By chance I've stumbled upon several recent movies and books on the theme of male redemption. The first was Clint Eastwood's GRAN TORINO. Clint helms and stars in a tale of a bigoted retired Korean War vet who, to his surprise, gets to know and like his Hmong neighbors. He's a hero with a war secret in his past and we eventually learn it and the ultimate sacrifice he makes to save his new young friends and redeem his past.
Jim Lehrer's THE PHONY MARINE, which I read on the new Sony Touch ebook (more on that later), is about a suit salesman who discovers his inner Marine when he buys a Silver Star on eBay. He actually avoided conscription during the Vietnam era by using college deferments. He pretends he is a retired Marine hero, performs two heroic acts in the present day—saving a judge's life and defusing a gunfight/hostage situation in a restaurant—which leads to local celebrity in Washington, D.C. He deals with the fear of exposure or the shame of confessing his deceit to his new admirers. Lehrer, a former Marine, is a master plotter and ties this up so neatly, with honor, that we can only wish life were more like that.
Today 1onthetown received an early Christmas gift from my daughter, two ducats to SUPERIOR DONUTS on Broadway. We need more plays about real people and less about singing fairy tales and roller skating cats. Michael McKean shines as the owner of a failing donut shop in Chicago, a target for acquisition by the aspiring Russian electronics mogul in the shop next door. The donut man takes on a young African American to work the register, clean up, and eventually, he teaches him to make the donuts. The owner is a former draft evader who "was invited home by Jimmy Carter," but he lives with the nagging feeling of being a coward, as his father called him. The young man has a secret too. He's in a 16K gambling hole. The plot is resolved to the satisfaction of all parties, most important being the donut man's act of physical courage. This show has posted a closing notice and it's a shame. In the old days, the Tony Awards would feature scenes from dramas and this year they played up musicals from road shows. No wonder straight dramas and comedies continue to struggle.
SONY EBOOK
I never had the time or the desire to devote to writing but I get bursts now and then. Ten years ago I had a web page called the Blackboard and here is a link to my review of one the original ebooks from 10 years ago.
I like the new Sony Touch. One of the great experiences was reading THE PILALRS OF THE EARTH. It's always been a drag to read heavy books on the train. This hefty tome is almost 1000 pages in print and 1-2 pounds depending on the edition. The ebook is 10 ounces and has the added advantage of a built-in 2000 page dictionary, a plus for a novel about 12th c. England. Great read by thrillmeister Ken Follett, a TV miniseries was co-produced by the Germans and Canadians, so read this book before the series eventually makes it over here. Publishers please note: this was a fantastic bargain at $7.59 in ebook form, so keep them coming. The Oprah's Book Club paperback edition will set you back $16.47. It's a beautiful production with the paperback cover in dust jacket– style, some nice gold lettering. With Oprah, all things are possible.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Electric Cooking with the Silver Anniversary Wok; 1-Cup Coffee Maker; The Most Annoying Character in Literature
I like electric cooking devices. The coffee maker and the wok will be celebrating their 25th anniversary next year, not to each other. Then there’s my EEB—the Emergency Electric Burner system, rarely brought out except for Thanksgiving when I need Burners 5 and 6. Pretty exciting when the Chef calls out for Burner 5 and the cry returns from the cook, “Burner 5 ready, sir!”
The little round waffle maker has gotten a lot of use lately, although there’s nothing sadder than making a pile of waffles and finding the forgotten, unexamined, uneaten leftover waffle sitting in the back of the fridge after a week. Not even the toaster can bring it back to life.
Tonight the wok saw some new ingredients: shallots and squash. I loved Anthony Bourdain’s memoir KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL, the updated 2007 edition and am a big fan of his NO RESERVATIONS Travel Channel show. Tony mentioned shallots in the book as one ingredient that chefs use that you don’t usually use at home, an onion-like vegetable that lets you know you’re eating out.
I went to Key Food, bought some shallots and thought, why stop there? Lately I’ve been eating squash at Miss K’s Kitchen’s hot food Italian buffet ($4.99/lb. is a fantastic bargain at
I usually cook chicken on the wok but tonight went for the pepper steak, 1 lb. Start the brown rice on the stove and cook for 45 minutes or as long as it takes simmer away extra water. Cut each steak strip into inch squares and marinate in soy sauce for as long as it takes to chop the mushrooms into thin slices, the squash into thin circles, and the scallions into circles then quarter the circles. Start with the steak in the middle at medium heat for about 5-6 minutes or until almost done. (Keep an eye on the rice!) Push the steak to the sides and add the scallions and the squash for at least 3 minutes. Push the scallions and squash aside and let the mushrooms cook in the juices for another 3 minutes. Mix it all together vigorously for 2-3 minutes, then turn the wok to low and cover as the rice finishes. Serve the steak combo over a bed of rice.
1-CUP COFFEE MAKER
How did I lose my plastic 1-cup coffee maker? I don’t know, but I can’t live without it any longer. Tonight I ordered one from Fante's Kitchen Wares Shop in
THE MOST ANNOYING CHARACTER IN FICTION
No doubt about it, the most annoying character in fiction is the father in LITTLE DORRITT. I’m about halfway through it and unless Dickens has a trick up his sleeve, this is the most annoying and self-pitying character in fiction since the incompetent Uncle Billy in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. My contempt for Uncle Billy, the archetypal unreliable family member, who not only isn’t pulling his weight but is a drag on the family resources, started to extend irrationally to the actor who played him, Thomas Mitchell, like hissing the villain in a melodrama. It wasn’t until I saw his heroic role in the Cary Grant flying pic ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS that I realized that Mitchell was just a helluvan actor.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
On a Most Diffucult Decision; Amy Dorritt or Owen Meany?; THE PRISONER; More JULIE AND JULIA
I read THE LEOPARD by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, enjoyed it greatly, contemplations on mortality when turning 50 was considered old. Written in the 20th c., love the pre-20th c.-style chapter section titles. I thought it should have ended sooner, with the last passage on Father Perrone's trip an unnecessary one of several postscripts.
I went to Netflix to look for the Visconti movie with Burt Lancaster and had a most difficult decision: to rent the Italian or English version. The Netflix reviewers favored the Italian version and I went with that. But did I make the right decision?
The conventional wisdom is that you want to hear the original language of the actors and read the subtitles. However in the Italian version, Burt Lancaster delivered his lines in English and his lines in the Italian were dubbed in Italian (with one exception--at the end of a line I heard the classic staccato Lancaster laugh). In the English language version, you get Burt in English, but all the Italian actors are dubbed. The English version is also cut a great deal.
When I recently saw PERSEPOLIS, I switched to the English for a bit and it was flat compared to the original French reading, including Catherine Deneuve as the grandmother. I'm sure I made the right choice to stick with the original French, but I'm not so sure with THE LEOPARD.
AMY DORRIT OR OWEN MEANY?
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY sat on my bookshelf for twenty years before I read it. Apologies to my sister. Great read. Now I'm reading LITTLE DORRITT by Charles Dickens, on my old Rocket eBook. I understand that Irving has been compared favorably to Dickens. Just asking: who is taller, Amy Dorritt or Owen Meany?
THE PRISONER: Episode 10: Hammer Into Anvil
This ep is featured on AMC On Demand this month as part of the promotion of the AMC series update with Jim Cavaziel and Ian McKellen premiering in November 2009. It's one thing for Number 6 to have a suspicious tearful woman directly appeal to to him for help. "I'm waterproof," was his response in another ep. But when Number 2's interrogation of another woman prompts her suicide, Number 6 pledges revenge. Number 2 is played by Patrick Cargill. Number 6 exploits a personality flaw of Number 2--he's afraid of his masters--and breaks Number 2 in the end.
Cargill was the star of the Brit sit com FATHER DEAR FATHER and recognizable to me when I saw this PRISONER ep again after its original run in the '60s. There was a period in the '70s when independent channels in New York would run more creative programming than Judge Judy, such as Brit and Canadian sit coms. FATHER DEAR FATHER ran on channel 9, featuring Cargill as the father of two sexy daughters. The American version was another syndie, starring Ted Knight and retitled TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT.
One hilarious scene involved Cargill visiting his brother in hospital, sneaking him in a forbidden bottle of Scotch. If you know British humor or are a fan of the Austin Powers series you can see where this is going. They can't find a glass so the brother breaks out two specimen cups. As they toast each other, a nurse walks in, horrified. From the hospital bed comes a response to her stupefied look: That's ok mum, it's my brother's!
MORE JULIE AND JULIA
I heard Julie, the author of the book/blog on which the movie was based, interviewed on the Audible Books show on SiriusXM radio. They played a clip from the audiobook with a blog entry talking about trying to get pregnant, something the movie left out. There's a brief but very powerful scene in the Julia part of the movie (Julia hears her sister is pregnant) and I wonder if the writer or director thought that adding a pregnancy element to the Julie section would have taken away from this strong Julia scene? Julie is a nice girl but too young and whiny for us to feel much empathy for her. Two hours on Julia Child would have been a better movie.
She told her interviewer from the publisher that her blog responders are "my collaborators." I'm sure her lawyer loved hearing that. Shouldn't they get a royalty?
I went to Netflix to look for the Visconti movie with Burt Lancaster and had a most difficult decision: to rent the Italian or English version. The Netflix reviewers favored the Italian version and I went with that. But did I make the right decision?
The conventional wisdom is that you want to hear the original language of the actors and read the subtitles. However in the Italian version, Burt Lancaster delivered his lines in English and his lines in the Italian were dubbed in Italian (with one exception--at the end of a line I heard the classic staccato Lancaster laugh). In the English language version, you get Burt in English, but all the Italian actors are dubbed. The English version is also cut a great deal.
When I recently saw PERSEPOLIS, I switched to the English for a bit and it was flat compared to the original French reading, including Catherine Deneuve as the grandmother. I'm sure I made the right choice to stick with the original French, but I'm not so sure with THE LEOPARD.
AMY DORRIT OR OWEN MEANY?
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY sat on my bookshelf for twenty years before I read it. Apologies to my sister. Great read. Now I'm reading LITTLE DORRITT by Charles Dickens, on my old Rocket eBook. I understand that Irving has been compared favorably to Dickens. Just asking: who is taller, Amy Dorritt or Owen Meany?
THE PRISONER: Episode 10: Hammer Into Anvil
This ep is featured on AMC On Demand this month as part of the promotion of the AMC series update with Jim Cavaziel and Ian McKellen premiering in November 2009. It's one thing for Number 6 to have a suspicious tearful woman directly appeal to to him for help. "I'm waterproof," was his response in another ep. But when Number 2's interrogation of another woman prompts her suicide, Number 6 pledges revenge. Number 2 is played by Patrick Cargill. Number 6 exploits a personality flaw of Number 2--he's afraid of his masters--and breaks Number 2 in the end.
Cargill was the star of the Brit sit com FATHER DEAR FATHER and recognizable to me when I saw this PRISONER ep again after its original run in the '60s. There was a period in the '70s when independent channels in New York would run more creative programming than Judge Judy, such as Brit and Canadian sit coms. FATHER DEAR FATHER ran on channel 9, featuring Cargill as the father of two sexy daughters. The American version was another syndie, starring Ted Knight and retitled TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT.
One hilarious scene involved Cargill visiting his brother in hospital, sneaking him in a forbidden bottle of Scotch. If you know British humor or are a fan of the Austin Powers series you can see where this is going. They can't find a glass so the brother breaks out two specimen cups. As they toast each other, a nurse walks in, horrified. From the hospital bed comes a response to her stupefied look: That's ok mum, it's my brother's!
MORE JULIE AND JULIA
I heard Julie, the author of the book/blog on which the movie was based, interviewed on the Audible Books show on SiriusXM radio. They played a clip from the audiobook with a blog entry talking about trying to get pregnant, something the movie left out. There's a brief but very powerful scene in the Julia part of the movie (Julia hears her sister is pregnant) and I wonder if the writer or director thought that adding a pregnancy element to the Julie section would have taken away from this strong Julia scene? Julie is a nice girl but too young and whiny for us to feel much empathy for her. Two hours on Julia Child would have been a better movie.
She told her interviewer from the publisher that her blog responders are "my collaborators." I'm sure her lawyer loved hearing that. Shouldn't they get a royalty?
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Something Terribly Wrong
This weekend I watched other men work as they put down a new kitchen floor. When an old rug was pulled up, a bit of old floor in the living room was exposed. I called up my sister to bring over her sander and a can of polyurethane.Man cred established after inhaling a lot of dust and poly, I rewarded myself by going to see JULIE AND JULIA. The ticket price seemed cheap, $8.50, and I thought I had somehow made the Sunday matinee at Sheepshead Bay. I later confirmed that there is no Sunday matinee. As I walked to the Theater 6 I saw the work "Senior" on the ducat.
This morning I ran a 9:30 mile, which I've been able to do consistently this summer on a 1.45 mile course in Marine Park. I played street sports as a kid but never blew out my legs playing competitive schoolboy sports, so I'm lucky to run now with nothing but occasional heel pain (a bone spur relieved by stretching).
I don't feel like 52. I took a picture of myself tonight just to give you an idea of what I look like. I could use a shave and it comes in a little gray. My son Matt said I looked good except for losing hair. Matt was the one who, when I was sitting on the floor 15 years ago playing with him and the other kids, pointed out my bald spot. He keeps it real.
I know guys with white hair but you'd never mistake them for seniors. I wonder if the girl who sold me the ticket just hit the wrong button?
CULTURAL NOTES
Theater
I saw REASONS TO BE PRETTY and rooted for it hard on Tony night, with no success. The opening scene is like the worst fight Margie and I ever had and amazingly, author Neil LaBute and a bravura cast sustain and extend the drama and humor throughout.
Video
Great vid: PERSEPOLIS. After seeing this well-drawn and -acted animated flick, a true story based on a graphic novel about growing up female under fanatical Islam in Iran, and reading READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN some time ago, I felt like John Lennon (subject of a great interactive exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex, the longest time Margie and I ever spent in a museum) who said, woman is the N-word of the world.
Books (thanks to the annual buy 2 get 3rd free at Posman's (Grand Central Station)
NETHERLAND by Joseph O'Neill. I had avoided 9/11 novels but this one is falsely promoted as such. Very good read, about a man with a shaky marriage and a questionable friend; a great meditation on getting through life and the meaning of friendship. I lose empathy when the protagonist inherits a million bucks (I'm buying Megabucks tix trying to pay for the new kitchen floor) but once you put that kind of money (after all it takes place during the boom when all NYers were raking it in) out of your mind, you can enjoy the car ride down to Floyd Bennett Field where the player/friend is building a cricket field. Not many novels take place in my area.
Next time: THE LEOPARD by Giuseppe di Lampedusa; LITTLE DORRITT by Charles Dickens
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Saturday, February 28, 2009
STREET FIGHT (2005)
Do you miss watching Keith every night on MSNBC? Need a political fix? Here's a great movie for you political junkies who can't get their jolt from debates over the TARP program.Sharpe James was mayor of Newark, NJ for 20 years. His iron grip on power was challenged by Councilman Cory Booker in 2002. STREET FIGHT (2005) directed by Marshall Curry, documents the struggle to dislodge a long-time and popular incumbent who had all the heavy hitters come in to campaign for him, including the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
The first hour is an admiring, almost idolatrous, study of Cory Booker's life and career. The last 30 minutes is a tense study of the weeks before the election. Threats and intimidation are the stock in trade of Mayor James. His style is "give a little, take a little, take a little bit more," if I can quote Jackie Gleason. James's workers and police force painted over Booker signs or ripped them down.
As Election Day loomed, voter machine fraud was in the air and the U.S. Attorney came in to monitor the election, just like a third world nation. Booker's team prepares for the debate and tells him good points don't matter but clever sound bites do. Booker is prepared by them to do what it takes to win, but will he get in the mud? He shows the tenacity of a former college football star but he's playing against an NFL-calibre politico.
The doc filmer not being allowed to film James at rallies makes for great footage. Ugly threats from James's people are scary and sometimes we just hear secret audio with transcription. On audio we hear James accuse a man in the crowd of being a terrorist; turns out he's just a local guy: "I was just sitting there." But when James saw the Booker hat on his head he sent the cops after him. Two reporters take the filmer aside and tell him to be careful, his life could be in danger.
Great images: Booker in the gym, letting off steam: this guy is tough, hitting the weights and the heavy bag. Al Sharpton is on stage endorsing Sharpe James. Former President Clinton doesn't take sides but James runs a picture of himself and Clinton in his ads to give a false impression. Jesse Jackson endorses James. Dr. Cornell West endorses Booker. Sound trucks claiming that Booker's "not black" and "You suspect boy." Sounds funny to say but it turns into a racist campaign, the way Muhammad Ali baited Joe Frazier over authenticity.
A cute child shakes Booker's hand. She says "smell my hand" and interviewer says "What do you mean?" "Cory Booker smells like the future," she says.
Constant lies by James, even on Election Day, calling his workers "volunteers" and Booker's people paid workers; yet James's vols ID them themselves to the interviewer as paid workers from Philly who barely know who Sharpe James is.
Election Day poll problems of power outages, intimidation of Booker supporters, levers broken, not enough Booker poll workers; cop taking down Booker signs, more nasty sound trucks: "It's not how bright you are--it's how white you are!" Al Sharpton again, proudly marching down the street with his good friend James.
The polls close. James does great in the predominantly black districts.
Spoiler alert: results below:
James 28300
Booker 24800
The film ends with the note that Booker will try again in 2006.
Postscript: James chose not to run in 2006. Booker did and he won with 70 percent of the vote over a candidate associated with James. James had some trouble with the law in 2008 and you're welcome to Google him and find our what he's doing today. The wonder of it all is how he managed to fool so many for so long.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Amos 'n Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy
After midnight tonight you can hear a radio episode of Amos & Andy called "Ruby's Diamond" on CHML-AM 900 from Hamilton, Ontario. But if any station in the U.S. broadcast this show, the outcry against it would be overwhelming. Why is Amos 'n Andy unofficially banned in the U.S.?hulu.com is running a TV documentary from 1983 called Amos 'n' Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy. Hosted by the late funnyman George Kirby, this program takes a look at and even runs a lengthy clip from the TV show.
The NAACP successfully pressured CBS in 1953 to cancel the popular program after two years and finally to remove the popular program from syndicated repeats in the mid-1960s. After seeing this documentary, hearing the original actors talk about their roles, and doing some research (including watching episodes on youtube), I concluded that the time has come to let this show come home. From what I saw, many of the images were very positive showing African Americans as hard working professionals with good family values. The negative images or articulation were no more demeaning than Jimmy Walker in GOOD TIMES or many hip-hop videos. The artistry of these fine actors deserves to be seen.
Trivia: the theme from the show came from BIRTH OF A NATION.
Note: if this show comes back to TV, people who have "borrowed" from it are going to be embarrassed. For example, there's a scene in MULTIPLICITY where Eugene Levy surfaces a driveway and Michael Keaton says you did a good job but you got the address wrong by two--you were supposed to do the house next door! How did I make this connection? Don Imus used to run a bumper of the ANDY radio clip that inspired this scene.
I'm going to turn this part of the post to hulu poster pembroke1952
Pioneers? Absolutely. I am African American and grew up watching the Amos n' Andy show in the late 1950's. I'm 57 years old and I think they were funny then and I think they're funny now. The Godsen and Corell black-face routine I didn't care for, but the actual African American cast playing the roles of Kingfish, Amos, Andy, Sapphire, her 'Momma', Lightnin' & Algonquin Calhoun (the attorney) should be ranked among the most talented great comediens of all time. Imagine breaking into the television medium at that time, especially being the first all Black cast television show in the 50's. As for their acting, they should be seen for just that - their ACTING. See it for what it is - pure raw talent. I see no difference in their comedic genius than the Wayans Show, the Three Stooges, Sanford & Son, or Good Times - silly, goofy, funny and sometimes dramatic. It's unfortunate it was during a time when racial tension was high but we should see these guys for what they were, talented comediens. I was fortunate to buy a DVD collection of the tv series on-line and have all 86 tv shows on DVD - and I have a good laugh everytime I watch them! I'm not ashamed - I VERY proud of them!In conclusion, judge for yourself. Here is the pilot episode of the show, courtesy of youtube. You can also rent the DVDs from Netflix.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
SLOW FADE TO BLACK by Thomas Cripps
Several years ago (25?) I was watching Channel 9 in New York. A newsbreak with reporter Denise Richardson came on during an evening movie. I can't remember the movie, but just before the break there was a scene with Stepin Fetchit doing his shuffling and stuttering act. As they cut to the break, Ms. Richardson, who thought her mike was off said, "I can't believe they're still doing this to our people," then went into the update. This caused a local brouhaha and I think may have hurt her career. I couldn't find this incident on Google, which surprised me, but I recall it clearly. I'm not sure where she works now but I've seen her in recent years on the local cut-in to the Jerry Lewis telethon.
******
SLOW FADE TO BLACK: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942, by Thomas Cripps, covers the long, slow climb from the first silent movies to the 1940s, when the old stereotypes started to fade during World War II. Chapter 1 reminds us that film began in the 1890s. Notwithstanding Thomas Edison's Kinetoscopes showing black troops "marching down a gangplank on their way to Cuba," in Colored Troops Disembarking, for the most part demeaning scenarios were the norm. Typical Edison titles: Prize Fight in Coon Town, Interrupted Crap Game, The Gator and the Pickaninny,...you get the idea.
Chapter 2 covers Birth of a Nation (1915), which is revisited throughout the book as the archetypal racist movie. Today it's in the public domain and you can see it on YouTube, but even in 2009 it would evoke outrage if shown in a commercial venue or outside the classroom.
Blacks channeled their frustrations with negative portrayals into producing their own films, the most famous director being Oscar Micheaux. As overt racism was replaced by casual racism (portrayals of criminality replaced by shuffling butlers and maids) in mainstream movies, black-produced movies suffered from lack of capital and distribution.
Some blacks turned to European cinema in the 1930s where there was less racism; two artists who crossed the ocean were Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. However, Baker's "exotic primitives" were seen as stereotypical and "drew small audiences." Robeson was more successful in American and European films. He was in a most difficult position, held to the highest standard by his own people. Old Bones of the River (1939) was appeared to be a dignified British shoot but the final cut caused outrage in the African American press.
Cripps thesis is a slow but steady climb to the years of World War II. Blacks fighting for their country added to the pressure on Hollywood for fairness. Caught in the middle were brilliant performers such as Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Criticized by some for the way he played Jack Benny's butler on the radio, I see Anderson as clearly Benny's equal or better in the mold of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves.
My biggest quibble in the whole book with author Cripps is his comment that Anderson saved the Benny show. I believe this to be false. Anderson made a popular show greater. I saw no need to demean Benny and can find no evidence that his show was in any trouble before Anderson joined the cast.
*****
You can still see racially insensitive portrayals on Turner Classic Movies. Some people want them banned. Tough question. Should Irishmen call for banning any use of the phrase "paddy wagon"? No. Should Stepin Fetchit be banned? I don't think so either, but I wouldn't object to a note that you sometimes see at the beginning of the broadcast, that some portrayals are of their time and may offend modern sensibilities.
******
SLOW FADE TO BLACK: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942, by Thomas Cripps, covers the long, slow climb from the first silent movies to the 1940s, when the old stereotypes started to fade during World War II. Chapter 1 reminds us that film began in the 1890s. Notwithstanding Thomas Edison's Kinetoscopes showing black troops "marching down a gangplank on their way to Cuba," in Colored Troops Disembarking, for the most part demeaning scenarios were the norm. Typical Edison titles: Prize Fight in Coon Town, Interrupted Crap Game, The Gator and the Pickaninny,...you get the idea.
Chapter 2 covers Birth of a Nation (1915), which is revisited throughout the book as the archetypal racist movie. Today it's in the public domain and you can see it on YouTube, but even in 2009 it would evoke outrage if shown in a commercial venue or outside the classroom.
Blacks channeled their frustrations with negative portrayals into producing their own films, the most famous director being Oscar Micheaux. As overt racism was replaced by casual racism (portrayals of criminality replaced by shuffling butlers and maids) in mainstream movies, black-produced movies suffered from lack of capital and distribution.
Some blacks turned to European cinema in the 1930s where there was less racism; two artists who crossed the ocean were Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. However, Baker's "exotic primitives" were seen as stereotypical and "drew small audiences." Robeson was more successful in American and European films. He was in a most difficult position, held to the highest standard by his own people. Old Bones of the River (1939) was appeared to be a dignified British shoot but the final cut caused outrage in the African American press.
Cripps thesis is a slow but steady climb to the years of World War II. Blacks fighting for their country added to the pressure on Hollywood for fairness. Caught in the middle were brilliant performers such as Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Criticized by some for the way he played Jack Benny's butler on the radio, I see Anderson as clearly Benny's equal or better in the mold of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves.
My biggest quibble in the whole book with author Cripps is his comment that Anderson saved the Benny show. I believe this to be false. Anderson made a popular show greater. I saw no need to demean Benny and can find no evidence that his show was in any trouble before Anderson joined the cast.
*****
You can still see racially insensitive portrayals on Turner Classic Movies. Some people want them banned. Tough question. Should Irishmen call for banning any use of the phrase "paddy wagon"? No. Should Stepin Fetchit be banned? I don't think so either, but I wouldn't object to a note that you sometimes see at the beginning of the broadcast, that some portrayals are of their time and may offend modern sensibilities.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Last year the editor of 1 On the Town decided to honor Black History Month and it was such a hit we'll look take a brief look back at what we covered.
Don Cheadle in HOTEL RWANDA and TALK TO ME: Cheadle is taking over the Terrence Howard part in IRON MAN 2. Lots of buzz over what happened and there's no conclusive evidence yet in this you-can't-fire-me-I-quit controversy.
PRIDE AGAINST PREJUDICE: THE LARRY DOBY STORY: There's a young guy running Newark, Corey Booker, who could be the Larry Doby of presidential politics in 2 years. Like my governor David Patterson said at the Gridiron Dinner regarding his own future in national politics, once you go black, you never go back.
On to 2009: we'll be looking at:
- Black History Month: PETTIGREW FOR PRESIDENT
- Black History Month: HOTEL RWANDA
- Black History Month: PRIDE AGAINST PREJUDICE: THE LARRY DOBY STORY
- Black History Month: TALK TO ME on DVD
Don Cheadle in HOTEL RWANDA and TALK TO ME: Cheadle is taking over the Terrence Howard part in IRON MAN 2. Lots of buzz over what happened and there's no conclusive evidence yet in this you-can't-fire-me-I-quit controversy.
PRIDE AGAINST PREJUDICE: THE LARRY DOBY STORY: There's a young guy running Newark, Corey Booker, who could be the Larry Doby of presidential politics in 2 years. Like my governor David Patterson said at the Gridiron Dinner regarding his own future in national politics, once you go black, you never go back.
On to 2009: we'll be looking at:
- SLOW FADE TO BLACK: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942. This is a scholarly tome by Thomas Cripps from 1977 and reissued in 1991 by Oxford University Press. One of the bonuses of joining the Press last June is that I picked this up at an in house used book sale for 50 cents.
- AMOS 'N ANDY: Anatomy-of-a Controversy: I can tune in CHML-AM 900 in 2009 and listen to Amos 'n Andy but in the U.S. they are banned forever. This doc from 1983, narrated by the late great George Kirby, explains why.
- Reflections on Chappelle and Pryor: The enduring appeal of CHAPPELE'S SHOW--one of my teenagers got into this show early, then a while later I did and told my friend. "Who? Dave Atell?" one of them said. Later he actually thanked me for telling him about the show, busted a gut enjoying "The World Series of Dice." Richard Pryor's LIVE ON THE SUNSET STRIP: there was a week in my life in the early '80s where, like Spencer Tracy in the last scene of MAD MAD WORLD, I thought I'd never laugh again. Richard got my funny bone back and I've been forever grateful.
- STREET FIGHT (2005): the no-holds barred fight for the soul of Newark, NY--Booker vs. James, winner take all.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
XM Radio--Addition by Subtraction
The new Metro Traffic on Sirius XM doesn't have the temperature/forecast on the readout like the old XM Traffic and Weather. It's the death of 1000 cuts, the lobster in the boiling water, value subtracted every month.
The new XM73 (swapping High Standards for Siriusly Sinatra) started running a new Saturday show (not from WNYC) with Jonathan Schwartz. He taped song intros but he may not even know what they're doing with the rest of the program. I don't think he or producer Buddy Ladd (did he survive the recent cuts?) have much to do with this show. For example, they've played Steve & Eydie (no intro); but JS is a long-time Steve & Eydie knocker, although he likes them individually. Part of his deal with Nancy must be to put his name on a show that plays songs he doesn't like, like terrestrial radio.
My wife liked the new XM27 (The Bridge, mellow rock), but then complained that they play the same songs every day.
I also miss the canceled XM2, which replayed exclusive content from other channels. I could never remember when Dylan or Marty Stuart were on their regular channels.
I'm letting my 2-year subscription lapse in March. If the marketers are counting on me being brand-loyal, they made the brand a lot less valuable for me. Side note: I read that DirecTV did not replace XM73 High Standards with XM73 Siriusly Sinatra.
related board links:
Clear Channel Using Some HD Signals For Traffic Data
Metro Traffic to Take Over XM Traffic+ Weather
TV Worth Watching by David Bianculli
Did newspapers die in 2009 because they let good writers go? David Bianculli of the Daily News was one of those good writers, and I recommend his website, proving that there's life after whatever you can call the gossip sheet that used to be the NY Daily News. Check him out, great stuff on the passing of Patrick McGoohan.
http://www.tvworthwatching.com
http://www.tvworthwatching.com
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Righteous Indignation
Several years ago, a young man complained via email about the air in his office. The air was unhealthy, either too hot or just not circulating. This went on for months, years. The head of office services, who was in charge of getting the air fixed, didn't like being accused of the truth of her incompetence. Her reaction was to file an anonymous complaint against the young man, accusing him of, of what?
He was called down to personnel.
"People are saying," said the personnel person, "that you don't like [name of person] for some reason... ... ..."
The implication was that it was racial.
I, that is, the young man, slammed his fist on the desk and said, "I DEMAND TO FACE MY ACCUSOR!"
Suddenly, it was over. She changed the topic and made it into an issue over violating company email policy. "Next time, don't be so inciteful," she said. "Is that inciteful or insightful?" he said. The bon mot went over her head.
When you're right and people who think they can get you fired are wrong, you can man up like McGoohan and fight, or meekly take it. I don't just mean to be like the fictional characters he played, but also to be like the real man. He was a unique soul for the ages.
He was called down to personnel.
"People are saying," said the personnel person, "that you don't like [name of person] for some reason... ... ..."
The implication was that it was racial.
I, that is, the young man, slammed his fist on the desk and said, "I DEMAND TO FACE MY ACCUSOR!"
Suddenly, it was over. She changed the topic and made it into an issue over violating company email policy. "Next time, don't be so inciteful," she said. "Is that inciteful or insightful?" he said. The bon mot went over her head.
When you're right and people who think they can get you fired are wrong, you can man up like McGoohan and fight, or meekly take it. I don't just mean to be like the fictional characters he played, but also to be like the real man. He was a unique soul for the ages.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Joke; KUNG FU PANDA; DOUBT; SHUT UP AND SING; What's in the Daily News? Not much
Nothing to do with the rest of the post, let's start today with a joke.
The definition of a Friend: some who'll help you move.
The definition of a Real Friend: someone who'll help you move a body.
*****
KUNG FU PANDA on DVD
Jack Black brings the funny as the little panda that could, meeting his destiny to fight an evil tiger who aims to ravage the land. Several fine Asian actors appears in the supporting cast, including Jackie Chan in a supporting role, which you wouldn't expect in a Kung Fu movie. He plays a member of the legendary team, the Fabulous Five. I would have cast him as the wise master (Dustin Hoffman).
Special mention to James Hong, he of the 335 imdb.com actor credits dating back to 1955. He's a duck who's father to a panda. The duo appears to be a variation of the Rodney Dangerfield joke and they do a very funny scene that plays on the duck/panda dichotomy. (Rodney always wondered if he was adopted. One day, he asked his father, "Wong Fu...")
DOUBT
Over the holiday it was Clint vs. Meryl, which movie to see? Since there was no sequel to BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY playing, my wife won this argument.
Did a priest (Philip Seymour Hofman) molest a schoolboy? Who is right about him, the strict and suspicious veteran nun (Meryl Streep) or the trusting rookie nun (Amy Adams) who knows he's innocent? Hoffman is one of my favorite actors. He reminds me of my brother, perpetually pissed in a Brian Keith kind of way.
Streep has a great reveal where we learn something of her past. She plays it as a throwaway line or two so don't blink. The lines give you enough evidence to help you decide if she's got what it takes to make the charge stick.
Amy Adams disappears from most of the last half-hour of the movie. She's written out of the plot to go visit family. That places Streep vs. Hoffman alone together on centerstage like Columbo vs. Patrick McGoohan in a battle of wills. No doubt, Oscar will be calling.
SHUT UP AND SING on DVD
People who supported Bush burned the Dixie Chicks CDs. Most of them changed their minds about Bush. There are a lot of people who owe the Chicks an apology. The most shocking revelation: lead singer Natale Manes is married to Adrian Pasdar--Nathan Petrelli from HEROES! I follow the business and had never heard this, or forgot it. There's a lesson here for showbiz couples who complain about the spotlight. Stay home with your kids when they're little, the night clubs will still be there when they get a little older.
I think the movie was an attempt to show Republican Family Values voters that these ladies are just like them, good parents. They are not Jane Fonda, providing aid and comfort to the enemy on enemy territory, within miles of our soldiers being tortured. Natale Manes spoke out against the war before a shot was fired. That's the using the same First Amendment that allows me to criticize Bill O'Reilly's call to slap around the Chicks as punishment. (It's on videotape from his show.) O'Reilly, who paid tens of millions of dollars in a dirty-talk-to-co-worker settlement, has it in for women. I don't have to worry about O'Reilly coming after me because he said on his show that after paying the millions, no matter who asked him or how many times, he would never speak about it again. Too bad the Chicks don't have that luxury.
WHAT'S IN THE DAILY NEWS? NOT MUCH
The Daily News Sunday comics taught me how to read. Dondi, Terry and the Pirates, Dick Tracy. This week I dumped the News.
The definition of a Friend: some who'll help you move.
The definition of a Real Friend: someone who'll help you move a body.
*****
KUNG FU PANDA on DVD
Jack Black brings the funny as the little panda that could, meeting his destiny to fight an evil tiger who aims to ravage the land. Several fine Asian actors appears in the supporting cast, including Jackie Chan in a supporting role, which you wouldn't expect in a Kung Fu movie. He plays a member of the legendary team, the Fabulous Five. I would have cast him as the wise master (Dustin Hoffman). Special mention to James Hong, he of the 335 imdb.com actor credits dating back to 1955. He's a duck who's father to a panda. The duo appears to be a variation of the Rodney Dangerfield joke and they do a very funny scene that plays on the duck/panda dichotomy. (Rodney always wondered if he was adopted. One day, he asked his father, "Wong Fu...")
DOUBT
Over the holiday it was Clint vs. Meryl, which movie to see? Since there was no sequel to BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY playing, my wife won this argument.
Did a priest (Philip Seymour Hofman) molest a schoolboy? Who is right about him, the strict and suspicious veteran nun (Meryl Streep) or the trusting rookie nun (Amy Adams) who knows he's innocent? Hoffman is one of my favorite actors. He reminds me of my brother, perpetually pissed in a Brian Keith kind of way.
Streep has a great reveal where we learn something of her past. She plays it as a throwaway line or two so don't blink. The lines give you enough evidence to help you decide if she's got what it takes to make the charge stick.
Amy Adams disappears from most of the last half-hour of the movie. She's written out of the plot to go visit family. That places Streep vs. Hoffman alone together on centerstage like Columbo vs. Patrick McGoohan in a battle of wills. No doubt, Oscar will be calling.
SHUT UP AND SING on DVD
People who supported Bush burned the Dixie Chicks CDs. Most of them changed their minds about Bush. There are a lot of people who owe the Chicks an apology. The most shocking revelation: lead singer Natale Manes is married to Adrian Pasdar--Nathan Petrelli from HEROES! I follow the business and had never heard this, or forgot it. There's a lesson here for showbiz couples who complain about the spotlight. Stay home with your kids when they're little, the night clubs will still be there when they get a little older.
I think the movie was an attempt to show Republican Family Values voters that these ladies are just like them, good parents. They are not Jane Fonda, providing aid and comfort to the enemy on enemy territory, within miles of our soldiers being tortured. Natale Manes spoke out against the war before a shot was fired. That's the using the same First Amendment that allows me to criticize Bill O'Reilly's call to slap around the Chicks as punishment. (It's on videotape from his show.) O'Reilly, who paid tens of millions of dollars in a dirty-talk-to-co-worker settlement, has it in for women. I don't have to worry about O'Reilly coming after me because he said on his show that after paying the millions, no matter who asked him or how many times, he would never speak about it again. Too bad the Chicks don't have that luxury.
WHAT'S IN THE DAILY NEWS? NOT MUCH
The Daily News Sunday comics taught me how to read. Dondi, Terry and the Pirates, Dick Tracy. This week I dumped the News.
Forget the politics, there's no reading in the DN any more. They took out Rush & Molloy for sleazy items about people I never heard of except in the gossip page, fired Bianculli, and what's left in the rest of the paper is about 20 minutes of reading. Almost no daily show biz coverage, few news articles, an anemic business section, sports hanging in there, and from 4 down to 3 comic pages. The worst layout decision was to start the NOW section on the left. I'm switching to the Post for the first time ever. I give the News about 6 months. They are ready to fold or sell. Zuckerman is no genius as he proved with the Madoff scandal.
I know Madoff can't be executed but I'm stumped how we send a message to the next guy.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Year in Review/A Look Ahead
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
The Stonecutters Song
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do! We do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Who robs cavefish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do! We do!
After I read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, I was charged with positive feeling for humanity. The example of Monsiegneur Bienvenu filled me with the desire to do good. Some years later I read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. What a bunch of idiots I’m surrounded by, I thought. How could I have let Hugo manipulate me so? Young Milton Friedman, among a coterie of
Roll call of nations:
The current American mortgage and stock market crash happened after the book came out but we can see the antecedents in this book. One chilling passage refers to the bailout of the business associates of the
The remainder of the national debt was mostly spent on payments, as well as shady bailouts for private firms. In 1982, just before Argentina’s dictatorship collapsed, the junta did one last favor for the corporate sector…the state would absorb the debts of large multinational and domestic firms that had, like Chile’s pirhana’s, borrowed themselves to the verge of bankruptcy…[T]hese companies continued to own their assets and profits, but the public had to pay off between $15 and $20 billion of their debts; among the companies…were Ford Motor Argentina, Chase Manhattan, Citibank, IBM, and Mercedes-Benz.
Any of those names ring a bell?
***
For years I’ve been complaining about Timesman Thomas Friedman and his clever “don’t blame me” columns and Klein quotes him, “We are not doing nation-building in
Physical torture in Argentina and Abu Ghraib, the near-complete privatization of New Orleans’ public school system, the lawless reign of Blackwater security forces and the profiteering of Cheney’s Halliburton in Iraq are not the result of natural forces or an invisible hand that will make things right, Klein posits, but part of a plan to exploit chaos. Why? Simple greed and power.
The real shock is that most of the reporting in the book is not from secret sources but from the public record—major dailies, weeklies, wire services, websites. The power grab after 9/11 and government incompetence happened in plain sight, promulgated by Republicans and abetted by Democrats. Either her book is true or this is the greatest conspiracy of the century, aiming to smear patriots like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush et al. who put Country First ahead of money and power. Read and decide.
POSTSCRIPT
America 2009 reminds me of Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror. In the 15 c., there were rich and poor. The middle class hadn’t been invented yet. No subject blamed the French king for his disastrous wars against
Friday, December 26, 2008
Merry Christmas from Mel Tormé
This is from my private stock and you probably won't find it on YouTube...
Let's view a clip from a Mel Tormé PBS Christmas show from the '90s. The song is the title tune from a Sonja Heine picture, IT HAPPENED IN SUN VALLEY. It's one of my favorites and after you hear this shamelessly romantic tune, this old gem might end up as one of yours too. Merry Christmas!
Ten awesome points if you can guess who the spangled band leader is before Mel mentions him by name. There was a time when every weeknight on TV, he played the greatest music ever written (which we only heard in 10 second intros and outros).
Clip from The Christmas Songs (1992), copyright WMVS/WMVT and Milwaukee Symphony.
Let's view a clip from a Mel Tormé PBS Christmas show from the '90s. The song is the title tune from a Sonja Heine picture, IT HAPPENED IN SUN VALLEY. It's one of my favorites and after you hear this shamelessly romantic tune, this old gem might end up as one of yours too. Merry Christmas!
Ten awesome points if you can guess who the spangled band leader is before Mel mentions him by name. There was a time when every weeknight on TV, he played the greatest music ever written (which we only heard in 10 second intros and outros).
Clip from The Christmas Songs (1992), copyright WMVS/WMVT and Milwaukee Symphony.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
44 and 43
DREAMS FROM MY FATHER
I’m a little late to the party but have you read President-Elect Obama's first book? (Stay tuned for the review.) After hearing his Superman gag at the Al Smith dinner. It got me thinking:
Little Barry Obama loved comic books.
He was raised by a kindly old couple from
After high school he lived in Gotham, where he worked as a writer and then moved to
In his early years he kept his background secret, afraid that his real identity would alienate people.
The woman he loves has two Ls in her name, like
His first act as president will be to restore the American way.
You'll never guess what the title of the first part of the book is:
Origins (a conceit from comic books).
Yup, he’s Superman.
Dreams from My Father is a memoir that reads like a bildungsroman, the colorful peregrinations of a young man in search of his identity. I recommend it highly. Ignore the nut jobs who claim that Bill Ayres wrote the first draft on the back of Obama’s Indonesian birth certificate.
W.
Last week I paid 75 cents for the new format Post, circular size, and 12 bucks to see W. Great movie. Stacy Keach knocks it out of the park with an unironic turn as the reverend who brings W to the Lord. Laura Bush will be flattered as even in the later scenes she's portrayed by Elizabeth Banks with no wrinkles and still very sexy, like Pat Nixon (Joan Allen) in Oliver Stone's Nixon.
Josh Brolin is dangerously close to an impression but never crosses the line. That little actor who looks like Truman Capote is an amazing Karl Rove. Richard Dreyfuss is back as a movie star--his stock had been so low in
Stone takes verbatim quotes we might know from watching Letterman’s “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches” series and puts them in different places, which is ok because I know the difference between a doc and fiction.
Why didn't this movie do better? Because people are tired of the subject. A surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a screwup on whom tough love failed but Jesus and will power succeeded.
I predict the real W the will become a popular TV evangelist as that’s where his heart lies. He won’t be making much money giving speeches but preaching something he knows he believes rather than something he thinks he believes in because smart people told him it’s so, might loosen his mangled tongue.
Next post: The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Wolf. This is a Naomi-explains-it-all, positing that the Chicago School and guru Milton Friedman are responsible for most of the worldwide political brutality and the intensely related economic shock and awe of the last 50 years. This replaces my father's Irishman's thesis: pick a point on the globe where there's trouble, any point, and you'll find the English were or are behind it. I almost dropped the book when she listed the overspending and bad-investing bums who first sponsored and finally took bailouts from the departing Argentine junta of the '80s: Citibank, Ford Motor Company, ... The usual suspects.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
PIECES OF MY HEART, by Robert J. Wagner with Scott Eyman
A parade of senior thesps is rolling through
Pieces of My Heart, by Robert J. Wagner with Scott Eyman
This is a lusty and entertaining tome and Wagner leaves no one out. HarperCollins should have at least provided a name index (Tony Curtis has one). Pieces is a story of a boy well-born in 1930, too young for World War II, and comfortably caddying his way through his teens for Hollywood royalty such as Gable, Astaire, Niven, to name a few legends. Beautiful ladies abound and the biggest revelation was his four-year affair with Barbara Stanwyck, making them the Ashton-Demi of their time, except in those times it was scandalous for an older woman to be with a man half her age. Their affair was intense and known only to their friends.
Wagner talks very little about acting or the details of any project he was involved in. The real theme in the book (the jacket flap writer alludes briefly to a father who wanted him to quit acting and join the family business of real estate and building) is a man in search of a father figure. He found one directly in Spencer Tracy and in other degrees in David Niven and Fred Astaire. My favorite chapter is titled “Fred!…Fred!…Feed!” When Wagner would “get down about…my career, he would take me aside and tell me, ‘Don’t ever get negative. There are a lot of bumps in the road; you’ve got to keep your chin up. The most important thing is to keep going.’” Wagner half-apologizes that, “None of this is profound, but all of it is true, and the fact that it was coming from Fred Astaire forced me to take it seriously.” Hey RJ, you’re a good dad, and you must know by now, that’s what a dad is: unconditional love and support. Their teamup on It Takes a Thief was priceless. The anecdote about Astaire making his first appearance on set, spontaneously breaking out into a dance as the crew welcomed him with infectious rhythmic clapping, is goosebumpy and worth the cost of the book.
For the general reading public the parts about Natalie Wood seem to draw the most interest. I imagine the ladies from The View will key on that. As far as I can tell, no new ground is broken, except for the fact that this is Wagner’s first full public statements on the events leading to her tragic accidental death.
RJ is serious about his art but not himself. His most recent comic turns in the Austin Powers series and in TV’s Two and a Half Men attest to that.
A note on profanity: the table of contents has the chapter titles, each extracted from a line from that chapter. For a class actor, I was surprised to see the f-bomb, the c-word, and the other c-word so prominent in the contents. My wife suggested that I Wite-Out the offending words before passing the book to Mom. She’s almost ninety. Recently I gave her a book that I hadn’t read and after reading it she asked me with arched brow, “Did you read this book?” This usually means she’s found something offensive. Odd, it never stops her from reading the rest of the book.
Next up: Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, President-Elect of the
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Let Freedom Ring
And let the hearings begin.
1. Who authorized torture?
2. Who made up the WMD?
3. Who profited from the war?
Cheney, Cheney, and Cheney.
1. Who authorized torture?
2. Who made up the WMD?
3. Who profited from the war?
Cheney, Cheney, and Cheney.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Baseball; Margie and the Super Bug
BASEBALLWe caught a lot of baseball as the season wound down. Brigid won Grand Prize in a Citibank/Mets contest and we spent a great Labor Day weekend at the beautiful Westin Diplomat with Margie and Brigid and her girlfriend Julie, enjoying a Met victory over the Marlins. Here is some video of David Wright with bags full. I won't give it away but it set up a late inning grand slam by Carlos Beltran to win the game. Guess which guy the Mets are going to let go?
In September we saw last-week-ever games at Shea and Yankee Stadiums. I had gotten two comps from the NY Blood Center for the Mets and went with my brother Dennis on 9/23. For the Mets, beating the Cubs with Santana leading the way, was one of the last happy recaps of another disappointing season. Before Dennis left he said goodbye to Section 1, where he and I sat when we were kids. We used to get to the park at 10:30 a.m. when the gates opened for a double-header.
The week before on September 18, I paid to see the Yankees beat the White Sox, Moose Mussina winning his 19th (on his way to become the first man to win 20 for the first time at 39), and Bobby Abreu hitting two HRs. Upper deck seats, a few rows from the last row, great seats behind the plate slightly up the third base line. Better get a last look at St. Patrick's, she's next to go.
MARGIE AND THE SUPERBUG
For many months Margie had a lump on her left hand. Every time she bumped the lump it hurt and I, like a fool, advised surgery. What followed was weeks of misery.
Hearing this story, I've heard several different approaches to handling a bump. One was whacking it with a ruler. Another was putting the hand flat on a table and dropping a thick book from a good height onto the lump. Both approaches reported mixed success.
So she went in for ambulatory surgery, came out with a lot of pain, and was prescribed preventative antibiotics. That's when real misery began. Her intestinal system went down, thanks to, I believe, the antibiotic destroying the good bacteria in her colon. After several days of woe, I sent her to my GI guy, Dr. Jay Weissbluth.
Dr. J is a genius. When I had my hour of need 10 years he said, "First we'll make you better, then we'll figure out what's wrong with you." Or, as he was getting ready to do my scope, he pulled a book off the shelf and said, "Let me check this, I've never done one before." Margie was in good hands and she's getting better. Should I mention the doctor who prescribed the antibiotic that made her sick for a month? Contact me and I'll tell you. He's in Park Slope. I'm not a doctor and I can't say for sure if my diagnosis is correct, but I can only wonder how many people he has serially prescribed this junk to.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Looks at 5 Books
One of the great things about working full-time again is having scheduled time to read on the subway, notwithstanding the pain in the neck of trying to read in the new cars on the Q that have less seats and more standing room. Here are some capsule reviews:BANANAS: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World by Peter Chapman; Canongate
I read this during the May farm trip but will grandfather this title on the list as much of it was read on the long bus trip. Substitute a crate of bananas for a barrel of oil and you get the angle of this book. Big government and big business ravage small Latin American nations to exploit their resources from the post-Civil War era to the 1970s. There's even an appearance by the ubiquitous E. Howard Hunt, the Forrest Gump of skullduggery, charter member of the Villains, Thieves, and Scoundrels Union, who shows up subverting the government in Guatemala for the CIA's "Operation Success" (featuring a cameo by Che Guevara). Very entertaining reading.
POCKETFUL OF NAMES by Joe Coomer; Graywolf Press
This a novel that I picked up at Brooklyn Book Festival last year. As I wrote last year, "Graywolf Press of
POSMAN'S ANNUAL SUMMER SALE
The next three books come from Posman's (Grand Central Station) annual green dot summer sale. This summer we bought three from the "Buy two and get the third one free" table.
MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN by Jonathan Lethem; Vintage Comtemporaries
The protagonist is an orphaned detective with Tourette's trying to find out who killed his mentor. Lethem accurately captures the earthy vocabulary and mentality of the Italian subculture that I'm familiar with. I can attest to this--I grew up with guys with names like Bagdagliacca, Iervolino, Alfano, et cetera. I didn't really get the feel that I was reading a detective novel, despite the way the book is promoted. It's more of a story about a gofer pretending to be a detective. The Tourette's angle wears you out as it's supposed to, listening to someone who says almost every thing that comes into his head. Gritty slices of sidewalk life that make up Court St., Brooklyn and New York City.
THE CODE OF THE WOOSTERS by P. G. Wodehouse; Vintage Books
Pure joy, one of the series of stories of the idly rich Bertie Wooster and his brilliant valet, Jeeves. As I read this I thought of Seinfeld and his series about nothing. I also discovered that Jeeves' first name wasn't revealed until the next-to-last book in the series (which ran from 1919-1974!!), which made me think of Kramer and his secret first name, eventually discovered. Then I thought of the pilot that Jerry shoots called "Jerry," about a man and his butler. Theory: other Seinfeld plots may have their roots in Wodehouse. I will explore this further at a future date.
APPOINTMENT IN SAMARA by John O'Hara; Vintage Books
A drink thrown in a man's face leads to the downfall of a Depression-era car salesman from the in-crowd in a small town. O'Hara's first novel, the sexual frankness shocked me considering the pub date (1934). If I had known how advanced the treatment of human desire was portrayed I might not have lent the book to my 89-year-old mother before I had the chance to read it first. However, Mom assures me she's not as sheltered as I think and not to worry about it. She did ask, "Did you read this yet?' and that's usually a sign that I let one slip though the cracks. One part of Mom's enjoyment of the book, she said, was that lived through that era and got all the references. When I read a book about the '30s and the characters start quoting song lyrics and titles, as they frequently do here, I'm amazed at how many I know. Very depressing novel, written during a Depression when no one knew if or when it would end, with a sense of dread that it could even affect the well off if it lasted any longer.
COMING UP
Family trip to Florida to see the Mets; new Sony HD radio: for hobbyists only or the next big thing?
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Memo to Self: Don't Quit Your Job
After freelancing for 15 months and seeing my unemployment run out, I found a full-time job. Thanks to Governor Paterson, if I had still been looking I would now be eligible for another 13 weeks of benefits. See the graphic for an important adviso from the NY State Dept. of Labor.AMERICAN IN PARIS
My daughter is taking a semester in France. She's a French major so this isn't a dilettante on holiday. She's got spunk, a lot more than me, and I like spunk. I was talking to my brother-in-law about his electric bill and his kids turning on the air conditioner too much. I offered to trade my cell phone bill with international roaming for his electric bill. Yup, it costs more to pay a cell phone bill that to run a house.
CLASSIC CONAN
Best joke I've heard in a while, from Conan O'Brien:
John McCain invited his grandchildren to visit him for Father's Day. Unfortunately they couldn't make it. They were all busy visiting their grandchildren.BIG BROTHER
I love my family but I lose a lot of respect for their judgment when they all watch Big Brother.
THE HARMONSITS on DVD (1997)
One night I was watching that odd show, Classic Arts Showcase, on late night cable. A performance by the Comedian Harmonists, a highly popular German singing group from the 1920s and '30s was shown performing "Happy Days Are Here Again" in German and also in English It led me to this great movie about the group. The beauty of song is juxtaposed against the rising Nazi regime, who eventually destroy the group because half the members are Jewish. The harmonies are sublime and I recommend this movie on every level, especially if you love 20th century music such as The Four Lads, the Beach Boys, or the Manhattan Transfer. I especially enjoyed their trip to America, where artful camera shots placed them in Central Park, the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty. Note: The Algonquin Hotel is shown under the Brooklyn Bridge and that's a minor quibble.
FREE STUFF
My new company has great benefits, free bagels every week, summer hours, after work mixers, a good retirement plan, nice people. Have I been so used and abused in other jobs so much that when I stumble into a good thing I don't trust it? I blame seeing The Twilight Zone, "How to Serve Man" for this subconscious dread.
Hey-Ohhhhh! 1000 AWESOME POINTS TO JIMMY KIMMEL
In the words of Ben Folds, it sucks to get old. When he heard Ed McMahon was broke, Kimmel offered him a new/old job, TV pitchman. Ed needs the money. How did Ed end up broke? There's a Who's Who of old guys in showbiz take young wives and their lives and afterlives take a turn for the worse.
Ed told Larry King, "I want to speak for the million people [in America] who now have foreclosure signs on their houses...If you spend more money than you make, you know what happens," he said. "A couple of divorces thrown in, a few things like that." Ed's wife said "Over the years, it's a combination of maybe Ed working so hard and not looking at proper management. We didn't keep our eye on the ball. We made mistakes. It's been tough but somehow our marriage is strong."
My analysis: Cagney was very ill and fell under the thrall of a women who exploited him and made him do a TV movie when he couldn't even talk. Astaire married a women who, after he died, sold his image to sell a vacuum cleaner. Kelly danced to heaven and his young wife had him cremated before his children could see the body. TMZ reports this new Mrs. McMahon spends a lot of money and could this be why Ed had to overextend himself, to pay her bills? I wish Johnny were here to help him out.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
What's Nu?
Dear Blog:
How to Shear Sheep
We lost our turtle Speedy this month.
Cathedral of Hay
Each time I go I try a new farm job. Last time up there I was spreading manure, this time I was working the chain saw cutting logs. It’s a whole other world there and I have to get myself to the farm more often.
How to Shear Sheep
We lost our turtle Speedy this month.
MINI-REVIEW: THE SAVAGES on DVD
SAVAGES portrayed one of the most common but least portrayed relationships in film, brother/sister, and for that alone deserves credit, in addition to taking on a topic that’s not box office, caring for an elderly parent.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
GREEDY LITTLE PIGGY: THE STIMULUS REBATE; BATTLESTAR GALACTICA; I Want MY DTV: Part 2
GREEDY LITTLE PIGGY: THE STIMULUS REBATE
I thought we were getting $1200 dollars as MFJ tax filers, but it turns out we’re getting $600 due to our low tax liability in 2007 (thank you, tuition tax benefits and underemployment).
Wow! Six hundred semolians! What to spend it on? Here’s my wish list:
1. HD Radio
2. Big screen TV
3. Giant turtle tank
4. New bed
5. Travel
6. Retire some credit card debt.
Six it is.
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
The hilarious appearance of the cast of BSG in costume earlier this year, doing the usually tiresome Top Ten List on Letterman: "Top Ten Reasons to Watch the New Season of 'Battlestar Galactica,'" made me realize I was missing something. I then started watching the last few episodes of season 3 and the beginning of the fourth and final season. Simultaneously I have been catching up via Netflix and Blockbuster from the beginning of the series, creating my own mega-flashback. One sign that it’s a great show--I know what’s going to happen in most cases but it doesn’t ruin anything, just like seeing Romeo and Juliet.
What makes BSG different from other SF shows is that good characters do terrible things, not because they are under the sway of an alien life form, but because humans and human-aspiring cybernetic beings (Cylons) who look just like us sometimes do terrible things. Some of the plots look like they were ripped from the headlines Law and Order style per the mid-years of this decade, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some self-examination of torture, rigged elections, abortion, the use of military force, religion, and the wisdom of listening to voices in your head without physical evidence is a good thing. “All will be revealed” the commercials tell us and I can’t wait. The idea of doing a prequel series after this one ends sounds like the worst idea since AfterMASH, but so did a reimagining of the original Battlestar Galactica.
I Want MY DTV: Part 2
I took my digital-to-analog converter box to my mother in Gravesend and my sister in
the reception was not perfect, even with roof antennas in
They can make announcements and advertise and send notices in the mail but one thing is for sure: there will be a lot of people in February 2009 who will think their TVs are broken.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Reader Mail
Q: Do you write about everything thing you see?
A: No I don't. For instance, I recently saw my niece in a middle school production of ANNIE. She played Molly, the lead orphan after Annie. She was great and will make a great Annie in the future if she chooses. This was an authorized production edited for school kids and they actually call the show ANNIE, Jr. The TV production of ANNIE (not the movie) was one of the best things ever on TV.
A: No I don't. For instance, I recently saw my niece in a middle school production of ANNIE. She played Molly, the lead orphan after Annie. She was great and will make a great Annie in the future if she chooses. This was an authorized production edited for school kids and they actually call the show ANNIE, Jr. The TV production of ANNIE (not the movie) was one of the best things ever on TV.
Q: What about movies?
A: Mrs. 1Ott and I recently saw BABY MAMA starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. It’s a piece of fluff with flashes of humor, not as funny as Tina’s 30 ROCK but better than SNL. The last episode of of 30 ROCK was very funny, with Jack (Alec Baldwin) trying to get himself fired from his government job. When I see Tina with a sole writing credit on a 30 ROCK ep, I’m amazed. She was hired to act in BABY MAMA, and some interviewers are confused by that, thinking she wrote it also (it was written and directed by former SNL scribe Michael McCullers). Tina humbly claims to have only four moves as an actress but that’s 2-3 more than most.
Q: What are you reading?
A: I’m reading but having a hard time finishing BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN by Charles Bock. There’s not much of a connected story among the multiple lead characters, but the descriptive language gives you a good feel for the losers in
Q: Do you still root for the Mets?
A: Ha! Yes, I had flirted with going to the Phils for a year after the existential meltdown of the 2007 Mets (losing a 7 game lead with 17 games to go), like a Catholic trying out the Lutheran Church, but the Mets are like that cowboy buddy movie--I can’t quit you.
Q: What’s on your iPod?
A: I don’t have an iPod but as I’ve written about before, I have an old
Q: You still listen to the radio. Why?
A: I like radio. I miss deejays like Ted Brown and William B. Williams. I’m hoping that someone takes an FM HD channel and runs standards like the old WNEW. That would make me run to buy an HD radio. Although, if they continue to offer Internet streamng, HD may be moot. In the meantime, I listen to High Standards on XM73 and hope that the upcoming merger doesn’t affect XM73.
Q: Still running?
A: Yup. The other day I felt something in my left hip that I never felt before. Each new ache makes you feel more alive I tell myself.
Q. How are the kids?
A: Two are coming home from college this week so I guess it's my favorite time of the year.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The New York Radio Message Board (NYRMB)
· VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Brian Black 19:20:40
- Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Robert Casey 20:14:30
- Re: Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - MikeN 23:20:14
- Re: Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Brian Black 20:24:46
- Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Greg Tallman 19:53:56
- Re: Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - MikeN 23:18:22
- Re: Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Tony Santiago 20:06:39
Posted by Brian Black on
I'm seeing scenes of
Thursday, April 24, 2008
John Adams on HBO
Paul Giamatti stars as John Adams with Laura Linney as his wife, Abigail, David Morse as
For most people, the presidency would be the peak experience of a life but for Adams, we see through Giamatti’s Emmy-worthy performance, a man living with the dread while he’s in office that history will not treat his term (1797-1801) as our second president kindly due to his nuanced stand between the perennial global rivals,
The best episodes are Part 3, in which Adams travels by sea and takes part in a battle against the Brits as he and his young son (future president John Quincy Adams) journey to France to get support for the new revolution; and Part 4, where John and Abigail are reunited and we see the events leading to the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended the Revolutionary War.
Outstanding work is done by David Morse as Washington, who is played with a Mona Lisa grin on his face, or is it his bad teeth bothering him? Stephen Dillane as Jefferson is so good that I hope someone will think of him to play
If you don’t have HBO, get it for this or rent it when the DVD comes out. You’ll be glad you did.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Free Ebook: Beautiful Children by Charles Bock; I Want my DTV
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
Well, Bill Gates told Homer you don’t rich by writing checks, as he busted up Homer’s Internet business. Ironically, Homer didn’t even own a computer. But the new/old paradigm of giving the product away has been a hallmark of the online experience. We take for granted free software (QuickTime, DivX, etc.) and that Adobe will always give away the pdf Reader, but what if they charged for it? Would the market respond and come up with another free reader? What if Adobe made pdf files proprietary? There was a rumor in the ’90s that Microsoft would buy Adobe and fears that we’d have to pay them every time we wanted to distill a pdf.
Tip of the Day: If you ever do read a book in Adobe Reader, here’s how I make a bookmark. I create a shortcut to the file, leave it on the desktop, and rename the shortcut with the number of the page where I left off.
I Want MY DTV
- The roof antenna
- The “turn your wiring into a giant antenna” device
- An amplified indoor or fire escape antenna
- A screw in my alarm system
Believe or not, wedging the tip of the coax into the screw gave me the best signal strength. However, the only channels I could get were 5.1, 5.2 (simulcast of Channel 9) 25.1, 25.2 (traffic camera channel), and a low power religious station on digital channel 3.1. It’s going to be weird to see channel 3 in
One of the knocks against digital is the all-or-nothing feature of receiving the transmission: no more ghosts. Another knock is how hard it is to get a signal in a fringe area. I’m on the second floor of the southern end of a six-story building and that’s certainly a reason why I’m not getting much of a signal. I can’t help but recall that the old analog VHF TV signal could penetrate thick walls but UHF cannot. Many people who are ignoring this conversion and who don’t have satellite or cable are in for a shock come February 2009. There may be a mad dash to Radio Shack or Cablevision or Dish.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Blockbuster vs. Netflix
I was going to write about the ongoing JOHN ADAMS miniseries on HBO but decided to put that off and jot down a few thoughts on Blockbuster 
vs. Netflix.
vs. Netflix.
I’m a latecomer to the Peabody Award–winning series on the SciFi Channel, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. The show is in its fourth and final season. I watched the last few episodes of the previous season last week and I’m familiar with the series plot just by keeping up with show biz news in general. After seeing the Season 4 premiere, I went to Blockbuster to catch up and get Season 1 Disc 1. I watched it on the laptop with headphones. Great audio and video production values and probably the best acting ensemble in science fiction television with veteran thesps like Edward James Olmos (Cmdr. Adama) bringing up the perfs of the less experienced crew members.
Netflix has also come up with a new killer app, as if having what Blockbuster stores don’t carry isn’t enough. Now you can download a subset of their selections on your computer via streaming, with no waiting for the entire film to load or clog up your hard drive. I tried it out and the program crashed when I tried to go full-screen on RED DWARF 8. I had just loaded the viewer so perhaps a reboot will fix this problem.
I recalled banking online with Citibank in the early ‘90s, dialing via modem in terminal mode, accessing their computer with a 212 number, lightning fast response for the most part. As the years went on, Citibank never lost their lead in sophistication over the other banks’ online services. Ironically, the service was faster on text only, 28.8K modems than on any modern graphic-laden browser. It was a sad day when they discontinued Direct Access. The program fit on a single floppy.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Live Video Exclusives: The Giants' Victory Parade, St. Patrick's Day, Mom's Birthday
GIANTS VICTORY PARADE 2008Somehow the Giants' Victory Parade of 2008 took away some, but not all, of the stink of the Mets' "7, 17" collapse of 2007. I'm not even a Giant fan but as a Jet fan I was pulling for the Giants. This is a New York thing. The negative corollary is that a Met fan cannot root for the Yankees in the World Series.
At the column hed is a still pic and below is some live video shot from the corner of Broadway at Liberty. Sounds like a title for an M-G-M Navy musical. The still looks like a scene out of Mecca. On the sidewalks of lower Broadway, the Canyon of Heroes, are some very impressive names of people and groups for whom the city has held ticker tape parades. Lindbergh, Churchill, MacArthur, de Gaulle, the Apollo 8 astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. And Sammy Sosa. I wonder what the hell was going through Giuliani's sports-happy mind when he suggested this one? Hey Mayor Mike, is it too late to scrape the memorial plaque off the lower Broadway sidewalk?
ST. PATRICK"S DAY PARADEThe weather's been rotten in March but the skies cleared for St. Patrick's Day. I stood at 60th Street and environs facing Central Park in the late afternoon and noted that security was tight as usual. When you can't walk more than a few blocks without taking a detour down a side street, it helps control the crowd. The still pic is a salute to my friend Kerry and my brother Brendan.
The vid is "Anchors Aweigh" on bagpipes, although you're forgiven if you mistook it for a bagful of cats being run over. I like the bagpipes like I like reggae--too much of a good thing is bad for you.
MOM'S 89th
Finally, we celebrated Mom's 89th birthday this month. Like Old Man River, she just keeps rolling along. Her secret to longevity is that she has something to do everyday. Don't call Mom alert. It's an insult. Yeah, she may have ("may have" I say) slowed down an eighth of a step but if you talked to her on the phone today you'd hire her tomorrow to work a full five and a half day work week, like she used to do for Domino Sugar down on the waterfront back in the day. (Mom on left, Sis on right.)ADAMS PREVIEW
I signed on to HBO for the month so I could see the Adams miniseries. This went under the radar for me as I first heard of it recently from an ad on a bus shelter. I read the McCullough bio on which this is based and from what I've seen so far, HBO has done the near impossible--show life as it was, be historically accurate, and entertain the hell out of you. More on this next month.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Off-Broadway: ADD1NG MACH1NE
I’m not sure that you’d have to be a middle-aged man who’s been laid off at least once to get the first part of Add1ng Mach1ne, which opened last month at the Minetta Lane Theatre, but it helps. The last time I was laid off, the home office sent an officer of the firm to do it, apparently a legal nicety when a couple of people are getting canned at the same tine. The boss (the guy who hired me) was nowhere in sight. It seems to me that the guy who hired me should have been the one to show me the door, and that’s what happens in the musical Add1ng Mach1ne, based on a play by Elmer Rice.In the 1920s, Mr. Zero (Joel Hatch) is let go (’20s-talk for laid off) by the boss. Zero had been expecting a promotion from the position of hand-tally man to the front office after 25 years of service. The daily morning nag from his wife (the opening number “Something to Be Proud Of”), plus the revelation that an adding machine was taking his job, drives Zero to a murderous rage. He kills his boss and lands on Death Row on the way to Heaven, an afterlife that’s not what he expects or even wants.
Minor criticism: I had a problem with the accents of Mr. Zero and Mrs. Zero (Cyrilla Bear). Was it working-class American or Cockney? Mr. Zero maintains his accent when he sings but Mrs. Zero lapses into operatic pronunciation and sounds less of a nagging shrew.
There’s a very clever bit of staging in Scene 1, where we are looking down at the couple in bed. The bed is standing on its bottom and I wondered how they kept the covers looking natural but not falling down so to speak.
Elmer Rice wrote a scathing play about capitalism’s bosses but he’s not too crazy about the workers either. Jason Loewth and Joshua Schmidt’s libretto, with Schmidt’s often discordant music, evokes the rollicking 1920s with the dark mood of the1930s (the real 1930s, not the movie version). There’s welcome comic relief in the role of Daisy (Amy Warren), whose unrequited love for Mr. Zero is given flight in the gentle ballad “I’d Rather Watch You.”
Since most of the show is sung, if you don’t like musicals I wouldn’t recommend Add1ng Mach1ne. If you do want to spend a very fast 90 minutes at an entertaining expressionistic musical that could be a harbinger of the bleak times ahead (as Rice’s play was in 1923?), if this week’s Bailey Savings and Loan–like run on Bear Stearns is any indication, then go. This was a bargain at $28 (TDF tickets).
1 On the Town is back on the town. My employment prospects have picked up in the last few weeks and I hope to once again offer the reader reviews of the best in bargain theater. The downside is that the more I work the less time and energy I have to go out. Ah sweet mystery of life.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Justice League: The New Frontier on DVD
Full disclosure: I am a big fan of the Flash (first two versions) and Green Lantern (Hal
Batman kicks butt bigtime and transitions from the original creepy-cowled maniac of the 1940s to the friendlier-cowled, ward-watching superhero of the 1950s. J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, is revealed to be an accidental visitor to Earth, trying to blend in but without the advantage of growing up with the Kents. Aquaman even shows up in the last scene but why spoil it? Needless to say, the scene takes place on the beach.
The Justice League is a club for superheroes. Writer Darwyn Cooke borrowed a concept from Paul Levitz, that in the 1950s, Sen. Joe McCarthy hounded the masked vigilantes of the League into the shadows, except for Wonder Woman and Superman (they signed loyalty oaths). For Batman it’s business as usual and he keeps up the franchise working underground from the Batcave. The analogy of this plot to real life is the blame put on comic books by politicians for juvenile delinquency. Most of the major superhero titles, except Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, went under.
The DVD extras contains a fascinating history of the Justice League. I was stunned to hear the unmistakable voice of Stan Lee (from the might Marvel universe) on this documentary. Then we see Stan, who reveals that the Fantastic Four was cooked up on the golf course when Marvel’s president asked Lee and Jack Kirby to come up with something to compete with DC’s Justice League.
Oh yeah, the plot: the League reunites to fight a living island of dinos and monsters.
While the ending is never in doubt, it’s a fun ride to get there. I like this movie a lot and look forward to more in the series. One of the extras was a preview of Batman: Gotham Knight, an anime-style direct-to-DVD. Promotion is calling it a bridge between the previous and upcoming live-action Bat flicks. I call it a must-see DVD.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Black History Month: PETTIGREW FOR PRESIDENT
Somewhere in the series we realized something was up. They never showed the candidate's face and we only saw him in long shots. Word balloons would cover his face when we got close. At first we thought they didn’t want to confuse us with any similarity to an image of a real person, but eventually we began to speculate. Here’s where my memory gets hazy but I think there were hints from some characters that they didn’t like him for personal reasons. Eventually, in the very last pages of the series we see Governor Pettigrew, war hero and family man, get the nomination of his party. The big reveal? He’s African-American, or as they put it in the story in 1964, Negro.
We came to admire this man and even root for him. Any racial prejudice we might have had was given a hard knock, and it encouraged a young mind to think about people based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This is the kind of practical morality that was associated with the Catholic Church in 1964.
And now Obama, the real-life Tim Pettigrew. The pundits are shocked how well he’s doing with white men. H-m-m. These pundits go to the same schools and are hired by the fathers and mothers of friends who also went to those same schools. They don’t ride the subway or go to public school meetings for their kids. They live in lily-white suburbs and when they say Hi every day to their doorman, they make believe that it shows how open their hearts are. They pretend to know what I think by assuming I’m too racist to even consider voting for an African-American. I wonder if the fault is not in me or the stars but in themselves.
We’ve tried the stupidest kid in the class, now let’s try the smartest. I know Carter was smart, but the president can’t be talking about malaises and driving the market in the toilet. Give this guy a shot.
Personal note: my two sons are now registered for the draft and I don’t want any part of a 100 years war with Big John.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Black History Month: HOTEL RWANDA
So far during our Black History Month celebration we've looked at the 1940s and '50s and the career of baseball's Larry Doby, the '60s and '70s with deejay and community leader Petey Greene. Today we jump to 1994 and pay tribute to Paul Rusesabagina. He was the subject of the movie HOTEL RWANDA (2004) and portrayed by Don Cheadle (Cheadle and Rusesabagina are pictured). 
Rusesabagina, using the resources of the hotel that he managed, saved over 1200 Tutsi refugees from the machete-wielding Hutu rebels, proving that one man can make a difference.
Rusesabagina, using the resources of the hotel that he managed, saved over 1200 Tutsi refugees from the machete-wielding Hutu rebels, proving that one man can make a difference.Historical background vs. the movie: the claim is made in HOTEL RWANDA that the Belgians (former colonial rulers) set the Hutu against the Tutsi by favoring the lighter-skinned Tutsi with jobs and educational advantages. The Hutu (of whom the non-political Rusesabagina was a member) exacted a terrible revenge in the form of ethnic cleansing or as it should be called, mass murder. 800,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days.
Research reveals that the two ethnic groups were rivals before the Belgians arrived in 1916, but the Belgians made things worse by their policy of favoring the Tutsi. When they left in 1962, the Hutu majority took over the government and scapegoated the Tutsi for most problems of the country. The movie especially emphasizes the hatred of the Tutsi for collaborating with the colonizers. The assassination of the president, a Hutu, sparked the Hutu rebellion.
In HOTEL RWANDA, Paul Rusesabagina has the savoir faire and survival instincts of Rick from
There’s a point where refugees are being allowed to leave and Paul and his family (his wife is Tutsi) are getting ready to get on a transport under U.N. protection to leave the country. As the truck is getting ready to leave, he tells his wife that he can’t go with them, that he can’t leave the rest of the people behind in the hotel. The transport is driven back by rebels due to a tip from a hotel worker, and the family is reunited. Eventually, international pressure and the return of control by the military over the machetes leads to a lessening of violence and the family does make it to a refugee camp to leave the country. Paul Rusesabagina received the thanks of many people at the camp in 1994 and when the movie came out in 2004, the thanks of the world.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Black History Month: PRIDE AGAINST PREJUDICE: THE LARRY DOBY STORY
This informational Budd Greenspan 2007 documentary should be on the C-B-S network, not just the Y-E-S cable channel under the “Yogi and a Movie” banner. The story of the second black player (and first in the American League) in the modern era of major league baseball, Larry Doby is not a household name, but then again in Internet time kids today think LeBron invented the dunk. Twinned in history, Doby is inevitably compared to outspoken Jackie Robinson of the
Interviews with former teammates such as Al Rosen and Bob Feller are mixed with comments by contemporaries Ralph Kiner, Don Newcombe, and friends and family of this quiet Cleveland Indian who made the move from the Negro Leagues to the American League and became an All-Star Hall of Famer. Doby himself appears in a few segments.
The humiliation of not being able to get a cab and having to walk in uniform to the whites only clubhouse in segregated Washington, DC is just one of the many injustices that you can’t be reminded of enough times. It reminded me of my father’s story of riding the bus in DC in the ’50s and laughing that all the white folk stood in the front while there were plenty of empty seats in the back. Local black families took in the ballplayers who were not allowed to stay in the hotel with the rest of the team.
A great moment in the film is when the Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Braves to take a 3-1 lead in the 1948 World Series. Steve Gromek pitched and got the win backed by a Larry Doby home run. The picture of a black man and a white man (see top of post) hugging was revolutionary in 1948 and Gromek took heat from it from his friends. Gromek's voice is heard commenting that it was nothing, just something that teammates do when they win.
One flaw in this film is showing that Doby retires in 1959 but then skips 10 years to Bowie Kuhn as the commissioner of baseball looking to advance blacks to the commisssioner’s office and to team management. What did Doby do from 1959-69? The “Yogi and a Movie” bumpers had additional info about Doby, such as Doby playing in Japan in the early '60s after his MLB days, and I would have liked to heard more about this episode in Doby’s life.
The first half of the movie is a social history of the era hanging its hat on Doby as one of many brave men who fought for the U.S in WW II but were denied basic rights after the war. There’s a great poster showing a man in military uniform in position to go into battle juxtaposed with the same man in the same position in a baseball uniform.
One fact I learned or forgot that I knew is why the Dixiecrats and Strom Thurmond left the Democratic party in '48. I only recalled that they did it, not precisely why they did it. Truman and the party had an extensive plank on civil rights presented at the '48 convention. For some reason, all I could recall was that the Dixiecrats hated Truman for one reason or another. There's a good audio of a speech by Mayor Hubert Humphrey of
Ira Berkow’s NY Times 1997 column on Doby was key to getting people to remember Doby and why he should be in the Hall of Fame, not only for his skills but for what he had to overcome. When he was elected in 1998 it was long overdue, like civil rights itself.
The number of African-Americans in baseball has declined dramatically for many reasons. Baseball has suffered from foreign players taking American jobs but no one likes to talk about it. Hard for a kid to want to emulate someone who doesn't live here or speak the language. I guess it's like comic books; the world of sports isn't for kids any more. I’m old enough to have seen the first blacks who played for teams (Elston Howard--Yanks, Pumpsie Green--Red Sox, Ernie Banks--Cubs) in the later part of their careers and the way it's going, 2008's class could be the last. We could use a couple dozen Jackie Robinsons and Larry Dobys to take away the odor of the steroid cheaters, but heroes like this only come along once in a generation, if at all.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Black History Month: TALK TO ME on DVD
One Cheadle performance that deserved to be seen by a wider audience in 2007 (now out on DVD) is TALK TO ME, a biopic about Petey Greene, an AM-radio star in Washington, D.C. who for a moment in history transcended show business and calmed a racially explosive capital.
Petey Greene is an ex-con who got his start on a microphone spinning his grandmother’s 45s over the prison P.A. He talks his way into a deejay job at a failing AM station in the early ‘60s. The program director, Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor), is the brother of one of his fellow convicts. They first meet in prison and Dewey says look me up when you get out, which no one thinks will be soon. Greene gets out unexpectedly early and shows up looking for a job.
Martin Sheen, as the station owner, has a great scene after Dewey’s radio show ends that you’ll have to see on the DVD extras. He’s interpreting the horrible events at the end of that long day and for some reason we only see the beginning and end of a moving monologue about meeting MLK back in the day. Perhaps the director felt it took away from the impact of the Dewey’s scene.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
90s Flashback: The Dana Carvey Show (1996)
Colbert is the breakout performer in this series and the following year he joined THE DAILY SHOW with another Carvey cast member, Steve Carell. Colbert has been in character so long on Comedy Central that after seeing Carvey’s show, it’s clear his talents as a mimic at that time were very sharp and now regrettably unused, unless you count playing “Stephen Colbert” as Bill O’Reilly. One episode of Carvey has him doing a very accurate Gregory Peck at the Academy Awards and another an eerie Oliver Stone.
I’ve watched four of the episodes and have not yet seen the infamous WIZARD OF OZ parody, featuring a song called, “If I Only Had an A%%.” This was still 1996 and the level of tastlessness on TV hadn’t reached where we are today, but it was building. If Carvey did a show like this today, it might have a shot as the threshold for bad taste is much higher, although half-hour sketch comedy shows rarely succeed (HALF THE GEORGE KIRBY COMEDY HOUR, PAT PAULSEN’S HALF A COMEDY HOUR).
Other stuff on hulu.com: I watched the first TODAY show from 1952 on hulu.com and found it fascinating. Host Dave Garroway leads us through the wonders of live video remotes (which they explained are just like the audio remotes we were used to on the radio) and a wall that featured the major newspapers of the country flown in just for the show! I was surprised to see a news crawl at the bottom of the screen, thinking that was a more modern innovation. Great stuff.
I find hulu.com good for shows that I forget or can’t watch, for instance 30 ROCK, CONAN, and THE SIMPSONS.
There are several old/new pairings on hulu.com, such the two BATTLESTARs, the two KOJAKs, and the two WHAT’S HAPPENINGs.
They have MCHALE’S NAVY, of which I’m not a big fan, and I may write to hulu.com to see if they can get F TROOP, of which I am a big fan. Many of the shows hulu runs are not complete seasons, which I think may be designed to protect DVD sales. There are commercial breaks of no longer than 30 seconds duration and they are unobtrusive compared to the 4-5 minute breaks on broadcast TV. Enjoy!
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler
In the first pages of the Introduction to Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, author Neal Gabler confronts head-on and convincingly debunks the rumor that Disney was frozen cryogenically from the neck up. The half-dozen end notes attached to this one story show how the book is well-researched: about 20 percent of the volume consists of end notes, many from personal interviews and research in the Disney archives.
Disney wanted to be an animator and Gabler answers a question that puzzled me as a child watching the 1960s NBC TV show: just what did Uncle Walt do? Interestingly, Gabler reports that people in his own company asked the same question. A modern comparison I thought of was Bill Gates, who started out as a code jockey but eventually became the guiding force and first principle that moved everything that the company did.
Money is the subtext of the Disney story. In debt on and off for most of the early years of the company, plowing whatever profits he made back into the firm, Disney jumps the shark when the company becomes wildly successful and art takes a back seat. The dedication to pushing the artists and staff to excel in producing SNOW WHITE and DUMBO for example in the early years, is lost after World War II. The studio becomes an arm of the federal government in producing training and propaganda films and after the war, in a chapter called “Adrift,” Gabler describes how Disney finally succumbs to his partner/brother Roy (and to his creditors) to spend less money on animation and show bigger profits. CINDERELLA and related merchandising (a field that Disney invented) becomes a hit that saves the company from going under in 1950.
From this point on, any of the love and camaraderie that went into making animation is gone and Walt is focused on one goal: to make money to finance
For a bio of a man who made many comedy cartoons, I was expecting a little more humor in the book, which might mean that comedy is a serious business. If you’ve sat through Charlie Rose with Steve Martin, deconstructing the art of funny, you’ll know what I mean. About the only funny passage in the book is not from a scene in a short or movie, but from animator Ward Kimball. In describing Disney’s attitude toward women, Kimball said, “He didn’t trust women or cats. Almost of his villains were either women or cats.”
Disney creates Mickey Mouse in the 1920s as an edgy bad boy who evolves into a suburban home owner with a dog. Disney also evolves as someone who is hailed as a folk artist in the beginning of his career and vilified as the personification of bland. Gabler is a good reporter and gives you enough information to make your own conclusion.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
JUNO
Sunday, January 13, 2008
DVD Review: POPEYE 1933–1938
- sixty Popeye cartoons, many with commentary
- eight Popumentaries
- 16 silent cartoons starring Krazy Kat, Mutt and Jeff, and others from the dawn of animation
POPEYE A MOVIE STAR
The Sailor with a “Sock” accepts Movie Contract
A “photograph” of Popeye on board a ship magically comes to life and instantly we get the first of several trademarks and recurring themes in the series: the “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man” song, the “toot-toot” of his pipe, and the fluidly circular motion of his arms and hips as he swaggers along. Gags 1 and 2: he smashes an anchor and turns it into hooks, then pulverizes a ship’s clock and the pieces reassemble into over a dozen little clocks. “So keep good behavior that’s your one lifesaver,” he sings. About two minutes in we meet girl friend Olive Oyl at the dock and learn that she can take care of herself against a masher, one of Popeye’s shipmates heading for shore leave. Interestingly they include barnyard animals in sailor suits. These non-human characters in human jobs disappear in later cartoons. Then Bluto, Popeye’s rival for Miss Oyl, makes a play for Olive. She fights him to a draw to the tune of “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” (the tune is used again in another Popeye cartoon in this set, “Beware of Barnacle Bill”). When Popeye shows up he just pushes Bluto aside and takes Olive to the carnival. Bluto is angry and you can tell from the raging battleship on his bare chest that he’s plotting revenge. For all the action described so far, and I left out some, we haven’t even hit the three minute mark.
A near-topless pre–Hayes Code Betty Boop does the Yaaka Hula and Popeye jumps on stage with her and busts a move as he dances (looks like rotoscope), grabbing the Bearded Lady’s beard and making a hula skirt out of it. A kidnapping and attempted murder-by-locomotive of Olive by Bluto is thwarted by our hero, aided by a can of spinach.
__________
*One-eyed or just permanently squinty? I’m not sure.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Three-Hour Philly Phormat Phlush on WPHT-AM
Sid Mark was on the big talker WPHT-AM in Philly live on New Year’s Eve last night and rebroadcast today from noon to three (not available as a stream) playing Sinatra et al. He does local and syndicated weekend Sinatra shows in Philly. [When I was courting my wife in the early ‘80s we loved Sid’s syndicated Sinatra show, Saturday nights on WYNY-FM. Sunday nights WYNY ran the Dr. Ruth sex advice show and the rest of the week was MOR. Philadelphia
Monday, December 31, 2007
Year in Review/A Look Ahead
Arrivederci 2007!
Coming up in 2008: Reviews of the DVD POPEYE 1933-1938 and a biography of Walt Disney. My new year's resolution is to make a little more money so I can get out more On the Town.With all the excess eating and traveling the past week I'm cheating and offering this 2007 in review:
Friday, December 21, 2007
Sweeney Todd: Comments on the Film Itself and in Relation to TOS
Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. I’ll only make comments and not a full review. MRS. LOVETT
Mrs. Lovett is as much a maniac and murderer as Todd but Helena Bonham Carter is directed to play it low key by Tim Burton. Her mild singing voice and inability to hold a note hurts her performance. Here is an example: if you don’t know the tune, read the lyrics of “Wait.” First read them normally. Then read them and hold the word “Wait” for 3 or 4 beats.
Don't you know,
Silly man?
Half the fun is to
Plan the plan!
All good things
Come to those who can
Wait.
It could be that it was politically incorrect to play Toby as mentally challenged as in the play, so the movie made him a drinker who doesn’t get drunk. In the play Mrs. Lovett addresses him as “child,” because of his child-like mentality. The movie casts a real child, Ed Sanders, and he is excellent, particularly in the song standard, "Not While I’m Around.”
I watched the movie on the 18th with such high hopes. Burton, Depp, Carter, Rickman, Cohen... all with Sondheim's approval. It's gonna be great, right?
Sadly, to make a good movie musical (or at least a good Sweeney Todd movie musical) you need leads that can carry a tune. Cohen's Pirelli was great, Rickman's judge was good. Toby, Johanna, Anthony, all good. But my God, Depp and Carter were horrid. I'll even give Johnny an A for effort as he seemed to sing on key and hold some notes.
I really wanted to like this movie. Now I just want to forget it was made
I replied:
Your review is what I wrote in my head without seeing it yet and I hope you're wrong but I have a feeling you're right. Yet without Johnny the movie never gets made, supposedly. Sondheim has never been happy with a film version of one of his shows and after the hype is done I wonder what he will say. Big CGI movies often suck humor and warmth out of source material, I'm thinking of LOTR and Superman Returns for example. Sweeney needs singers and comedians, like Bryn Terfel and Bette Midler, but in
It looks like Mr. Crawley was mostly right. Johnny Depp was not horrid as Sweeney Todd. He acted it like the great actor he is, but he’s just not the guy to sing this score.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Holiday Concert
We're taking a break from the usual today as One on the Town offers selections from a holiday concert by the Brooklyn College Chorale and Conservatory Orchestra. One of my own bairns is the blond young man in the center of the stage, to the right of the conductor.
We open with the closing of Leroy Anderson's Christmas Festival.
Next up: The Blessed Son of God from Hodie by Vaughn Williams.
The grand finale: (standing optional) the Hallelujah Chorus by George F. Handel.
I hope you enjoyed the selections from this free concert at Brooklyn College on December 13, 2007, made possible through the support of the New York City Council.
We open with the closing of Leroy Anderson's Christmas Festival.
Next up: The Blessed Son of God from Hodie by Vaughn Williams.
The grand finale: (standing optional) the Hallelujah Chorus by George F. Handel.
I hope you enjoyed the selections from this free concert at Brooklyn College on December 13, 2007, made possible through the support of the New York City Council.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet
Born on a Blue Day is the bestselling autobiography of autistic savant Daniel Tammett, published in paperback by Free Press. The author is born and we learn he has synesthesia, a mixture of senses often resulting in alphanumerics taking on colors. Tammett also sees numbers as “shapes,…, textures, and motion.” This experience of numbers allows him to perform lightning-fast calculations. Synesthesia, he claims, also allows him to learn new languages quickly. Researchers believe that an epileptic seizure at age 4 “may have played an important role in making me the person I am today,” and he cites other geniuses who had epilepsy and similar feelings such as Dostoyevsky. The savant side serves him well in school in math but the autistic side makes it difficult to have friends and mix in with other children in grades school. He creates an imaginary friend, a widow named Anne. He talks about everything with her and she reassures him that although he was different, he “would be fine.” One day she went away because she said, “she was dying.” Tammet writes,
Looking back, Anne was the personification of my feelings of loneliness and uncertainty. She was a product of that part of me that wanted to engage with my limitations and begin to break free from them. In letting go of her, I was making the painful decision to try to find my way in the wider world and to live in it.
Tammet is truly a genius. Woody Allen is still paying his analyst after 40 years and has yet to make this kind of breakthrough. Tammet does it at no cost and with profound insight into what holds any of us back from our achieving our dreams.
He begins to make friends and even fills in for a sick friend in the lead of SWEENEY TODD. He creates in his mind fictional histories of countries and an entire new language. Deciding to skip college because he’d “had enough of the classroom,” he’s accepted as a volunteer in a program that sends people to
Tammet is clearly high-functioning in the autism spectrum. He’s developed a long-term relationship with a partner. The things that he thinks separate him from the average person are that he’s awkward in new social situations, he gets confused if a familiar rout or routine is changed, and, he’s a genius. By the end of the book he’s become an entrepreneur and world traveler, appearing on Letterman after learning pi to over 20,000 places. Tammet is doing very well.
The book gave me insight into what it’s like to be Daniel Tammet and his story is plainly written and interesting to read. Based on the stories I’ve heard from my wife, a social worker in a school for autistic children, this book does not describe what it’s like to be an average person with autism. The back cover copy claims that Tammet is “among people who have severe autistic disorders” but I disagree with that assessment of “severe.”
Tammet is in a best-case scenario for someone with autism: he’s high-functioning, has a loving family, and is a genius, if somewhat confused dealing with people socially. If you’re the parent of a child with a middle- to severe assessment of autism, this book might make you feel good for the author but won’t help you out much if you’re looking for a “how-to.”
Friday, November 30, 2007
BEE MOVIE; Book preview: Born on a Blue Day
Jerry Seinfeld was in Israel recently where he met the Prime Minister and the President, honors usually reserved for a head of state. He deserves it. This is a man who can do whatever he wants and he has chosen to make an excellent family-friendly film, BEE MOVIE. Mrs. 1OTT and I were the only adult couple in the theater in an audience of parents and children. What a relief it was to see a movie for kids that didn't contain the usually gross-out Shrek-humor that children supposedly enjoy.I won't give away too much of the plot except to say that Jerry plays Barry B. Benson, a bee who wants more out of life than working in the hive and dying. He meets Vanessa, honey-sweetly voiced by Renée Zellweger, a florist who accepts Barry as the first bee to talk--a violation of bee rules--and the pursuer of justice for bees.
Hilarious Jewish humor abounds around Barry's family and a star turn by a cable talk legend. Nudge-nudge cameos are also entertaining and integral to the plot so don't read too many reviews before you go see it.
I hear people say, "Why should Jerry even work?" since he's so rich. Crosby kept working after his first 100 million and so should Jerry. One can only wonder what the extra episode of Seinfeld planned for DVD would have been like. Jerry said things didn't come together for it to happen, but I suspect the Michael Richards scandal kiboshed it. I saw Jerry's COMEDIAN documentary, showing his return to standup and was amused by it, but BEE MOVIE is a return to form by a comic prince.
Note to Chris Rock fans: his participation is a cameo, but the setup of his mosquito character, Mooseblood, near the beginning of the movie, leads to the funniest line of the movie near the end.
Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet
Free Press has just published the paperback of the British bestselling autobiography of an autisitc savant, Born on a Blue Day. Mrs. 1OTT is a social worker in a school for autistic children and wanted the book for herself, so I bought it, read chapter 1, and was drawn in. The author's love of math and some of his odd habits, such as spinning coins, reminded me of some of my own childhood habits and those of kids I knew and even my own children. But when you put all these behaviors together in one person you have the autism spectrum. I'm trying to learn more about this condition. One OPRAH show with Jenny McCarthy isn't enough to learn everything you need to know. I'd like to think that eventually we'll live in a world where, when a person with an unusual condition like autism enters a bus and acts up, people will have actually learned enough in school to understand what they are dealing with, instead of scowling or laughing. Full review to follow.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
I Built It One Piece at a Time: The Amazingly Durable Rio S10; This American Life
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is around.
By Wayne Kemp, copyright 1976, performed by Johnny Cash
According to the inverse ratio of the original
- half of 320 = 160
- half of 160 = 80
- half of 80 = 40.
I look forward to 2018, when memory is measured in quads and a 1 GB chip costs the same as a potato chip.
Actually, SD card prices are dropping faster than
I had never purchased an iPod so the SD card has opened up a whole new audio world for me. I actually own 2 Rio S10s. My daughter dumped hers after she got her first job and bought an iPod. She doesn’t live by Dad’s strike price of <$100 for technology. My friend Cicero Slim from
What’s on my
There were a lot of things in the 1990s that I heard about but never got into because I was too tired raising babies. One of the great public radio shows that started in during that decade was This American Life with Ira Glass. The weekly podcast is perfect for me because the content of the show is so high, that I don’t want to miss a word or note and I’m able to rewind. Mrs. 1OTT and I recently enjoyed a show featuring a woman writing a breakup song and enlisting Phil Collins to advise her. It is rare for Mrs. 1 and I to so thoroughly enjoy anything on TV or radio together. She’s Gray’s Anatomy and I’m Scrubs. Another outstanding entry featured violent criminals doing hard time performing Hamlet in prison. Almost every episode is good. I look forward to seeing the TV incarnation of TAL on Showtime (will either wait for the DVD or see via download).
Sunday, November 11, 2007
SLAM by Nick Hornby, or Bamboozled!: The Responsibility of the Critic
Page 145 of this 309 page novel confirms the dramatic core of the plot, whether or not the skateboarding protagonist’s girlfriend is pregnant. Too bad I already read the result of the test in the Library of Congress Cataloging in-Publication data on page vi. The promotional copy on the dust jacket doesn’t mention it, so why should the frontmatter?
I once read that a good critic, rather than taking pleasure in easily and totally trashing a work, can make it a challenge and find something in a piece that someone somewhere might like. The recently fired TV critic for the NY Daily News took this to an extreme. When he started writing for the Daily News in the 1990s, his viewpoint was that of a well-rounded individual writing for an equally well-informed audience, of whom TV watching was one of many entertainment choices or intellectual pursuits. If a show stunk, he’d tell us not to bother, to turn off the tube and do something else.
As the TV audience eroded to Internet and video games in the 2000s, I noticed the Daily News critic’s reviews becoming much more positive and less critical, except for the worst shows. He would talk of how a show’s worthiness was great enough for the viewer to devote hours of his or her life to. My first impression was that he assumed people watched TV all night so his job was to get people to watch the least bad shows. Finally I conjectured that he was subversive, knowing that most things on TV are junk, and seeing that if he wrote mostly negative reviews he would erode the audience even further until the position of TV critic would be endangered like radio, book, and buggy whip reviewers, he encouraged people to stick with mediocrity rather than turn off the set.
I found this book to be mediocre. After reading some reviews, I conclude it is overpraised by critics who are rooting for an author who sells a lot of books and keeps publishing afloat.
My only previous direct artistic experience with the author’s work was my viewing of HIGH FIDELITY, a great movie based on Nick Hornby’s first novel. I had no idea SLAM was his first Young Adult (YA) book. The humor escaped me, except for one chuckle where a man pictures himself as a 49-year-old being able to play club soccer with his 16-year-old grandson.
The book will be impossible for
There’s even a happy scene at the end where everyone is still young but slightly more grown up, the couple is apart but the baby cared for, and the icing on the cake: she has a new boyfriend and he has a smoking hot girlfriend! By gum, why did I even stay married for all these 22 years? It’s the Gilmore Girls all over again, a world where children don’t need two parents, where they’re better off with just one, there only being half as many adults to screw up their wise-before-their-time teen noggins.
This book offers a lesson in middle-class civility when dealing with misfortune. The girl’s father pulls a little class snobbishness on the teen dad but instantly apologizes for the remark, “Don’t you people ever learn anything?” The book doesn’t get much deeper that this. Is he dreaming about the future or is he time traveling? Is the Tony Hawk poster to which he talks and from Whom he gets advice a metaphor for the Deity? Gimmicky with CGI possibilities, but not well done in the novel.
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