see if I could shave a little off the time (1:30) and because I didn’t have any change for the bus! I reckon that the driver would have been happy to make change but by this time the language barrier was really getting to me and besides it was a really nice day, again, so good for a nice walk.
So back to St Pauli for the Hamburg History Museum, which had many exhibits on shipping and the port and how all that evolved. There was a recreation of a third class cabin for passage to the New World, which looked crowded, noisy, and grim. There was a room display tracing the development of music & instruments in the City, including a trombone from 1679 and a piano or clavichord or something with a panorama of Hh painted on the inside of the lid. Also, rooms depicting life in the City at various times from the 1890s to now. They didn’t flinch from WWI and WW2 or the big flood of ‘62 in which 20% of Hh was under water and hundreds died.
Examples of clothing through the ages, a firefighting display (fire burned down half the city in 1842) and one about the huge relatively recent population growth in the City.
That night I had planned to be home earlier than usual to have supper all together but went off in search of food and found an antiquairiat, in which I dawdled for quite a while. Didn’t see anything I wanted and got home 7.15 or so, after everyone had eaten, missing a call of G’s for good measure, had the ringer off.
Next morning off w/G to pick up & drop off caviar & see the brand new concert hall, the Elbphilarmonie, which is very grand and has great views, too bad it ended up costing 10x the original estimate! G told me of having worked in the surrounding area well before it was all built up.
Then we rode around the City seeing some of the sights and then she had an appointment so dropped me off at the Bathaus where I circumnavigated the Keine Alther then rested halfway around the big one for a while. Another nice day for sitting in the park! But didn’t want to be late for supper--and more cheesecake--so I left in plenty of time and indeed got to the house right on the stroke of 6. After supper we had movie night, Joe’s Apartment which wa about a yokel who comes to NYC from Iowa, only to luck into a downtown apartment--that he shares with a few thousand talking, singing roaches. They give what for to the devious landlords's henchmen, but ruin Joe's nascent love life very efficiently. Very funny.
So now it’s time to reluctantly leave for home. One simply couldn't ask for more from a holiday--I had the most gracious, generous hosts anyone could ask for, and as noted I was able to do exactly what I wanted, which was to see my friends, sit in parks, stroll along rivers, play the piano, browse bookshops, and just generally enjoy not having to be anywhere I didn't want to be or to think too hard about anything.
So, to my friends Gisa, Constantine, and Henrik--and to Hamburg herself--Vielen Danke! Bis Bald!
October 2021
What, me worry?
When MAD magazine trampled on nearly a half-century of common sense and independence and began taking advertising in 2000, this outraged reader immediately canceled the subscription, feeling that the satire that the magazine is/was revered for would be fatally compromised. Haven’t seen it since, although I understand that it is mostly reprints now. This past weekend I had occasion to see the June 2022 issue, No. 25, on a newsstand and on impulse picked it up to see what the intervening 22 years have wrought:
The articles are mostly in color and the ads for junk food and video games seem to have disappeared, two good developments!
Spy vs Spy from ‘62 and ‘63–never my favorite feature, it’s still good to see the go-to vintage stuff!
Superduperman–I remember reading this in the 70s when some of the Specials had facsimiles of the early comics before MAD morphed into a magazine to evade the self-imposed censorship that comics publishers dove into to head off Congressional action on the ‘fact’ that comics generated juvenile delinquency. These gems from the Kurtzman era are pure gold, then and now.
Supperman Pence parody–great.
The Asinine Archeological Atrocity–never liked Duck Edwing or bathroom humor, this one’s a dud.
The Scorpion Ka-Ching–Not bad, a little predictable, but then I haven’t seen the film.
Article in Ancient Egyptian–the kind of brilliant non-sequitur that was a hallmark of the Kurtzman days, absolutely inspired.
Pharoah Faux Pas–not very funny, banal.
Seven Blunders of the World–A bit forced but ok.
Mad Look At Mixed Martial Arts–not one of Sergio’s better efforts, but then there is very little innate humor to work with here.
Black Adam Joins the Justice Society–Very funny, just as good as anything from the old days.
Legendary Feets–Lame. Pass.
Lesser Known Villains–Not very funny, at least to this reader. Admittedly, your correspondent is well past MAD’s hoped-for demographic!
Health Clubs and Fitness Centers–Ok. Not great, not terrible, but Paul Coker’s art is always welcome!
Not So Certified Personal Trainer–Nice try but none too funny.
Darker Side of the Lighter Side–Tell me that is not a reference to a cock ring in MAD Magazine. Please tell me. Leave Dave Berg’s stuff alone–the changes are creepy, violent, and vulgar.
American Radiators–The original source material is self-parody anyway, nothing MAD can do is going to change that.
Superheroes Uniting–Not that great, MAD is stretching to have articles on comic characters and not doing so well.
Shazam! Funnies–mediocre, even if you get the Batson gimmick.
Supermarkets–I had to think about it for a minute but then I did chuckle.
Thus we can conclude that not all of the vintage stuff was brilliant, while not all of the current stuff is stinko. Will your correspondent try another issue? Time will tell!
May 2022
Band Leader
You know, just like Ricky Ricardo! Along about the spring of '95, your correspondent was jonesing to form a band and play some rock and roll. I'd gotten a batch of songs together, and after playing them while jumping around in my living room, figured they were now suitable for public consumption. I've forgotten specifically, but I think it was an ad in the local alternative paper or possibly word of mouth, but I found myself in a basement in Bridgeport playing with a group. It sounded ok--after all, it WAS the first rehearsal--but we needed more work before we could play in public. Understandable, but two problems. One was that the head guy was pining away for his old band and kept saying, 'in Old Band we did this and that,' and it got pretty tiresome after a while to the point where we told him, stop wasting our time and go and re-form the old band already! The other problem was more immediate, which was that the drummer's lady friend was in the band as a singer even though she made your correspondent sound like Jenny Lind! Don't do nepotism, kids. It isn't a good look.
Today in 2022 it would probably be better to join up with an existing unit as opposed to starting a completely new aggregation, but back in '95 I decided to start a completely new aggregation. After all, the point was to play my songs! So I had a couple of sessions with a friend of mine who, like I, could go back and forth between guitar and bass. When push came to shove he wanted to play in a wedding band and do weddings, because it was and remains steady work, and you usually got paid, even. But your correspondent still wanted to play originals. Then, in January '96, no less than twenty-six years ago, back to the local alternative paper to the following ad: Bernie seeks Elton, bass player w/lyrics seeks guitarist w/music to form a band.
Well now. I called him up--and I didn't have a phone in my apt back then, I remember I called from the pay phone outside the grocery store--and we agreed to meet. We jammed some and I gave him a tape of demos of my stuff and Pete agreed to come on board. At the time I hung out with a guy called Bob, who had a friend who he said was a good drummer and sure enough he was! So I gave him a tape, too, and Joe was in. And the both of them sang, too! I wasn't a very good singer then and it was nice to shift some of the vocal burden, although the way it worked out whoever wrote the song usually sang lead. Just like the Beatles! All three of us were huge fans of the Fab Four and Monty Python's Flying Circus and a fly on the wall would hear ersatz Liverpudlian accents and Python quotes all over the place during rehearsals and even gigs. Example: The Beatles Anthology had just been released and one take of Fabs rehearsal broke down after someone made a mistake:
Lennon: What are you doin'?
McCartney: It was you! It was you!
So forever after, any time one of us glitched, someone else was sure to say, 'It was you!' And it usually was.
We began rehearsing on January 26, 1996 (I remember the date because we considered 126 as a band name. No, really.) and it was in the fall that we played our first gig, which was at Wings Cafe in the Sikorsky Airport in Stratford. Your correspondent certainly had some butterflies but it was a fine thing to get up there with my very own band and put it down!
I remember driving to Joe's house for rehearsal one Saturday and being tickled pink to be in a band, I really got a corny feeling of camaraderie, for no one else on earth knew what it was like to be the three of us playing our music together. I insisted on playing originals, both because that's what I wanted to do and because we would have used up most of our rehearsal time 'discussing' what to play! At least with our own tunes it was a given. Usually I, and sometimes Pete or Joe, would whip out a new tune at rehearsal and show it to the others and then we'd try to arrange it and run it a few times. Then we'd tweak what needed tweaking and play it a few zillion times until it was deemed ready for the public. Here is where Pete deserves a ton of credit: he did most of the heavy lifting, calling venues and basically bugging them until they booked us. So the three of us, in Joe’s van, lugged our gear all over Fairfield County and played, according to your correspondent’s journal, about 40 gigs during our lifetime. I should say a bit primitive compared to 2022, no monitors, no tablets with lyrics, no laptops correcting bum notes, just the three of us playing our instruments and singing. We played Toad’s Place, a semi-famous venue in New Haven and arranged to have it video taped. I still have the tape of the eleven songs we played, but I’m sorry to report that your correspondent’s singing was flat all through the first song and I haven’t been able to watch it since. On the other hand, I always was pretty hard on myself as far as criticism of performance, so maybe I’ll dig it out and watch it again, could be it isn’t so bad. After all, it HAS been over a quarter of a century!
Eventually we learned a bunch of tunes, and once in a while we had to adjust to a slightly shorter set time, like if there were other bands playing, so we had to decide what to cut. But you never know! Once I was saying we should cut, I think it was ‘Salad Days,’ and a friend of ours, a guitarist in another local band, said, “What! You can’t cut that, it’s my favorite song of yours!” And here I was thinking it was kind of a throwaway and wouldn’t be missed! I remember playing our song ‘I Swear’ someplace, and seeing the fellow who ran the club singing along with the chorus, which really gave me a kick, since I wrote it! Just a small taste–I wonder how Sir Paul feels, knowing that his tunes are sung and enjoyed by amateurs the world over! Not that I’m comparing myself to him. Although I was born on John Lennon’s 21st birthday, which is kind of cool.
So this one night we were playing a club in Stratford, and I guess we were partway through our set, and there was a pretty good crowd and they were digging us, but all at once some fellow came up to us and started yelling “Stop! Stop!” Now, we didn’t know this fellow from the man in the moon, so we kept right on playing but he got more and more insistent and so we finished the song, professionals that we were, and said what is up, and he said pack up and get out of here, which shocked us all into silence until I finally said, why, and he said, because you suck!
So there was nothing else for it but to unplug and pack up our gear and silently walk through the crowd, who had been digging us, and out the front door, into the van, and home in silence. Of course we didn’t get our fee either. What a downer that was! After that neither Pete nor Joe wanted to continue, even after my pep talk, and so we kind of petered out, that was in the summer of ‘98. But we had already gone into a studio and put down some backing tracks and in early 2000 we finished them and put out a CD with a place based in Connecticut. Naturally, since we weren’t touring, it didn’t sell, but I note that the label is still active although I couldn’t find our record on there, must have been deleted! After that I lost my taste a bit for playing with other folks and have been solo ever since. Oh, yes, I kept right on playing! I’ll stop when I’m deceased. Maybe.
June 2022
Today in 2022 it would probably be better to join up with an existing unit as opposed to starting a completely new aggregation, but back in '95 I decided to start a completely new aggregation. After all, the point was to play my songs! So I had a couple of sessions with a friend of mine who, like I, could go back and forth between guitar and bass. When push came to shove he wanted to play in a wedding band and do weddings, because it was and remains steady work, and you usually got paid, even. But your correspondent still wanted to play originals. Then, in January '96, no less than twenty-six years ago, back to the local alternative paper to the following ad: Bernie seeks Elton, bass player w/lyrics seeks guitarist w/music to form a band.
Well now. I called him up--and I didn't have a phone in my apt back then, I remember I called from the pay phone outside the grocery store--and we agreed to meet. We jammed some and I gave him a tape of demos of my stuff and Pete agreed to come on board. At the time I hung out with a guy called Bob, who had a friend who he said was a good drummer and sure enough he was! So I gave him a tape, too, and Joe was in. And the both of them sang, too! I wasn't a very good singer then and it was nice to shift some of the vocal burden, although the way it worked out whoever wrote the song usually sang lead. Just like the Beatles! All three of us were huge fans of the Fab Four and Monty Python's Flying Circus and a fly on the wall would hear ersatz Liverpudlian accents and Python quotes all over the place during rehearsals and even gigs. Example: The Beatles Anthology had just been released and one take of Fabs rehearsal broke down after someone made a mistake:
Lennon: What are you doin'?
McCartney: It was you! It was you!
So forever after, any time one of us glitched, someone else was sure to say, 'It was you!' And it usually was.
We began rehearsing on January 26, 1996 (I remember the date because we considered 126 as a band name. No, really.) and it was in the fall that we played our first gig, which was at Wings Cafe in the Sikorsky Airport in Stratford. Your correspondent certainly had some butterflies but it was a fine thing to get up there with my very own band and put it down!
I remember driving to Joe's house for rehearsal one Saturday and being tickled pink to be in a band, I really got a corny feeling of camaraderie, for no one else on earth knew what it was like to be the three of us playing our music together. I insisted on playing originals, both because that's what I wanted to do and because we would have used up most of our rehearsal time 'discussing' what to play! At least with our own tunes it was a given. Usually I, and sometimes Pete or Joe, would whip out a new tune at rehearsal and show it to the others and then we'd try to arrange it and run it a few times. Then we'd tweak what needed tweaking and play it a few zillion times until it was deemed ready for the public. Here is where Pete deserves a ton of credit: he did most of the heavy lifting, calling venues and basically bugging them until they booked us. So the three of us, in Joe’s van, lugged our gear all over Fairfield County and played, according to your correspondent’s journal, about 40 gigs during our lifetime. I should say a bit primitive compared to 2022, no monitors, no tablets with lyrics, no laptops correcting bum notes, just the three of us playing our instruments and singing. We played Toad’s Place, a semi-famous venue in New Haven and arranged to have it video taped. I still have the tape of the eleven songs we played, but I’m sorry to report that your correspondent’s singing was flat all through the first song and I haven’t been able to watch it since. On the other hand, I always was pretty hard on myself as far as criticism of performance, so maybe I’ll dig it out and watch it again, could be it isn’t so bad. After all, it HAS been over a quarter of a century!
Eventually we learned a bunch of tunes, and once in a while we had to adjust to a slightly shorter set time, like if there were other bands playing, so we had to decide what to cut. But you never know! Once I was saying we should cut, I think it was ‘Salad Days,’ and a friend of ours, a guitarist in another local band, said, “What! You can’t cut that, it’s my favorite song of yours!” And here I was thinking it was kind of a throwaway and wouldn’t be missed! I remember playing our song ‘I Swear’ someplace, and seeing the fellow who ran the club singing along with the chorus, which really gave me a kick, since I wrote it! Just a small taste–I wonder how Sir Paul feels, knowing that his tunes are sung and enjoyed by amateurs the world over! Not that I’m comparing myself to him. Although I was born on John Lennon’s 21st birthday, which is kind of cool.
So this one night we were playing a club in Stratford, and I guess we were partway through our set, and there was a pretty good crowd and they were digging us, but all at once some fellow came up to us and started yelling “Stop! Stop!” Now, we didn’t know this fellow from the man in the moon, so we kept right on playing but he got more and more insistent and so we finished the song, professionals that we were, and said what is up, and he said pack up and get out of here, which shocked us all into silence until I finally said, why, and he said, because you suck!
So there was nothing else for it but to unplug and pack up our gear and silently walk through the crowd, who had been digging us, and out the front door, into the van, and home in silence. Of course we didn’t get our fee either. What a downer that was! After that neither Pete nor Joe wanted to continue, even after my pep talk, and so we kind of petered out, that was in the summer of ‘98. But we had already gone into a studio and put down some backing tracks and in early 2000 we finished them and put out a CD with a place based in Connecticut. Naturally, since we weren’t touring, it didn’t sell, but I note that the label is still active although I couldn’t find our record on there, must have been deleted! After that I lost my taste a bit for playing with other folks and have been solo ever since. Oh, yes, I kept right on playing! I’ll stop when I’m deceased. Maybe.
June 2022
Boston '22
Up betimes and out the door at 5 to 10 and off to Penn Station, where your correspondent entrained for Boston Back Bay, arriving bang on time shortly after 3. As usual y_r correspondent had the very devil of a time calling up my ‘ticket’ on the phone. Finally got it and boarded. Wasn’t this a lot easier when you just paid and got handed a ticket? Oh, right. Private transactions where no third party can take a chunk aren’t allowed any more. But where was I? Right, Boston.
Had originally planned to go to the UK this summer but with air travel such a hassle and the pandemic still going no matter how much we pretend it isn’t I decided on something a bit simpler and closer to home. So much less hassle on the train!
So the first order of business is to find my hotel, which was centrally located just a couple of blocks from the Common. One thing I was keen to do was to see the summer production of Much Ado About Nothing so I checked in, dropped off some stuff and walked back to the park to find…an empty stage. Unbeknownst to me the horrendous heat wave of the previous week had necessitated the calling off of numerous things and Much Ado was one of them. But it was going on all week and I resolved to see it on Tuesday instead, hopefully. So I just ‘chilled’ in the park for a while then went to find Brattle Books, which was a nearby antiquariat, which shops I make a point of visiting wheresoever I am. Picked up histories on the Red Sox and the Gashouse Gang. Then off to find some grub then back to my room to rest and catch the Crimson Hose on telly.
Luckily the previous week’s terrible heatwave had abated by the time I arrived in Beantown, so hopefully Much Ado was back on. But it’s still the middle of the summer so a boat ride was in order! I went over to Long Wharf and caught the Harbor Island cruise to Spectacle Island, as it seemed the most interesting. But in fact it was a bit underwhelming, just a scrubby rock with a couple of trails on it. So I hiked the perimeter and enjoyed the scenery and boated back to Boston. Near where I was staying, just south of the Commons, there was a chain drugstore and right outside of it stood an upright piano. Around these parts, a worthy organization places pianos here and there for anyone to play, so naturally I had to bang out a few. It was out of tune and the F below middle C didn’t work until I banged on it a few times. Then off to the other antiquariat that I wanted to check out, Commonwealth, but there wasn’t anything there that grabbed me. I also wanted to see some of the historic sights. So after some grub and some rest, off to the Paul Revere House and the Old North Church. Of course, everyone knows about Revere’s famous ride (although there were actually two riders that night) and his silver-smithing, but did you know he had eight kids with his first wife, and then eight more with his second? At the very least, that’s a lot of birthdays to keep track of. He was a copperplate engraver, doing many illustrations for books and periodicals. He even did a bit of dentistry, although not on George Washington. Part of his engraving business was producing currency for the Commonwealth. After the Revolution he established a copper business. The house itself was built around 1680, and Revere owned it from 1770 to 1800, although for at least part of that time he rented it out. There were docents dressed in period costumes in the rooms to answer questions and talk about his life, and when this writer walked into the bedroom, there was a gentleman there asking the lady if the air conditioning was original to the house. The house built in 1680. Incredulous, after he left I asked the lady if I’d heard what I thought I heard and not only did she say yes I did, but that the same question is asked routinely during the summer months. Can you imagine? (Revere’s great grandson bought the house and opened it to the public as a museum in 1908.)
After that, off to the Commons to see Much Ado About Nothing which was back on and which was very good! All Hail The Immortal Bard!
Then back to the room for the evening, caught the end of the Bosox on telly and some of the Law and Order marathon. I like the ones where the entitled jerks get what’s coming to them!
Come Wednesday, it was Fenway time! But that wasn’t until the evening so I put in some time on a lovely summer’s day under a shady tree on the Commons and then went back to the room for lunch and a rest. Fenway was only 20 minutes walk from where I was staying so over I went and took the usual half an hour to find the stupid ticket on my stupid phone. Sure was nice when you got handed a ticket and handed it back to go in, wasn’t it? Anyway I finally found it & got in and showed the screen to the friendly usher who directed me to the proper row–but there was someone sitting there already! So naturally I said, ‘Yo, homes, you’re in my seat,’ to which I got the predictable no way, dude, this is our row, so back I went to the usher who agreed that the dude and his friends were loath to give up their row. The usher and I were standing right in front of a grandstand section that was completely empty so I said ‘Can I just sit here?’ and he said, sure, I’ll upgrade you, so I got a much better seat! Then in between customers he told me what he’d do if he ran the Bosox (get rid of everyone except Bogaerts, especially Dalbec who proceeded to hit two dingers that night but made out with the tying run on) that in two weeks he’d celebrate his 50th year as an usher at Fenway and did I want to come to the celebration (don’t get up to Boston much, alas) and who was the best he’d seen at Fenway (Yaz and Fisk, didn’t think much of Ortiz). It was a seesaw battle but the Clevelands prevailed on a home run by their first sacker Naylor in the top of the ninth. The crowd took it all in stride and after an uneventful stroll back to the room, it’s a late snack and perusal of my new books.
Thursday! Time to go back to New York, but not until 2 so first I went back to Brattle Books as they had a nice selection of vintage mass market paperbacks and I thought I’d see if there was anything that I’d overlooked and I found Star Trek 6, one of the adaptations of the original series by James Blish which I had as a kid and which I now have all but three, and a vintage football book from the late 40s which I think I can sell. Then I remembered I meant to snap a pic of the Revere House but forgot so I strolled over there again and got my picture. Circled around to the Old State House but it was closed another day or two after the heat wave so that can wait until next time. Then it was time to head to Back Bay station for the train back to NYC.
So long, Beantown! A bientot!
August 2022
Keep on rockin' that piano!
Along about last April or May (2022) I hauled my cheesy keyboard out of the closet and set it up so it was more handy and started playing every day. I don't know what came over me but all of a sudden I had quite the jones to improve, I wonder if the impulse started when I was playing Gisa's in Germany. Gee, nearly a year and a half ago already!
But soon I noticed a problem--the keyboard I had replaced the one that Hank got me for my birthday in I think 1992, but the keys weren't weighted on either instrument which made them seem more like toys than professional models. Now, one of the few good things about the pandemic was that it enabled me to sock away a little dough so I resolved to upgrade and started looking around for a sleeker, weighted model. Looked some stuff up online, played a few at Gtr Ctr and Sam Ash, and had just about made up my mind on the Yamaha P-45. So I went to Gtr Ctr and played the display model they had there but some of their sales people aren't very good, I got ignored for quite a while and eventually left in a huff. Over to Sam Ash I was playing the P-45 and the next model up, the P-125 was right on the next rack so I started playing that and it was so much better and sounded so good I decided to get that one instead. I didn't want it delivered due to the time and expense, so I had them make handles for both boxes including the one that the bench & stand were in. Good move, not bothering to improvise furniture! So I lugged them from the store at 34th between 9th and 10th and it was slow going, those things were so heavy to lug my chest & arms hurt for a couple of days after. But now I've had it here since late September and my crappy piano playing is now slightly less crappy! Here are the songs I can currently play:
A Man Needs A Maid
Maybe I'm Amazed
Lady Madonna
The Long and Winding Road
Let It Be
Hey Jude
For No One
The Fool On the Hill
Penny Lane
Imagine (see, it's not ALL Sir Paul!)
Back When My Hair Was Short
Chicago
I Miss You (mine)
Just This Once (mine)
The Time Has Come (mine)
In Progress:
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Eleanor Rigby
It was interesting digging out my modest pile of piano music, I had to re do the music for Just This Once, all I had was a vague memory but I bet it's better now than what I thought up back then. Also interesting is what I'll learn in the future. Like to do Martha My Dear and maybe resurrect Let 'Em Dangle. Also know the basics of Linus and Lucy, albeit slowly and painstakingly.
Funnily enough, I also did the same thing with my Ovation--at Daddy's Junky Music in Stratford? Hamden? right off the Merritt, I was playing the midline model, about $425, and the next model up was a Balladeer Special for about double that and it was so smooth and well made and sounded so good I decided to spend the extra dough and get the better one. That was way back in Sept '01 and I still have it and I haven't regretted it for a moment. Same with the keyboard! If music be the food of life, then play on!
January 2023
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Up betimes on Monday 7/24 and left for Penn Station about half past noon. Left at 2.18, 16 minutes late, and arrived about 5.40. It was only a few minutes walk straight down E Street to the Harrington, so I set down my bag and put on the telly and found a channel that was playing only TPIR from '83. So that was my background for that trip, just like L&O SUV in Boston last year. Found Safeway on map and got usual hotel fridge food. Not that many food outlets that I could abide around here, it seems.
Tuesday up betimes and met friend & former colleague Jake for brekkie at a place near his shop called Tryst, where they had baked eggs, square and spongy and v. good. Then we strolled over to Fantom and it reminded me of the place on Fifth in midtown, Fantasy? That's not it but it's something like that. Montesy! That's it. I asked him what would be interesting and offbeat and he showed me a newspaper format with seven sections of strangeness, so that made a good souvenir, then next door to Second Story books (although they are on the ground floor and Fantom is on the second floor), where I got Bill Bryson's Shakespeare in a first for $4. I think I have it in pb already but guess I can donate one or another. Then walked around Mall/Capitol/WashMonument area. Very hot. Wed off at 10 in the morn to walk ~40 mins to Nationals/Expos park. Forgot to bring a hat and felt it wise to get one to ward off the sun. Jake & I went to the CVS for sun screen, but all they had for hats was lame mesh ones and they were out of bandanas so off we went to the local independent entrepreneur who had Senators hats in bright red with the W logo, $10. Inside the ball park, $35. Colorados use the long ball to go ahead 4-1 headed to the last of the ninth. Wherein the Expos get four to win! Walks, HBP, two timely hits and former Amazin Dom Smith scores the winning run on Abrams' hit. Sent the crowd home in delerium! Thence off to Harrington to rest and eat, thence off at 7 to meet at the theater to see a show for which Jake's hs teacher did the music, it was angsty stuff about a band, at first I thought it was set in the early 90s but it turned out it was late, Jake was under the same impression but it probably meant more to him as I was less impressionable than someone younger when all that was happening. Too many long speeches, a few 'reciting the lines' moments, but some good acting too and the band was pretty together. I would focus more on them that on past relationships but the psychodrama stuff is considered more of a crowd puller today. At end spoke to teacher and lady lead guitarist but they were yakking about all this 90s stuff so I split. Thursday morn off to Ford's Theater and looked around the Abe exhibits, didn't stay for the lecture, 45 minutes hence, meant to go back later to the house across the street where they hauled the stricken president but forgot. Thurs museum day, off to Smithsonian Am Hist which had tons of interesting stuff, then a futile search for a grocery which was apparently right in the middle of the Agriculture building and just for them, so I simply kept walking along, in the shade as much as possible, 97-98 degrees. Just grabbed a quick snack en route to the Air and Space museum, which I was keen to see, recalling when I was there in June of '97 that the Spirit of St Louis and the Wright Bros and the moon module were hanging from the ceiling in the main room. It's different now with each having a separate room, Lucky Lindy's ride was unluckily off to one side behind a barrier, but I got a quick snap anyway. The Wright bros were given 100% credit for inventing the flying machine, no one else was even mentioned. What would Igor Sikorsky have to say about that? There were only two floors of stuff, I thought it would be bigger so I was done earlier than expected and took a long hot walk to Capitol Hill books where I got Bob Woolf's memoir of announcing Senators games, among many other things. Still seeking food, I went in to about the third place looking for something that would make a hearty meal, went into small grocery, which claimed a small block of cheddar was $5.89 instead of the $3.89 that it was clearly marked. So I said skip it. Crooks! Scrounged up a few things at Wawa and Chopt and even CVS. Friday lounged in the ac and watch Bob over brekkie, then checked out and went to the Botanical Garden until it was time to go to Union Station, this done, 3 pm train leaves bang on time and I got the bright idea to disembark at Newark Penn Station which is closer than New York Penn Station, where from I'd just have to turn right around. So I cut about 45 minutes off my return ETA, although I stepped on my shades as I rose to get off the train and lamented their loss but was able to bend them back into shape. Now for a couple more days of rest & music before it's back to the salt mines while I ponder where to go in August and/or October. Washington: First in war, reluctant in peace, and mighty warm! July 2023 Canaan.So far we've gone to New Canaan and yesterday to Philadelphia. First, the former:
Worked and lived in the area from 1998 to 2002, and just for the halibut I entrained up there yesterday and was surprised at how much I remembered and equally surprised at how much I forgot. I remember I was in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire and wanted to learn 'Strange Fruit,' and sitting on one of the benches outside the parking lot down the street and struggling through it until I got it. And then the darn song got cut! Working there were siblings Joey & Winter Quisgard as well as JohnClarke and the hens in stationery. I remember meeting a lady called Maya at the coffee place down at the corner when Winter warned me off, psycho you know. There was a chronic shortage of folks to staff the counter but I was never assigned there myself despite having experience, always wondered about that. Used to go to the library a lot but it's all changed now and much bigger. Went over to Mead Park & used to sit there a lot, think that's where I played for 'The Zinnias' and where I took BP with John Netzer. Sometimes I'd buy my lunch down the street from Susan at the little market, went with her to see Hubert Sumlin about 2000. Bob Waters from softball had a deli there for a while and I'd get a sandwich from him. Friday night was celebrate the weekend with pizza pie so sometimes I'd just have a bagel all day so I could have an appetite for the pizza pie. Recall the teens asking me to buy them Marlboros. Remember Luce and the other girl at the clothing place, remember Stephanie (?) from the bank who went to They Might Be Giants but yakked about some clown the whole time. Yesterday took the Amtrak from Newark to Philadelphia, 9.52-11.06. Saw again the Liberty Bell, the Mint, and Independence Hall, went to three bookshops and picked up something in all three; didn't go into a fourth, when there's greeting cards instead of books in the window something's wrong! October 2023 Fluffy. |
Taking the heat in D.C. |
There was a lot in the air in the fall of '97. I was rehearsing for the very first acting I did, a production of George Bernard Shaw called Heartbreak House, wherein I played Hector Hushabye. Even though I hadn't done it before, during the audition I got an inkling that I might be on the right track when I was asked to read the same scene with a bevy of different 'wives.' How happy I was when I got the notice that I'd gotten the part! But there was an air of melancholy to our rehearsals. My poor kitty Fluffy, aged 12, was ill and not doing well. Only a couple of nights prior, just as I was about to leave for rehearsal, I saw she was dragging her back legs and could barely get around, a very bad sign. How I concentrated on rehearsing my very first performance in a play I don't know, except that I was very motivated not to look like a boob in front of a theater full of people. One of my co workers recommended a vet that I took her to, as my local animal doctor's office had closed. While a competent DVM, his manner was a trifle brusque, and I got a cold bill in the mail afterwards which I thought could have been handled better.
After I moved back from Connecticut from California in '85, while I was looking to settle somewhere, I bunked in an apartment near UConn with some friends who were still attending or working up there. One of our regular chums' cats had just had a litter and in an apparent moment of weakness one of my housemates said, sure, we'll take a kitten. Turned out I was the only one who was diligent about looking after our new pal. What the hell, we were all 25 years old and kind of clueless! Still, I 'bonded' with Fluffy and took her home when I moved to Bridgeport that November. And there we lived happily ever after, me and my portly kitty pal. Until she started getting wobbly in '97.
She got out once, no small trick, for we were on the third floor of a house, and so she toddled down two flights and right out the front door. So down the street I went, asking my Spanish speaking neighbors, 'el grande gato negro?'
Since I don't speak Spanish, I hope I wasn't saying something ridiculous!
Eventually I found her, of course, or this would be a very different story! Just like it almost was when one day I took her to our not yet closed local vet. All I had was a crappy cardboard carrier, and when we were done and walking home, all of a sudden the bottom of the carrier fell out, depositing poor frightened kitty on the sidewalk. She took off in fear right into the street, where here came a van, barreling down on Fluffy and me! Luckily, the driver was paying attention and stopped, enabling me to dash across the street, where kitty already was, trying to burrow under the wire fence around the building there. The carrier was useless so I left it where it lay, scooped up kitty and walked the rest of the way home. Later, when I told my dad about it, he laughed and said he wished he'd been there just so he could have seen the stricken look on my face, which I thought was a tad bit insensitive. But life went on, and Fluffy liked to sit quietly on my right leg, never the left, always the right, while I read or watched teevee.
Getting ready to hit the stage as an actor was stressful enough, but when Fluffy got sick it really upped the anxiety factor. Still, it was good to have something else to think about, memorization and rehearsals along with working, to get my mind off poor kitty. Eventually the new vet indicated that there was nothing more to be done and I couldn't let Fluffy suffer, having raised her from a kitten and all. So it had to be done and I was an absolute wreck the last rehearsal and the first couple of shows. But according to my journal at the time, I was the only cast member out of ten who was word perfect on opening night, for which I credit Fluffy's memory. So it's twenty six years ago today, rest in peace, best pal!
November 2, 2023
After I moved back from Connecticut from California in '85, while I was looking to settle somewhere, I bunked in an apartment near UConn with some friends who were still attending or working up there. One of our regular chums' cats had just had a litter and in an apparent moment of weakness one of my housemates said, sure, we'll take a kitten. Turned out I was the only one who was diligent about looking after our new pal. What the hell, we were all 25 years old and kind of clueless! Still, I 'bonded' with Fluffy and took her home when I moved to Bridgeport that November. And there we lived happily ever after, me and my portly kitty pal. Until she started getting wobbly in '97.
She got out once, no small trick, for we were on the third floor of a house, and so she toddled down two flights and right out the front door. So down the street I went, asking my Spanish speaking neighbors, 'el grande gato negro?'
Since I don't speak Spanish, I hope I wasn't saying something ridiculous!
Eventually I found her, of course, or this would be a very different story! Just like it almost was when one day I took her to our not yet closed local vet. All I had was a crappy cardboard carrier, and when we were done and walking home, all of a sudden the bottom of the carrier fell out, depositing poor frightened kitty on the sidewalk. She took off in fear right into the street, where here came a van, barreling down on Fluffy and me! Luckily, the driver was paying attention and stopped, enabling me to dash across the street, where kitty already was, trying to burrow under the wire fence around the building there. The carrier was useless so I left it where it lay, scooped up kitty and walked the rest of the way home. Later, when I told my dad about it, he laughed and said he wished he'd been there just so he could have seen the stricken look on my face, which I thought was a tad bit insensitive. But life went on, and Fluffy liked to sit quietly on my right leg, never the left, always the right, while I read or watched teevee.
Getting ready to hit the stage as an actor was stressful enough, but when Fluffy got sick it really upped the anxiety factor. Still, it was good to have something else to think about, memorization and rehearsals along with working, to get my mind off poor kitty. Eventually the new vet indicated that there was nothing more to be done and I couldn't let Fluffy suffer, having raised her from a kitten and all. So it had to be done and I was an absolute wreck the last rehearsal and the first couple of shows. But according to my journal at the time, I was the only cast member out of ten who was word perfect on opening night, for which I credit Fluffy's memory. So it's twenty six years ago today, rest in peace, best pal!
November 2, 2023
Taking girls to concerts and ballparks.
It was about 1997 and two or three of my co workers ganged up on me and said that I must ask out this girl that one of them knew. So Annie and I went to New Haven to see the noted guitarist Jeff Healy, who was good. At one point a couple of the guys on my softball team came by our table and said hello and she invited them to join us so we had a brief visit. A day or two later I called Annie and got this far:
Me: I wondered if you might like---
She: No thank you. Goodbye.
And so she hung up in my ear and I still remember sitting in the little office at Klein's that was right off the sales floor, looking askance at the phone and wondering where it had all gone wrong. But she asked them to join us, so what was she mad at me for?
A year or two later I was keen on the young woman Stephanie (I think) who worked at the bank I banked at and who expressed enjoyment of the group They Might Be Giants. So we went to see them in New Haven or Stamford and she spoke at length about what a swell fellow her gentleman friend was; somehow I must have gotten an inkling because she asked me why I was so glum, either that or I knew it was another lost cause!
A year or two later I got ahold of Mets playoff tickets and answered an ad in the Advocate for a baseball fan. So Jennifer and I entrained to Shea and watch John Rocker, the Atlanta pitcher who'd made some foolish bigoted comments, implode and the Amazins won, although they lost the Series. J had mentioned to me, in a self-protective move, that she was the kind of person that fell asleep on trains, so naturally she was asleep in the seat before I could say boo. When we got on the platform back in Conn. I turned to try my usual follow up but all I saw was her departing tail lights.
A year or two later I got to talking to a customer at CT and she and I decided to see jazz guitar guy Stephane Wrembel in Brooklyn. He was very good but even I could tell over the course of the evening that we weren't connecting.
A year or two later, when we met at the audition for Mousetrap, I fumblingly asked Pamela to a Mets game and we went and I still have a picture of her. I still think of her because that's one of the last times a woman would have anything to do with me especially more than once, but my journal from the time reveals that it wasn't an especially happy interlude. Watch out for those rose colored glasses!
A year or two later I met a woman, I think online, and we went to see Toshi Regan of Sweet Honey and the Rock at Joe Papp's theater on Lafayette. I told her that, at 50, she could pass for ten years younger and she said, 'I know.' Moving forward from that I knew that another rejection was in the offing.
Then T and I went to see the Jets on the day after Xmas in '06 or '07 or so. It was freezing cold and she arrived in a quite fetching but quite skimpy outfit, which must have been very uncomfortable. Whenever I admit weakness in apologizing for being inept with women, which I did with both T and G, it is apparently considered a mistake, as women don't seem to like any show of unmanliness. Hopefully a lesson learned
It took a long time but I finally learned not to take ladies to concerts or sporting events.
November 2023
Me: I wondered if you might like---
She: No thank you. Goodbye.
And so she hung up in my ear and I still remember sitting in the little office at Klein's that was right off the sales floor, looking askance at the phone and wondering where it had all gone wrong. But she asked them to join us, so what was she mad at me for?
A year or two later I was keen on the young woman Stephanie (I think) who worked at the bank I banked at and who expressed enjoyment of the group They Might Be Giants. So we went to see them in New Haven or Stamford and she spoke at length about what a swell fellow her gentleman friend was; somehow I must have gotten an inkling because she asked me why I was so glum, either that or I knew it was another lost cause!
A year or two later I got ahold of Mets playoff tickets and answered an ad in the Advocate for a baseball fan. So Jennifer and I entrained to Shea and watch John Rocker, the Atlanta pitcher who'd made some foolish bigoted comments, implode and the Amazins won, although they lost the Series. J had mentioned to me, in a self-protective move, that she was the kind of person that fell asleep on trains, so naturally she was asleep in the seat before I could say boo. When we got on the platform back in Conn. I turned to try my usual follow up but all I saw was her departing tail lights.
A year or two later I got to talking to a customer at CT and she and I decided to see jazz guitar guy Stephane Wrembel in Brooklyn. He was very good but even I could tell over the course of the evening that we weren't connecting.
A year or two later, when we met at the audition for Mousetrap, I fumblingly asked Pamela to a Mets game and we went and I still have a picture of her. I still think of her because that's one of the last times a woman would have anything to do with me especially more than once, but my journal from the time reveals that it wasn't an especially happy interlude. Watch out for those rose colored glasses!
A year or two later I met a woman, I think online, and we went to see Toshi Regan of Sweet Honey and the Rock at Joe Papp's theater on Lafayette. I told her that, at 50, she could pass for ten years younger and she said, 'I know.' Moving forward from that I knew that another rejection was in the offing.
Then T and I went to see the Jets on the day after Xmas in '06 or '07 or so. It was freezing cold and she arrived in a quite fetching but quite skimpy outfit, which must have been very uncomfortable. Whenever I admit weakness in apologizing for being inept with women, which I did with both T and G, it is apparently considered a mistake, as women don't seem to like any show of unmanliness. Hopefully a lesson learned
It took a long time but I finally learned not to take ladies to concerts or sporting events.
November 2023
The Art World
I thought that I'd be way late so I texted the lady to say so, but I wasn't as late as I thought and when I arrived at the Smush Gallery in Jersey City on Saturday night, the folks inside saw me lurking through the window and bade me enter. I was there to play a tune or two during their festive holiday celebration, so I ran down the street to my place, got my Ovation, and ran back, sat down, and waited for my spot. There was a fellow on keys and one on guitar, both staring down, not at music or a chord chart, but at some kind of gizmo which is apparently where folks 'write down' their changes which is apparently the way it's done nowadays. Doesn't anyone memorize anything anymore? (And with my memory, that is no small trick!) The people performing ahead of me were all young folks, 3 poems, one short story, which were also read from phones except for one fellow reading off of papers! Presently I realized that I'd forgotten my strap and was keen to play standing up, so when the lady asked if I was ready to go I said I'm just going to run and get my strap, one minute, so they slotted in a short act that was just finishing when I got back. So I tuned up and hit it with Suzanne Vega's Knight Moves and Killing Me Softly after Roberta Flack. Took a minute or two to get locked in but managed through sheer willpower to hit all the notes although to my chagrin I forgot half of the third verse of KM and so winged it. No, I went for it and belted! Folks seemed to dig me and got kudos from 2.
While I found the other pieces to be mostly incomprehensible, a fellow dressed as Santy Claus seemed to be the 'headliner' and was entertaining, sang good and had a couple of funny bits. The gallery was giving away small stuffed puppies to every performer and I selected one which was cute. Props to the lady who went up and ad libbed a piece specifically to get the stuffed puppy! After my mini set I went home for supper, and happily quickly re learned McCartney's Junk. A good tune.
December 2023
While I found the other pieces to be mostly incomprehensible, a fellow dressed as Santy Claus seemed to be the 'headliner' and was entertaining, sang good and had a couple of funny bits. The gallery was giving away small stuffed puppies to every performer and I selected one which was cute. Props to the lady who went up and ad libbed a piece specifically to get the stuffed puppy! After my mini set I went home for supper, and happily quickly re learned McCartney's Junk. A good tune.
December 2023
That's not funny--or is it?
On Ken Levine’s fantastic blog, there was a discussion about what do you find funny? Now, that’s a very good question, so I started thinking about what y_r blogger laughs at. So, chronologically, I’d have to say the antics of the Flintstones and the Three Stooges led to hilarity as a lad. In particular, from I think the next to last season of The Flinstones when they did a parody of sorts of the top show at the time, Bonanza. Fred & Barney end up as sheriffs in a dying ghost town, menaced by the Slattery Brothers who no one wants to tangle with. Barney keeps doing an impression of Dennis Weaver/Chester Goode and talks in a drawl and Fred keeps yelling at him to shut up. When they are faced down by the Slatterys, just before the Cartrocks save the day, Barney drawls, ‘Looks like this is it, Mister Flintstone,’ and Fred replies, ‘For the last time, shut up!’
Cracked me up when I was ten and still does to this day! Meanwhile I’ve heard it said that the clearest example of the gender gap is the Stooges themselves–men love them and women can’t stand them, and I haven’t seen or heard anything to disabuse me of that notion.
Speaking of being ten, it was about that time that I was introduced to MAD magazine, which was a huge humor influence not just on me but on just about everyone in my generation.
A worthy companion to MAD came along on television, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus broke the mold in that all the tired old tropes of humor were exploded and cut into little pieces by the wacky troupe who would let a sketch go any old way so long as it was funny. And so the gallows humor and the off the wall nature of it all drew me in, where I remain to this day. Honorable mention to Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles–two of the funniest motion pictures ever made.
Brilliant character- based humor with a large dash of topicality sent All In the Family my way when it entered syndication in about 1976. After school I would deliver the papers on my route, then settle in for a snack and a couple of episodes back to back. And my goodness! Somehow even more subversively than Monty Python, AITF left nothing sacred and took on everything and everyone, from the President on down. Archie B, excoriating the British as having a society that’s a kind of a ‘fagdom.’ Or hiring a Jewish lawyer when he wants to sue an Arab, for the former will be ‘full of hate.’ Similarly, when the Simpsons came along a few years later, y_r blogger was nearly shocked when, in declining to go to church on Sunday morning, Homer responds to Marge’s entreaty that G_d only asks for one hour a week, responds, ‘Then he should have made the week an hour longer! Lousy G_d.’ Between Monty and Homer, is it any wonder the view from here on organized religion are…irreverent?
A couple of more recent examples:
Bob Barker on The Price Is Right, dealing with a tricky contestant: ‘I believe that I’ll just start drinking early today!’
Detective Benson of SVU, calming down two suspects arguing over who found the body:
‘Girls! You’re both pretty!’
Cracked me right up.
February 2024
Cracked me up when I was ten and still does to this day! Meanwhile I’ve heard it said that the clearest example of the gender gap is the Stooges themselves–men love them and women can’t stand them, and I haven’t seen or heard anything to disabuse me of that notion.
Speaking of being ten, it was about that time that I was introduced to MAD magazine, which was a huge humor influence not just on me but on just about everyone in my generation.
A worthy companion to MAD came along on television, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus broke the mold in that all the tired old tropes of humor were exploded and cut into little pieces by the wacky troupe who would let a sketch go any old way so long as it was funny. And so the gallows humor and the off the wall nature of it all drew me in, where I remain to this day. Honorable mention to Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles–two of the funniest motion pictures ever made.
Brilliant character- based humor with a large dash of topicality sent All In the Family my way when it entered syndication in about 1976. After school I would deliver the papers on my route, then settle in for a snack and a couple of episodes back to back. And my goodness! Somehow even more subversively than Monty Python, AITF left nothing sacred and took on everything and everyone, from the President on down. Archie B, excoriating the British as having a society that’s a kind of a ‘fagdom.’ Or hiring a Jewish lawyer when he wants to sue an Arab, for the former will be ‘full of hate.’ Similarly, when the Simpsons came along a few years later, y_r blogger was nearly shocked when, in declining to go to church on Sunday morning, Homer responds to Marge’s entreaty that G_d only asks for one hour a week, responds, ‘Then he should have made the week an hour longer! Lousy G_d.’ Between Monty and Homer, is it any wonder the view from here on organized religion are…irreverent?
A couple of more recent examples:
Bob Barker on The Price Is Right, dealing with a tricky contestant: ‘I believe that I’ll just start drinking early today!’
Detective Benson of SVU, calming down two suspects arguing over who found the body:
‘Girls! You’re both pretty!’
Cracked me right up.
February 2024
|
Having planned to visit Great Britain in 2020, y_r correspondent got distracted by a shiny new guitar, and so that was postponed to 2023, and postponed again in order to save up some more dough. But at last we were ready, so here we go! Up betimes and off to the train en route to Newark Airport to Reykjavik and then on to Heathrow; the direct flights were much more expensive than those with the stopover. Keflavik airport is well outside of Reykjavik, though, and so there wasn’t much to see except the barren landscape. Perhaps next trip I’ll be able to spend a little more time and see the sights! Then, the last three hours on to Heathrow, took the Piccadilly Line to Kings Cross/Pancreas and thence to my room in Argyle Street. The handy phone kiosk right on the corner cheerfully installed a UK sim card, so my phone now works, at least for the moment. Thank goodness for the map function! Looked up doings for the evening and what do you know? The noted guitarist Richard Thompson is appearing at the Royal Albert Hall this very evening! So like a dutiful 21st-century person, I went on their website to get a ticket; made at least four attempts to get the one time authorization code that they insisted was en route, but none ever arrived, so I emailed their hotline and to their credit they got back right away and said that the box office was open! So I strolled over there and got my nosebleed, an actual paper ticket, for fifty quid. Come show time, over I went, and as I’m trudging up and up to my seat, an usher comes up to me and says, we’re upgrading for free, would you like to sit downstairs? Why, yes! Yes I would. So I got a much better seat than the one I actually paid for! RT was celebrating his birthday with several guests, including ex-wife Linda (!), Dave Mattacks on drums, Danny Thompson on bass for a few numbers, the guys from Squeeze, Crowded House, Ralph McTell, John Etheridge, Zara Phillilps, and several family members. Image one: l-r McTell, Thompson, Thomas After I got my ticket but before show time, went strolling around Chelsea and went into a bookshop called World’s End. Apparently Bill Wyman, formerly of the Rolling Stones, has a place in the neighborhood and is a friend of the shop. They had Wyman’s history of Chelsea in a trade paperback signed by the longtime Stones bassist, and only 15 quid too. Our first souvenir! Sat in the park across from the Hall with Prince Albert’s statue looking down upon me, thence to the show, which was absolutely great! It was quite a stroll back to my room from the RAH, so I broke down and took the tube back. If you pay via tap or card for a tube ticket, it’s two pounds seventy; if you pay cash it’s six pounds seventy! They REALLY want to discourage cash! So I fell into line and ‘tapped’ like everybody else, saved a few pounds, but what was wrong with paying cash for tickets again? Oh, right. Up for a busy day on Sunday! First thing, up and over to the British Museum, where I visited the other time I was in London in November 1993. What were you doing in November 1993? But while in ‘93 I strolled right in, in 2024 the line to get in was three blocks long with hundreds of people waiting, so figured quite a while to get in, so Plan B. Strolled down to the water and along the Thames. Presently I came to a bridge and over to the other side toward Big Ben, Parliament, and the giant ferris wheel. Image 2: Parliament and Big Ben I wasn’t planning to go on it, but was curious to see how much the Eye (giant ferris wheel) cost to go on. The cars are very big and they give you binocs to enjoy the view, but it’s forty-two pounds which seems a lot. By then it was getting along towards time to go to the London Stadium for the Mets/Phils in the London Series! Had entertained thoughts of seeing the first game on Saturday but think it was sold out and anyway I wanted to see Richard Thompson. (Note to readers, if any: check out the music of Fairport Convention and Richard and Linda T. Go ahead. I’ll wait.) So Sunday’s game it was. I was hoping it wouldn’t rain but needn’t have worried, so far as I could see all the seats were covered–the only area that wasn’t was the field itself! London Stadium is a big oval venue used for football (‘soccer’ in North America. At least I think. What say you, Canada?) (Non ball fans can skip this next part, go directly to ‘Monday the tenth.’) Programs were only ten pounds and contained scorecards, so I didn’t need to have brought sheets of blank paper to keep score on! Former Mets pitcher Taijuan Walker was on his game pitching for the Phightin’ Phils, and shut them down but good until the sixth, when the Amazins, down 3-0, tied it up. My seat was way out in left field and sometimes it was hard to tell what was happening but I think J D Martinez drove in a couple. Scorecard inconclusive. Phils got a homer to go up 4-3 but Amazins got 3 more, the last two on a HBP and WP! To the last of the 9th and the Phils have a run in, the bases loaded, and only one out. Castellanos hits one about three feet in front of the plate. Catcher Torrens grabs it, gropes around for the dish with his toe, and fires in the dirt to first. Alonso fell over and from where I was I thought it had got past him but he caught it and the game was over on a 2-3 double play! Image 3: The view from my nosebleed, London Stadium, June 9, ‘24. Monday the tenth up betimes and off to Euston Station to hop a train to Lime Street Liverpool. Took less time than I thought & arrived at only 11 instead of 12. Room wasn’t ready yet so I checked my bag and wandered over to the Mersey and the docks. There was a barker touting a boat ride, 30 minutes, eight quid (six for me, as I’m kind of old) so I did that, pretty cool. Did you know that Liverpool was incorporated in 1207? That’s getting to be a while back. Image 4: The old and the new at the Liverpool docks. Looking forward to the Fab Four bus tour where we saw their childhood homes and other points of interest. There was an exhibit at the waterfront called The Beatles Story that I didn’t go to, both because it was 25 quid and because I could easily write it! Image 5: 20 Forthlin Road, where Sir Paul was raised. Weren’t able to see George’s home, as someone on the street had died, so that was skipped out of respect, which of course is the only thing to do. Unlike the other time I took this bus tour, now we were able to get out a couple of times and take pics. Image 6: In the middle of THE roundabout… Image 7: St Peter’s church, where John met Paul summer 1957. Can you believe that anyone could prepare for a week’s stay in Great Britain and forget to pack any socks? I wouldn’t have either, but when the Tour bus dropped me off in central Liddypool, I went in to a Marks and Spencer where they had a 5 pack for fourteen pounds and a 7 pack for fourteen pounds. Certainly seemed about the same so I opted for the latter. Properly socked, I went over to Mathew Street to see the relocated Cavern and the numerous other music clubs. Besides, my bus tour ticket entitles me to avoid the five pound cover at the Cavern! Downstairs past the brickwork and low ceilings, memorabilia all over the place on the walls and the stage: Images 8 & 9: MD in Liverpool Image 10: The original location of the entrance to the Cavern. There’s a statue of Cilla Black just off to the left. There were some good voices in Liverpool that night but let’s face it, on Monday night you’re not going to see your ‘A’ list! Went over to Rough Trade records and got copies of memoirs of Robby Krieger of the Doors, which was very interesting and made me think I might have dismissed J Morrison too readily. Might, mind you. Also got 2022 memoir of Dave Davies of the Kinks but haven’t gotten to that one yet. Will advise. Then back to London to meet up with my friends the Turners, who kindly offered to put me up for the next couple of nights in Britain and who couldn’t have been more gracious hosts. We went to supper a couple of times and there was a guitar in the house which delighted me to no end; and kitties! Image 11: Kitties, or bookends? Megan (L) and Harry would make swell bookends, wouldn’t they? They are not named after the royal twosome, kitties having been got well before. Lots of good convo about music and this and that. Next day off to the Royal Haymarket Theatre near Trafalgar Square Image 12:Trafalgar Square with Nelson’s tower looming over. to see a production of A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller. Acting pretty good if a bit hammy (wait, I’M saying that? ME?) and it really isn’t Miller’s best work, I don’t think. Of course, what I think and a pound will get you a Cadbury bar! But the ending was good and I got a kick out of the fact that I could see the matts they were doing even from where I was sitting. And then, a broken aircraft part, a wait to get a new one, a missed connection, waiting for more planes & trains, and then home at last after 22 hours on the road. Whew! A swell trip and we can say with assurance that my twelfth trip outside of North America was a smashing success! Lastly, I’m glad there’s still some of these around: Image 13: red phone booths June 2024. Stringback Glove For My Automolove |
One of the best things about living in the Metro NYC area is not needing a car. Think of it! All the things one need not think about:
Traffic jams
Parking
Crazy drivers
Bored cops
Insurance
Repairs with dishonest mechanics
Repairs with honest mechanics
The DMV
and so on…
I never even liked to drive. So why was I so hot and bothered to get my license? Well, partly because America is a car culture, and growing up when & where I did meant that the only way to get around in a practical sense was the motor car. And have you ever known a 16 year old that wasn’t keen to drive asap? Except that in my case it was seventeen–my folks were splitting up at the time, somewhat acrimoniously, and giving me pointers on driving and taking me for my test was kind of on the back burner while all that rigamarole was happening. Eventually Mom took me out and about in our huge Buick Electra 225, which was the size of several city blocks and got about eight miles to the gallon. Nothing has altered my opinion that the US driving tests were ridiculously easy–I ran a stop sign!--since if I passed, it must be!
So there I was, an actually licensed driver. I was a junior in high school, my favorite band was Humble Pie, I hadn’t yet had a date, but about all I was thinking about was driving myself to concerts to see the popular music of the time. The popular band Queen had one (and only one) record that I liked that had a tune on it called I’m In Love With My Car, from which the title of this piece comes.
But who wants to borrow Mom or Dads car all the time? Not me! Despite the split, the folks offered a deal–keep the grades up and they will pick up the tab for the insurance so long as I bought the car with the dough I made working at Sears after school and on weekends. Fair enough, so that’s what I did. Mistake! I ended up with a 1974 Chevrolet Vega and what a piece o’crap that was! Always breaking down, never worked right, and I was almost relieved when it gave up the ghost for good.
Shortly thereafter the local utility sold off some of their surplus vans and Dad bought two and gave me one. This is what I had the last couple of years of uni, and what I had when I drove across the country all by myself to see Mom in California. One day I was driving along on the Golden Gate bridge and smoke started pouring out of the engine. I pulled over, and a friendly cop pulled up behind me. He had a small extinguisher that he had the wrong way round, and accidentally sprayed himself with it! Naturally I started to laugh as a passer-by stopped with an extinguisher pointed the right way and put it out. It turned out that there was a leak in the oil pan which, when empty, ignited. So that was the end of that van. Too bad. It was kind of cool having a van for when I needed my own space.
Back in Connecticut I ended up with my first manual transmission, a Ford Galaxy, chocolate brown, with a three-on-the-floor. Drove that one around for about five years until it died.
Sadly Dad too had died by then but had left me enough to get a car, so I selected a Honda Civic for reliability and was it ever reliable! Always started right up, never gave me a moment’s trouble–until I totaled it. I used to drive to work in Conn. along back roads to avoid those miserable freeways, but this one morning in Feb ‘97 I was tooling along and hit a patch of black ice and slid right off the road into a tree. So much for that car, but the insurance company paid off, will wonders never, and I got another Honda Civic, another ‘90 but a four door this time instead of a hatchback. Sold that baby in 2004 a couple of weeks after I moved to NYC, having taken a job in Manhattan. And that was it. Retired from the automobile, hopefully for good.
Vega 1979-82
Ford Econoline 1982-84
Ford Galaxy 1985-1991
Honda Civic I 1994-97
Honda Civic II 1997-04
August 2024
Traffic jams
Parking
Crazy drivers
Bored cops
Insurance
Repairs with dishonest mechanics
Repairs with honest mechanics
The DMV
and so on…
I never even liked to drive. So why was I so hot and bothered to get my license? Well, partly because America is a car culture, and growing up when & where I did meant that the only way to get around in a practical sense was the motor car. And have you ever known a 16 year old that wasn’t keen to drive asap? Except that in my case it was seventeen–my folks were splitting up at the time, somewhat acrimoniously, and giving me pointers on driving and taking me for my test was kind of on the back burner while all that rigamarole was happening. Eventually Mom took me out and about in our huge Buick Electra 225, which was the size of several city blocks and got about eight miles to the gallon. Nothing has altered my opinion that the US driving tests were ridiculously easy–I ran a stop sign!--since if I passed, it must be!
So there I was, an actually licensed driver. I was a junior in high school, my favorite band was Humble Pie, I hadn’t yet had a date, but about all I was thinking about was driving myself to concerts to see the popular music of the time. The popular band Queen had one (and only one) record that I liked that had a tune on it called I’m In Love With My Car, from which the title of this piece comes.
But who wants to borrow Mom or Dads car all the time? Not me! Despite the split, the folks offered a deal–keep the grades up and they will pick up the tab for the insurance so long as I bought the car with the dough I made working at Sears after school and on weekends. Fair enough, so that’s what I did. Mistake! I ended up with a 1974 Chevrolet Vega and what a piece o’crap that was! Always breaking down, never worked right, and I was almost relieved when it gave up the ghost for good.
Shortly thereafter the local utility sold off some of their surplus vans and Dad bought two and gave me one. This is what I had the last couple of years of uni, and what I had when I drove across the country all by myself to see Mom in California. One day I was driving along on the Golden Gate bridge and smoke started pouring out of the engine. I pulled over, and a friendly cop pulled up behind me. He had a small extinguisher that he had the wrong way round, and accidentally sprayed himself with it! Naturally I started to laugh as a passer-by stopped with an extinguisher pointed the right way and put it out. It turned out that there was a leak in the oil pan which, when empty, ignited. So that was the end of that van. Too bad. It was kind of cool having a van for when I needed my own space.
Back in Connecticut I ended up with my first manual transmission, a Ford Galaxy, chocolate brown, with a three-on-the-floor. Drove that one around for about five years until it died.
Sadly Dad too had died by then but had left me enough to get a car, so I selected a Honda Civic for reliability and was it ever reliable! Always started right up, never gave me a moment’s trouble–until I totaled it. I used to drive to work in Conn. along back roads to avoid those miserable freeways, but this one morning in Feb ‘97 I was tooling along and hit a patch of black ice and slid right off the road into a tree. So much for that car, but the insurance company paid off, will wonders never, and I got another Honda Civic, another ‘90 but a four door this time instead of a hatchback. Sold that baby in 2004 a couple of weeks after I moved to NYC, having taken a job in Manhattan. And that was it. Retired from the automobile, hopefully for good.
Vega 1979-82
Ford Econoline 1982-84
Ford Galaxy 1985-1991
Honda Civic I 1994-97
Honda Civic II 1997-04
August 2024