SUMMER WRAP-UP: 2 BOOKS AND 2 MOVIES; BRA SHOPPING WITH MY WIFE AND LUNCH AT OTTOMANELLI’S

PLEASE STAND BY: A PREHISTORY OF TELEVISION by Michael Ritchie is a fascinating book from 1994 about television before 1948 in the U.S. and Europe. Amazing technical and show biz angles are covered in great detail with personal interviews with the people who made it happen, not flies on the wall like a Ken Burns doc where some professor speaks of 1861 in the present tense. I had always thought it was only the war that stunted TV’s growth in the 1940s but a major factor was the resistance of Petrillo, president of the musician’s union, to the use of live licensed music on TV. Once a deal was struck with him, it lead to variety on TV (with more than just amateurs singing unlicensed public domain music), which led to Milton Berle, and to TV’s domination over radio, movies, and all other night time leisure.

HERE’S JOHNNY by who else, Ed McMahon is a 2005 love letter to his late boss and friend, Johnny Carson. Fluff, not enough detail, all heart. The best reprinted gag from Karnac the Magnficent:

KARNAC: The answer is Hasbro.

ED: The answer is Hasbro.

KARNAC: The question: How did Tito Jackson get into show business?

SPIDERMAN 3

Tobey Maguire can act and that’s what makes S3 superior to the current Superman franchise. The love story still doesn’t sizzle enough for me but he and Kirstin Dunst make a cute couple. There’s a dangerous flirtation with camp when Peter shows his dance moves, but that would only upset people who don’t like to be entertained.

2 DAYS IN PARIS

My wife likes the Angelika Film Center and she likes Julie Delpy since she saw BEFORE SUNRISE/BEFORE SUNSET, so she dragged me to see 2 DAYS IN PARIS, which Delpy wrote and helmed. A woman takes her Amercan boyfriend to meet her folks in Paris. A lot of real life infuses the goings on—Adam Goldberg, the boyfriend, is Delpy’s former lover. Her parents play her parents. She really is French and so on. The characters are unappealing and the source of their attraction is not made known. I don’t believe that common interests are necessary for a couple but chemistry is a minimal requirement. Their sex life is mediocre, they seemed like a couple who had been married for forty-nine years. Perhaps Delpy was showing a marriage in reverse time. It's Annie Hall without the laughs.

BRA SHOPPING WITH MY WIFE AND LUNCH AT OTTOMANELLI’S

Ladies, Intimacy at Madison and 90^th is the place to go for the hard to fit woman. If Dolly Parton were a New Yorker, she’d go here. I’m told the service was excellent and my wife will probably become a return customer. Before we went we had a delicious lunch at Ottomanelli’s on Lexington and 93^rd. She had the spaghetti and meatballs and I had the pecan chicken salad. A two-pint glass of watery Coke [that’s how I like it, with lotsa lemon slices] completed our prelude to Intimacy.

The Old Town Bar--1 on the Town for Less Than a Gen'l Jackson

Most of my friends have moved away, like the Johnny Cash song, to everywhere man, like Chicago, Long Island, upstate New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, and so on. The ones who commute to Manhattan are always looking at the watch for the last train to Podunk. So it was that I found myself alone at 6:30 p.m. at the end of the bar at the Old Town on E. 18th St.

There's a gap where the wooden bar to your left ends and a marble bar begins. The waitress moves through it. I sat at the far end of the marble bar, not quite at the corner and not on a barstool but on the edge of a small table, sharing the surface with a large plastic container that slowly filled up with dirty dishes. When the real barstool to my left emptied, I moved over. This was my first promotion in a long time.

The Brooklyn lager was so good I had another. I asked for the menu, even though I already knew what I was going to order. I enjoy eating at the bar, not that I could get a table (it was a crowded Thursday evening). The chili came hot and was good too. I asked the bartender, "Do you have any pie?" "None that I can recommend," he said. I don't if that was funny but hearing it said with an Irish accent made me chuckle.

"We have apple crumb," said the bartender. I then asked for coffee and felt a little guilty because this looked like the first coffee made all day (maybe all month). I thought he 's thinking, I make more on liquor than I do on coffee. I forced the coffee down with the apple crumb.

I sat in front of the very active dumbwaiter, which connects with the second floor kitchen. I thought of my old Irish father, who would have been 100 in 2010. He lived in an old building and claimed to have ridden a dumbwaiter for fun when he was a kid. The flopping around of the Old Town's dumbwaiter cables was hypnotic, almost dizzying. Could have been the beer, the chili, and the coffee. Or the apple crumb. Did I mention the whipped cream on the side? Nice touch.

This is as good of a time as you can have by yourself for less than $20.

Phil Rizzuto 1917-2007

Scooter made a personal appearance when The Wiz opened across from Kings Plaza in the 1980s. He signed a Wiz cap for my mother and sister. When she told him they were in Richmond Hill HS at the same time in the 1930s, Phil flattered my mother and said, "That's not possible!"

A couple of years later, she asked him if he could send an autographed pic to a priest friend of our family for his birthday, which he or somebody did. What a great guy.

THE SIMPSONS; The Sandbar; Looking for Work

THE SIMPSONS

Go see it, it’s great. My only criticism: there’s a scene about 20 minutes in where Bart undergoes a public burning so to speak, and the cruelty of it set a dark tone that the movie doesn’t recover from until the last scene. THE SIMPSONS was the Bart Show for the first five years with the catch phrases and the national debates on negative influence but it’s been Homer’s for the last fifteen. The movie belongs to Homer but Bart is there with him for the resolution. Stay for the credits as there are several gags lasting until the last frame.

It will be interesting to see if the events of the movie become canonical, which doesn’t mean anything of course. On TV Homer forgets he was Mr. Plow many seasons ago even as he’s wearing the jacket. Whatever they do for a laugh is perfectly cromulent to me.

THE SANDBAR

Voltaire declared that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. So it is with The Sandbar in Rockaway, Queens. [If you Google this you will find the Village Voice misplaces it in Far Rockaway.] The Sandbar is at B. 116th and the Boardwalk. Last week after accepting a new job offer, I went down to the beach and had a few at The Sandbar. Like a neighborhood bar, your Irish bartender John offers a buyback every 4th brew or so. I sat there reading the New York Review of Books but made sure it was folded over to look like the Post or News. This ain’t Park Slope and no use alienating the regulars. It’s okay to pull out a book at the bar but I feel the NYRB is a little snobby in a neighborhood bar. A constant breeze from the beach wafted through this open air paradise, open to the beach side and the far wall on 116th. There’s a burger counter on that other side too but I didn’t have the nerve to try it. Maybe next time.

In movies and TV I’ve seen guys yell out, “Cat fight,” when two girls start fighting but I’d never seen it in real life, until last week right outside The Sandbar on the boardwalk. In this case, the cry was “Girl fight!” as two girls in bikinis were jawing and finally slapping each other on the boardwalk. There’s a major NYPD presence until 5 p.m. at 116th and the fight was immediately broken up by two cops.

LOOKING FOR WORK

One of the worst job-hunting experiences I ever had involved a publisher in 2005. The fellow who interviewed me said he’d recommend me for the job, whatever that meant. Did I have the job or not? I found out: he left the firm, his supervisor left, and the higherups I followed up with thanked me for my diligence. The trail ran cold after that. Oddly, I have a 2007 update coming up with the same company [stay tuned].