1 On the Town

Happy 92nd Birthday Mom!

2011-03-25T20:20:00.042-04:00

Mom's doing great and we had a nice little party.

Blog hiatus: we're getting ready to go to Paris next month. I promise to return with a big photo feature in May. I expect Mrs. 1onthetown to be constantly stopped by well-wishers of the beautiful Julie Delpy.

UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

2011-02-14T20:10:00.061-05:00

When I was a kid I loved boxing. I read about it, watched it on TV, even kept score round by round. What turned me off permanently was the Patterson-Ellis title bout on September 14, 1968. The old champ Floyd Patterson was attempting to regain the crown and become the heavyweight king for an unprecedented third time. He gave WBA (one of two crowning authorities, the WBC being the other) champ Ellis a beating and my scorecard gave it easily to my fellow Brooklynite and all-around good citizen. I'm paraphrasing but the post-fight dialogue with announcer Howard Cosell went something like this:

HOWARD: Champ! Champ! How do you feel? It looks like you're going to regain the crown and be the heavyweight champion again!

FLOYD: Let's wait and see what the referee says Howard.

The referee in Sweden was the sole judge and he gave the decision to Ellis for reasons unknown. My own conclusion as an 11-year-old buff was that there were powers greater than Floyd that wanted a young champion that they could control.

Part of being a young buff was learning the continuous lineage of the heavyweight championship line. From John L. Sullivan in 1885, there followed Corbett, Fitzsimmons, Hart, Burns and the greatest champ of all time, Jack Johnson. Johnson lived like a modern man and how he avoided being shot, lynched, or physically destroyed is a testament to the sheer force that this man exuded. The racism of the time prevented him from fighting for the title for many years as white champs refused to fight him. Once he was given the opportunity, he took the title and held it from 1908-1915.

The Ken Burns documentary, UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, is very well done and especially clever in the showing of and commentary on real fight footage from 100 years ago. It's almost corny to dub in the sound of punches and the crowd noise but it works with silent footage. All the other Burns touches are there, such as period music and famous people reading from archival newspapers and magazines.

I particularly recommend the on-screen commentary from James Earl Jones, who played Johnson in THE GREAT WHITE HOPE on stage and screen. Some great still photos are shown of Jones and Muhammad Ali play sparring, back in the day when Ali was banned from boxing. Jones movingly talks about Johnson's ethos: how his heart, mind, soul, and very manhood was his alone: he was not a slave.

Part I concludes with Johnson's ascension to the title. Part II covers the fall and it's sad to see a man flee his country and have to bargain his way back in to serve a one-year jail term for violating the Mann Act. In 2011 there's recurring talk of a presidential pardon. Even though he lived his later years fighting bums and living off past glory, his final rounds are filled more dignity than many modern champs who end up addled from too many blows and broke: Joe Louis working as a casino greeter always comes to mind. I was happy to see Johnson make it to 68. It's implied that his fatal car crash was precipitated by some racial mistreatment; he drove off speeding in a rage. It's hard to believe that he would have done that.

Black History Month IV: Move Over Gabriel! Here Comes Satchmo!

2011-02-05T17:28:00.002-05:00

Welcome to the 4th annual Black History Month for 1 On the Town. Check out the archives for 2010, 2009, and 2008 (there's some amazing prognostication or just hopefulness about our current president in the Pettigrew for President entry).

Move Over Gabriel! Here Comes Satchmo!

So said radio/TV man Fred Robbins at the end of his eulogy for Louis Armstrong in 1970. I can remember growing in the 1960s, the Golden Age of free television. A middle class kid could see the greatest artists of the 20th century on free TV on the late afternoon talk/variety shows and beg his parents to stay up and watch a late night show (9 pm) if it was a school night. Louis Armstrong was a frequent guest in that era, always welcome in the home. His avuncular ubiquitous presence was anodyne to the occasional racism a kid was exposed to by his older siblings. I can't recall feeling prejudice toward blacks and my Irish father scolded anyone in the house who used the N-word, but I can recall that one sibling liked to tell offensive Black jokes and another favored anti-Semitism. We had little exposure to African Americans inside the house, except for my father's friend from work, Holcombe Hall, who fixed TVs as a sideline, and the Edison man.

I recently read Terry Teachout's 2009 bio POPS (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and recommend it. What comes though is the underlying sadness of the humorous trumpet icon who brought so much joy to the world. If Tracy Morgan wants to get his EGOT, he should star in the biopic.

"(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue?" Louis sang courtesy of Fats Waller and Andy Ratzaff. Twice Teachout comments and reports on Louis's interpretations of the song. From the first time he recorded it in 1929, Louis "made a point of blunting its confrontational edge," Teachout notes. When I hear anyone criticize Louis this is usually the thrust, that his good-natured stage and real-life personas made his people look meek or happy in their oppression, ignoring the reality of racism. They conveniently ignore the mixed-race bands he led, which did more to break down legal barriers and hidden prejudices than any professional speakers ever did or will do.

There's a beautiful scene in the documentary JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY (1959) (thank you Netflix streaming) with Louis and Jack Teagarden doing their old chestnut, "Rockin' Chair." Teachout describes a 1957 TV perf "in which the broad shouldered Teagarden puts an arm around the shorter Armstrong and looks affectionately at him as they amble through their well-worn routine:

[JACK:] Fetch me some water, son!

[LOUIS:] You know you don't drink water, father.

If you don't dig this kind of good humor and bonhomie, then you can't dig Pops.

One more note on Louis and childhood: I think every kid in the family did a raspy impression, which was always followed by Mom warning that you'd ruin your throat. I can even remember bringing out a handkerchief for verisimilitude.

Antenna TV: Old Shows on New Network; Back from the North Country

2011-01-09T17:15:00.002-05:00

ANTENNA TV

By "old shows on new network" I'm not talking about Dr. Phil repeats on the new OWN channel. The first day of the new year 2011 saw the return of the Three Stooges to channel 11, that is, eleven point four on the over-the-air digital dial, on a new national network called Antenna TV. A Stooges marathon was followed by regular programming later in the week. This channel trumps cable's TV Land by sheer variety, none of the four-hour blocks of the same show that I can't imagine anyone sitting through. Also, black and white is welcome on 11.4. I assume TV Land thinks that only color GUNSMOKEs would be of interest but I would love to see a b/w from the beginning of the run.

Antenna TV is running classic comedies like THE MONKEES and BENNY HILL that I'm pretty sure anyone under 25 either hasn't seen or only heard their parents talk about. How to describe, in a 24-hour Internet world, the joys of the naughty, bawdy Brit humor of Benny Hill? The one guest that Johnny Carson wanted but couldn't get, Benny Hill and his amiable troupe of old men and young ladies were last seen on a regular basis in New York in syndication on channel 9 in the '80s, late at night (after 11). Musical parodies and sketches that never reached the level of lewd (by 21st c. standards), Benny Hill and his backward salute could find favor with a new generation if they can find him. Hey Cablevision, can you drop one of your several end-is-near or PPV porn channels and put on something that more people would want to watch?

THE NORTH COUNTRY

My last trip to the farm was in 2008 in the summer and this time I was promised soul-searching wind chills in the week after Christmas. Walking 3 miles to the F train through the aftermath of the blizzard of 2010 (I actually got a lift for part of the way from a van full of Chinese fellows) to catch a bus from the Port Authority, my arrival in Gouverneur found me above the snow line and the beneficiary of temperate weather on Lockie Lane Farms. Ken's wife Claire and her mother Elsie fed me so well that I gained 5 pounds in 3 days, which doesn't seem possible. Elsie's biscotti, Claire's sweet and sour pork and apple pie and more apple pie--not even a few hikes through the hills, or reading my trip book, GULLIVER' TRAVELS by Jonathan Swift, could work off the weight. The only thing close to work that I did was climb up the hay bale stairway to the loft and throw a few bales down to Mr. Sullivan and his father-in-law. One bale is going for 2 bucks this season.

Did you know that chickens need 12 hours of sunlight to lay an egg? Some folks force them to lay, by installing artificial lighting, but Ken's giving the girls these short days off.

One day we bought two new barn windows and a dump wagon, two things I probably won't do again for awhile, although we may buy a few hundred new windows this year here in the co-op.

Here come the pictures and some video. Turn down the volume if the sound of bleating disturbs you.

And here comes my new best friend, Major. A black Lab, he was found on the side of the road with a bag of dog food. Who would do something like that? They actually know who did it--Major's collar had a chip in it. Best dog I ever met.

Comes running like a bullet from a half-mile away.

His Master's Voice.

Good boy.

Looking down on the farm from up the hill.

Who you calling chicken?

Ken said that Major barks at anyone new, but Major and I hit it off from the start. I miss Major.

The sheep. The barn smells a lot better in the winter. The coats are to protect the wool. Ken sells the wool and some go to slaughter. Sorry PETA.

The rams are kept separate.

Ken and Claire are off the oil grid for heating--he chops wood and has at least a two-year supply for the furnace (made in USA furnace and fuel--take that, Kuwait).

Mom sends an ornament each year. This year I hand delivered one (this is an old one from the their tree--you can guess where they got the tree from).

Sheep on Film: Turn down your sound card if you're at work. These sheep are like sheep except when you ask them to keep it down at feeding time. There's another difference in visiting in the winter--no baa-ting when you're waking up.

Year-end Roundup: BLOODY BLODY, TRUE GRIT, Hooked on Netflix; THE EMPEROR OF MALADIES

2010-12-27T17:18:00.002-05:00

BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON

1onthetown had a theatre companion this month for BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON. We've been talking about seeing this for awhile and when the closing notice was posted she ran out and got us two ducats on the aisle in front of the stage right speakers. The intimate ~~Belasco Theatre~~ Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre houses this rousing Guitar Hero bio of the seventh president. The eponymous lead as played by Benjamin Walker proves he can fill a theatre with his voice even without a mic. The incredibly cluttered stage makes scene changes easy as everything is already up there. I liked a lot of it except for the dotty lady in the wheelchair who narrates the first half of the proceedings.

This show started in L.A. in 2008 and there's a West coast TV sick humor sensibility that may have contributed to this show not catching on, such as jokes stretched paper thin and too long (for example, in the very beginning we suffer through the narrator wordlessly tooling around and around the stage in the electric wheelchair). The other negative is the effeminate depiction of Eastern political figures. Except for the rugged postures of Jackson and Calhoun, figures such as JQ Adams and Martin Van Buren are portrayed as foppish jackasses. I can accept that Andrew Jackson is bringing back sexypants but the other male characters were too Paul Lynde for this context.

TRUE GRIT

What does it take to get me off the couch and into a movie theatre?: a weekday afternoon and the Coen brothers teamed with Jeff Bridges making a movie out of the great Charles Portis's TRUE GRIT. But the real attraction is newcomer Hailee Steinfeld as the plucky miss out to avenge her father's murder by an ungrateful coward. I feel like Christopher Plummer giving you "Miss Daisy Clover" but I'm giving a money back guarantee based on her perf. She's real and the true grit of the title, with no phony 21st c. politics informing her acting.

Were the Coen Bros. joking by hiring a lookalike (Barry Pepper) for Robert Duvall to play the same part that Duvall played in the first version of TRUE GRIT? Oh brother!

HOOKED ON NETFLIX

I spent a good deal of week one of vacation watching DARIA on Netflix DVD, streaming Season 2 of HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, and also streaming the cult classic TV show FIREFLY. So sad that we have hundreds of ST: TNG eps and only 14 FIREFLYs but I'm telling myself it's like watching 5 or 6 great movies. I read that 20% of Internet traffic from 8-10 pm is from Netflix streaming and that only 2% of their customers currently stream. When this catches on it may break the Internet. I was running the laptop thru the TV but my new BluRay player makes it a couch potato's dream. How did I miss FIREFLY during its run on FOX in the early 2000s?

THE EMPEROR OF MALADIES by Siddhartha Mukerjee

This book is subtitled "A History of Cancer" and is a good read if you've ever liked a science class or read science for leisure. Stay away if you're looking for humorous anecdotes. The author's vocabulary is excellent and I learned some new words, or at least one of those words that you see but can't ever remember its meaning: febrile.

That's it for 2010. I'm off to the farm, bringing the camera, and will have a full report in the new year.

Merry Christmas from Mel Tormé 3

2010-12-23T19:25:00.000-05:00

Cre-a-k-k! The private vault is open again for Mel Tormé. This time it's New Year's Eve, 1987. Like Santa, he comes around every December and leaves all with a great feeling. Enjoy!!

Raw Nerve Touched: The Missed Opportunity of Sweeney Todd

2010-12-08T09:47:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a book about Beer and one of the topics is Ale, which elicited a comment from my copy editor, and touched off some deep feelings I have about Sweeney Todd. I wrote about the movie in 2007, and some of those thoughts bubbled to the surface again today.

From: Jeff

Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 5:45 PM
To: Brian
Subject: Ale and Meat Pies

You saw the Cariou Sweeney Todd, no?

Ever see Cerveris/Lupone or Depp?

****************************************

From: Brian
To: Jeff
Subject: RE: Ale and Meat Pies

Sadly no; no/yes.

I saw Dorothy Loudon and George Hearn. I have the Lupone/Hearn/NPH DVD. Hearn filled in for Bryn Terfel, whose chronic bad back made him unavailable. I saw the Lansbury/Hearn on VHS.

If you saw the Sondheim birthday tribute on PBS, Hearn has become the Bublé of Sweeneys. I mean that as a compliment. Hearn was/is an amazing artist at any age and killed at the birthday tribute. It was a privilege to see him in his prime.

I saw Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury on YouTube sing at a charity event in LA in the 2000s, where Cariou probably gave his last singing performance. Word on the street is that role killed his voice. What a way to go as Dean said.

Not crazy about paying four times as much to see ¼ as many performers playing cymbals between their knees while they sing and juggle. It’s the kind of thing that people convince themselves is good.

Depp: fantastic actor, craptastic singer. The director’s wife was awful. The gal who played Joanna—awful. Borat as Pirelli—very good. The kid playing the kid—novel idea to have a kid playing a kid. You don’t get a movie made of a musical unless you get Depp/Burton. Then you get a Burton movie, not Sondheim. If I recall the trailer, the music was second to the FX. It’s extortion. I hope to live long enough to see it done right on screen. Dream casting would have been Bryn Terfel and Bette Midler. We can only hope some 10-year-old is doing the grade school version and is vowing to do it right when he or she is all growed up.

Dorothy Loudon was one of those very talented people you’d see on TV in the 1960s, when you could turn on a talk/variety show after school and see Count Basie rap with Mike Douglas or Robert Q. Lewis. It was the golden age of free TV.

Richard Pryor's Birthday Today

2010-12-01T09:32:00.000-05:00

Richard would have been 70 today. I've never laughed as hard at anyone until the meteor that was Chappelle. Thanks again. You were the one-man Beatles of comedy.

Best Thanksgiving Ever

2010-11-28T22:15:00.001-05:00

I cooked for 10 and made apple pie (DIY crust and filling). You can't ruin a Butterball. I also served glazed carrots and invented a green bean and small-potato (red and white) casserole. I believe I also made yams but a wild argument broke out over the difference between yams and sweet potatoes. Whatever it was, I added some sugar, pepper, and salt and all were pleased. I forgot to serve the cranberry sauce and applesauce but no one seemed to notice.

This year I saved all my vacation and personal time to take one week off at Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, and two weeks off at the end of the year. I'm visiting Lockie Lane Farms next month to visit my friend the sheep farmer and his wife. If the weather holds we're taking a hop over the border to Montreal.

There was a great 80th birthday tribute to Stephen Sondheim on PBS last week. I bought his biographical annotated collection of lyrics, FINISHING THE HAT, today at Border's at an outrageous 40% off thanks to an email coupon. They typeset and printed this coffee table book in the US and were able to keep the list price at $39.95. Imagine if you were alive in 1936 and were able to read a similar tome by George Gershwin. Truly a must read for anyone who loves the theatre.

Later in the afternoon I got a sweet deal on a Sony Blu-ray at Best Buy. Apropos of Ed Norton's question to Ralph Kramden, Why don't you have a TV?, to which Ralph replied, I'm waiting for 3D, this player can do 3D. All I need now is the TV (paraphrasing Sondheim).

Over the holiday I watched THE BEGGAR'S OPERA on DVD and read EUREKA by Jim Lehrer. Lehrer writes clean usually and I figured this was SFM (safe for Mom). However, Mom was shocked at some of the content. I read it after her and I can guess what she was aghast at (at one point a 59-year-old man has a few normal hetero fantasies about a young girl). She enjoyed Lord Larry Olivier in BEGGAR'S OPERA. (THREEPENNY OPERA reworked the same story with new music.)

One of the saddest things in the novel EUREKA is a reference to an interview with Anthony Hopkins in which he refers to his entire career as a waste of time. It's so depressing that I had to look it up. After that quote from 1999, IMDb lists 30 projects finished or in development so Hopkins was kidding or just having a bad day.

The Jets are 9-2 after Thanksgiving night! I'm pretty sure they have never been 9-2. Another thing to be thankful for: Mom bounced back from a few weeks in the hospital this year to play host to the Thanksgiving dinner. Margie found her a nice apartment in an elevator building. Mom gave us a scare and made me appreciate her more if that's possible. At one point in the hospital, when it was unclear what was wrong with her, she asked if we were thinking of putting her in a nursing home. That hurt but that's what uncertainty does to a person, makes them ask questions that hurt. It has all worked out ok so far, and is continuing to do so thanks to everybody helping out in their own ways. Like the little drummer boy with his humble gift, I make turkey drumsticks and apple pie and bring books and DVDs.

Brother Victor, OSF--Rest in Peace

2010-10-24T10:32:00.001-04:00

My high school Algebra teacher, Brother Victor Fischer, OSF, died this week. Victor was a combination of the comic rage of Lewis Black and the good-natured cynicism of Victor Borge.

After eight years of Catholic school nuns in Blessed Sacrament School, who knew you could laugh + learn in a classroom? Brother Victor had a line for every occasion. Some of the humor was bawdy, which was legal in an all-boys school in the '70s. For example, if a kid raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom, Victor would retort, "Didn't you go already this year?" Another lad would raise his hand for the same thing and Victor would throw a rubber band at him telling him he could hold it. Then there was the boy who reported that his two quarters were missing. He was known forever by Victor as "the kid who lost the fifty cents." Or an especially nervous student he pegged "the nervous kid." One very hot day, several students broke the rule on no beverages in the classroom. Brother got very angry, seized the offending cans, and ran one over his forehead in sweet relief from the late spring Brooklyn haze.

Brother Victor was a positive influence on my brother who, like Victor, was a ham radio operator. Victor's callsign was WA2LML (We Are Two Little Meat Loaves). He taught my other brother too. The year the school went coed, my sister enrolled and he call out to her in the hall, "You're a Black [ed. note--that's our last name], right?"

I got a 98 on the Algebra Regents exam, which we took in the Fall. I also did well in trigonometry in the Spring. When I went to college I majored in Math, no doubt due to the solid grounding in numbers and fun given to me by Brother Victor, OSF. Through several layoffs in the 2000s, the math degree has been something for me to fall back on and gets the foot in the door.

The following is courtesy of franciscanbrothers.org:

BROTHER VICTOR FISCHER, O.S.F.

James Fischer, son of George and Charlotte (Haiser) Fischer was born in Brooklyn on July 24, 1932.

After attending St. Leonard’s High School and St. Anthony’s Juniorate he entered the Franciscan Brothers on February 11, 1950.

He received the Franciscan habit and the Religious name “Victor” on August 2, 1950 and made his profession of vows two years later on July 26, 1952.

Brother Victor’s first assignment was to St. Leonard’s High School. He was Business Manager at St. Francis College from 1956-1959 before returning to St. Leonard’s until 1963.

Brother Victor taught at St. Francis Prep, first in Brooklyn then in Fresh Meadows, from 1964 until 1978. He was a member of the Mathematics Department and subsequently Chairman of the Business Department.

Beginning in 1979 Brother Victor served in a variety of ministries including three years in Pennsylvania and many years in the Archdiocese of New York at St. Jean Baptiste High School.

In spite of a severe hearing loss Brother Victor volunteered during his retirement years at several Brooklyn locations that included CHIPS (Christian Help in Park Slope) and St. Martin of Tours Parish.

On October 16, 2010, while out for a walk, Victor died as a result of injuries suffered in an accident.

He is survived by a sister, Catherine Mattison of Florida, a brother, William of Pennsylvania, and numerous nieces and nephews.

Who says you have to wait for Christmas to hear Standards on terrestrial radio?

2010-10-19T23:17:00.007-04:00

You just have to wait until Sundays:

WNYC 93.9 FM

Jonathan Schwartz, Sat/Sun (Noon-4 pm); the Sunday show is simulcast on SiriusXM. The dean of Standards broadcasters, Schwartz champions the American Songbook. My only criticism is that he plays a lot of the same people and excludes other performers that the other Standards channels feature. Some high rotation artists are from his circle of friends; he could widen his horizons a little bit. When I turn on cable’s Music Choice, Singers and Swing, I hear a lot of the artists that he rarely plays, such as Steve Tyrell. Schwartz may find him unworthy somehow but should give Tyrell et al. a better shot.

Danny Stiles, Saturday night 8-10 pm, plays a lot of pre-stereo era 78s. It might be the timeslot or my own listening habits but I’ve never made Stiles appointment radio. It’s a mix of well-know tunes and lesser-known (to me) records from the ’40s to the ’80s. Yet it’s good to know he’s there.

WBGO 88.3 FM Michael Bourne: Singers Unlimited. Sunday 10-2. Fantastic show and it’s overlapped with Schwartz’s programs from 12-2 for 20 years. Perfection would move it to 8-noon or Saturday morning.

Don’t listen much to these stations but good to know they are there playing Standards:

WHLI 1100 AM daytimer 7 days.

WBAI 99.5 FM—David Kenney. Everything Old is New Again. Sunday 9-midnight.

WNYM 970 AM—Dick Robinson, American Standards by the Sea. Sunday midnight.

WFUV 90.7 The Big Broadcast with Rich Conaty. Sunday 8-midnight. Standards from the ’20s and ’30s.

WKRB 90.3 FM (Brooklyn)—Professor Ron Forman. Sweet Sounds. Sunday 5-7 pm.

WPHT 1210 AM (Philadelphia) Sid Mark. Friday night and Sunday morning with Sinatra.

Too bad WVIP-HD2 no longer simulcasts WVOX Music of Your Life (they dropped the HD2 signal in October). Sorry Signore Marconi, terrestrial lost another listener when I switched to their Internet stream at night.

When WNEW turned off the lights, Mark Simone celebrated the long run and didn’t cry over the end of the era. We can look at today as a silver age for Standards on the radio. What is striking is the decades of longevity of most of these hosts playing music that no one wants to hear. Classic music keeps you young.

FREUD'S LAST SESSION; NYRMB

2010-09-21T22:26:00.006-04:00

Listening to Mike and Therese doing Depravity's Rainbow tonight on WFMU. Mike's an old buddy. He and his cohost fill in for Tom Scharpling and the Best Show. He's the regular producer, call screener, and background kibitzer on that show.

I love radio. Here are a few of my recent posts on the NYRMB (New York Radio Message Board).

New Media Pitfalls

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Posted by Bob T. on September 21, 2010 at 10:08:10:
We hear so much about the takeover of new media stripping radio of younger audiences.
You-Tube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are so new that they really aren't battle tested.
This morning, news sites are full of info on a Twitter bug that apparently can takeover your computer with just a mouseover.
Can anyone come up with a similar weakness for radio?

Posted by Brian Black on September 21, 2010 at 15:44:58:
In Reply to: New Media Pitfalls posted by Bob T. on September 21, 2010 at 10:08:10:
If you mean technically, I have a portable HD radio that charges thru a mini USB. Something could crawl in with a firmware update.
Metaphorically, the mouse hanging over radio is everything online. When I run a Compaq thru a Sony tabletop I almost forget I'm not listening to broadcast; and it's that much less time listening to real radio.
Radio will always have the "I just want to turn it on" fans but now HD makes you wait for a buffer/rebuffer. Trivial? CFL bulbs (another enemy of AM) have run into similar resistance. We gave them away *free* to shareholders in a co-op and some users said it takes too long to get fully bright (less than 10 seconds!).
In summary, radio killed vaudeville, vaudeville came back as YouTube. Internet killed radio, radio can come back as something you can't get any more.
A step backwards to live and local news and deejays would be a start. Blogs are filling the gap for local news. When we had a shooting in our area, I turned to the neighborhood blog for street-level coverage that day, which was far superior to the newspaper, TV, or other Internet spaces the next day.

Why is AM 970 The Apple not doing better?

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Posted by Brian Black on September 14, 2010 at 10:50:22:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Why is AM 970 The Apple not doing better? posted by Frank on September 14, 2010 at 08:35:58:
The signal? It's usually a terrible listen in Brooklyn.
I stumbled into Dick Robinson's American Standards by the Sea after midnight Saturday night, the only show on 970 other than Curtis that I might listen to. American Standards's website lists The Apple but The Apple's own website doesn't show American Standards on the schedule. So 970's promotion dept./budget might be a problem too.

American Standards by the Sea

More Talk from Stern About His Plans

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Posted by Brian Black on September 10, 2010 at 10:24:23:
In Reply to: Re: Re: More Talk from Stern About His Plans posted by SKlein on September 10, 2010 at 09:18:07:
Stern is starting to sound like film/radio/TV legend Bud Abbott, who died broke with tax problems, who agreed with a reporter's remark that even if all the fans sent him a few bucks he'd still be broke. (It morphed into a story of Abbott begging fans for money.)
I bought XM to listen ($9/month) to Standards when they left terrestrial radio. But 7 bucks a month just for Stern? Maybe when everyone had cash to burn. He's dreaming or bluffing. I miss his show biz interviews and amazing insight into the business but I don't miss the poor taste.

Standards HD/Internet Radio Update; Bob Elliott interview

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Posted by Brian Black on August 31, 2010 at 11:19:52:
To update a post from last month, it appears that WVIP-HD3 is off the air. The WVOX simulcast, including Music of Your Life after 10 pm, was moved to HD2.
Another bright spot for Standards is Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli. The August 14 podcast featured a rare interview with radio icon Bob Elliott. A must listen for Bob & Ray fans; Pizzarelli is a hardcore fan of the boys.
http://www.johnpizzarelli.com/RadioDeluxe.html

Standards Return to Weeknight FM radio: WVOX: Music of Your Life on WVIP-HD3

Posted by Brian Black on September 01, 2010 at 10:33:41:
In Reply to: Re: Standards HD/Internet Radio Update; Bob Elliott interview posted by Pete Tauriello on August 31, 2010 at 22:27:53:
To begin to make HD a "must have" you would have to improve reception, sound, and content.
Audio quality: Berle sold pictures with sound and color shows sold color TV, but an HD signal doesn't improve the regular FM sound greatly to my ears. I have a Sony XDR-S3HD and a cell-phone sized Insignia portable.
Content: On the cheap, only a few listener-supported stations produce original local HD-only shows.
Buzz: I study the 21-53 demo (my house) and no one is interested except me. I love it for the niches. I heard Conway Twitty on WLTW-HD2 this morning but I also like some of the new stuff on WFUV-HD3, and appreciate the artist/title readouts. I like WNYC-HD2's simulcast of WQXR-HD1 (whose 105.9 signal isn't as strong as WNYC's HD2). I listen to Imus and Batchelor on WABC-HD3 without the static (WABC-AM in HD is gone). WBGO gives me a static-free lock that I never had before HD. I enjoy True Oldies on WPLJ-HD2 and occasionally dial up TONY on WCBS-HD2. I like the Sony dial for some reason instead of push buttons. Nostalgia?
Even if the content were improved, no one except the hobbyist wants to adjust an antenna. People freaked on the iPhone antenna problem when most radio folks would have DIY'd a solution (buy a cover). I listen via roof antenna or outdoors so I'm immune to the indoor reception problems, but I can hear it when I enter a building with the portable.

Nice FM DX catch Yesterday from NY

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Posted by Brian Black on August 30, 2010 at 09:55:19:
In Reply to: Re: Nice FM DX catch Yesterday from NY posted by Mike Grayeb on August 29, 2010 at 22:35:59:
On the Brooklyn shore, CT stations were blowing out most of the pirates too on Saturday, all the way up to WEBE 107.9, Westport. Made me wonder if I might hear those stations regularly sans pirates.

Out of context!

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Posted by Brian Black on August 14, 2010 at 09:37:18:
In Reply to: Out of context! posted by Walt on August 14, 2010 at 09:11:16:
Yes, there are two Simones and when the opinion show gets too Ann Colterish I spin the dial and turn it back later for his Saturday night music show. Yet when he books a superior point maker like Frank Rich, he tamps down the right-wing rhetoric, or ignores Rich's cogent point.
Imus told his listeners this in 1971: change the dial if you don't like it and I have followed his advice, even for shows of which I'm a fan.

FREUD'S LAST SESSION

I was going to write about this show but it wasn't all that interesting, a fictional meeting between C. S. Lewis and Freud in 1939. The acting was fine but the writing left me flat. Freud bests Lewis in their meeting in Freud's office. The set was beautiful--old books, a cathedral radio, the couch, small objets d'art. I saw the lead actor arrive walking his bike through the front door of the Y that houses the theatre (The New Little Theatre on W. 64th) but this did not shatter the illusion. Lovely little house.

Happy 100th Birthday Thomas Black

2010-09-20T10:15:00.000-04:00

Dear Dad:

Happy 100th birthday. We spent a lot of time with Mom over the weekend doing little things to help her in her new apartment. One of the last times I saw you twenty-five years ago, you said to take care of her and I hope we're all doing a good job at that.

Any time we see anyone who emigrates to America, and talks her down because she's not perfect yet, I think of the patriotic Irishman who came here when he was 12, loved his new country, and worked two jobs on two phlebitic legs and a bum ticker to support a family of six. I never heard you complain much, except maybe to "stop that roughhousing" when the boys and I were fighting on the second floor. Sorry if we ever woke you up from a well-earned sleep.

your son,
Brian

THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH--The Disappointment of the Summer on Starz on Netflix streaming

2010-08-12T11:47:00.003-04:00

The movie of a favored novel is almost always disappointing but this one disappoints in so many ways. After you've seen Monty Python's version of the era, the buckets of blood approach is hard to take without snickering.

Let's look at the ingenue, Aliena. In the novel she first appears as a spoiled brat, daughter of a lord, who survives a brutal assault and impoverishment by the villain of the piece. She comes out of it hell-bent to survive and to avenge her executed father, but also to restore her family's place in the order of things. Capitalism saves her as she becomes a successful wool merchant. She flirts with the brooding younger-than-her Jack, the cathedral builder's stepson.

Jack wins her over slowly and gently with his modest demeanor, artistic temperament, storytelling, and a well-timed love ballad. Jack first kisses Aliena in the woods during a chaste encounter. Even though she is starting to fall for him, she latter rebuffs him in her spinning room, the villainous rape still in her mind. All this is well-plotted and understandable by the reader.

The miniseries: Aliena may make one snarky comment but you don't find yourself not liking her. The assault isn't anywhere as awful as in the book even with TV sensibilities factored in. The courtship of Aliena and Jack is missing. The worst part is the second kiss in the spinning room. In episode four we see Jack kiss Aliena and there is no rebuff. She looks like she's a little flushed, maybe a case of the vapors, but no rebuff. It is a critical moment in their rocky relationship because Jack can't understand why she is acting this way. He has no knowledge of the rape.

Instead of character development we have frequent battle scenes, of which the book has several. The technical methodology of cathedral building is interesting in the book and must have also been thought to be unfilmable, because I haven't seen it yet in the still-running series. There's a nice bit of line art animation (made me think of the Hubleys) of the cathedral in the opening credits and this could have been a nice touch as an exposition of the building plans as the architect describes it to the prior. As it stands, the overarching character of the piece, the great cathedral, is an afterthought to the blood and gore.

So how to film the backstory of well-drawn characters from a novel? There must be a way.

The Girl with Something Extra

2010-08-02T15:58:00.002-04:00

"THE GIRL WITH..." trilogy by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson is a publishing phenomenon. The other day I was on the Q train with my daughter. I was reading the third installment of the trilogy on a Sony Touch, she was sitting on my right reading the second book and to my left a lady was reading the first, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO. I also just watched the Swedish movie of TATOO on Netflix streaming on my son's Wii.

Is any of it any good? The first book has an interesting plot: an old rich man hires a disgraced journalist, Mikael Bolmkvist, to uncover the mystery of his missing and assumed-dead niece. The most compelling character by a factor of 1000 is the Aspergerish hacker, Lisbeth Salander, who is hired to do a background check on the journalist and ends up investigating the missing niece. The hacker and journalist meet and forge a relationship of unconditional trust and loyalty, like Spenser and Hawk without the sexual tension (unless I've been misreading Robert B. Parker). The second novel is about international sex trafficking and the third novel's plot follows directly after the second opening with Lisbeth's recovery from trauma.

If you're going to read this, it's for Lisbeth's character. Over the course of the trilogy, she slowly grows out of her turtle shell, which accreted from a lifetime of abuse at the hands of her family and government spies and factotums, to become an involved human being. Mikael, on the other hand, is a young middle-aged schlub who jogs a little yet has the kinetic sexual energy of Elvis in 1959. He walks into a room and women are instantly smitten. His character never develops. Most of the other characters have no depth and sound alike in speech and attitude.

Is it worse writing than The DaVinci Code (which I read on the Rocket eBook in the early 2000s)? No, but this is a translation and it would be interesting to see what someone fluent in Swedish and English can make of the writing. The love scenes and post-coital talk are boring and clinical with failed attempts at irony. The amount of space devoted to making and drinking coffee, eating a pastry or sandwich, getting dressed, the color of outfits, and falling asleep are considerable.

The TATOO movie: I saved 12 bucks by watching the Netflix stream rather that going to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Like THE LORD OF THE RINGS, in which I lamented the lack of depiction of fellowship that is a charm of the series, this adaption stints on characterization. It's in the first book, subtle and a little charming between Mikael and Lisbeth, and Mikael and the rich man, less so in any of the other relationships depicted. There is a lot of technical detail in Mikael's detective work, such as the perusal of photographic archives, and this is depicted too fast and furiously in the movie, losing the revelelatory impact that his dogged work and analysis has in the novel.

The third novel (all three are on my ebook) is becoming incredibly difficult to finish, a real slog. Lisbeth, the eponymous heroine, is laid up and all of her action is from a convalescent bed. Not a great plotting decision. Supposedly there is a fourth novel, two-thirds complete at the time of the author's death. If it ever appears, one would hope for less keyboarding and more whupass from the heroine.

Jury Duty: Civil, Petit, Grand, and Beyond II; Ta Ka Di Ma at the AMNH

2010-07-26T11:55:00.000-04:00

I was going to write about grand jury duty but just remembered that the proceedings are secret. I was able to write about the events of 30 years ago in the previous post because it was a public trial. Briefly, I will say that the experience was marked by a few luminous pearls connected by a string of intense tedium, making a token clerk's job look like intergalactic exploring. We listened, we deliberated, we voted.

Civil jury duty is one of the worst injuries ever suffered by the juror. I can speak from experience and from the many stories collected from fellow victims. A typical experience is:

Day 1: Wait most of the day in the Central Juror Room. Late in the afternoon, report to the court room for juror interviews.
Day 2: Get interviewed, be assigned to a jury.
Day 3: This may not be a consecutive day after Day 2 because the courts take more days off than Reagan. I once served in February and was stunned on Feb. 11 when the bailiff said he'd see us on the 13th. I don't think I'd had February 12* off since I was in grade school. When you report to Day 3, you are told that the case has been settled out of court, which is surprising the first time you hear it, but not after the tenth time. What's going on?

I sue you when I tripped on your stairs. You defend yourself and possibly file a countersuit. The court date approaches and a performance of chicken ballet begins. I start thinking I might not get as much as I asked for and you worry about losing your shirt. Your insurance company makes an offer. I don't like it and say let's go to trial. You say, see you in court! The jury is empaneled, we both blink, and a compromise is reached before the trial begins. Jurors time be damned and one considers that arbitration would be a better way to adjudicate most disputes.

THE SILK ROAD PROJECT at the AMNH

I've been spending most Sundays the last two months wishing it were football season. I've been enjoying playing Scrabble with my 91-year-old mother and cooking big Sunday dinners, but yesterday I went to the Museum of Natural History to see THE SILK ROAD PROJECT. An amazing serendipity was a performance at the exit of the exhibit by "percussion legend Glen Velez and rhythm-voice virtuoso Lori Cotler." He performed on frame drum and sang and she also did vocal improvisations. The audience was invited in one part to sing along, which most did with gusto. "Ta Ka Di Mi" was the title of the performance and the audience participation song.

Ms. Cotler was accompanied by Mr. Velez in a performance of the American Popular Standard "Imagination" by Van Heusen (music) and Burke (lyrics), possibly the first time the tune was given a Middle Eastern, Central Asian, Indian flavored musical twist.

The day was concluded with chili at the Old Town. My 2010 World Cup shirt elicited a comment from the bartender (who looks like Neil Flynn, Janitor from SCRUBS) and we had a discussion on US soccer. Business was way up more than usual this year for the World Cup and if we advanced one more round it would have been even better.
__________
* Lincoln's Birthday (actual)

Jury Duty: Civil, Petit, Grand, and Beyond

2010-07-20T15:12:00.001-04:00

I have served every kind of jury except Federal. It all began in 1977 when I was 20. Back then, most able-bodied men found a way to get out of jury duty, unlike 2010 where everyone from Giuliani to Obama to Mr. T is asked to report and serve.

Unless there is an existential threat and the enemy is marching up Flatbush Avenue (thanks to Chris Rock for establishing the standard of "when I would join the Army"), it is unlikely that 53-year-old men, even those of us who can knock off a 9-minute mile on a good day, will ever be asked by our government to help out in the future. So, when called to jury duty we serve gladly, if only in the knowledge that we're helping out someone else who can't spare the time.

In the summer of 1977, I served on a murder case with mostly young people like me, retirees, and a very few middle-aged people who were either civic minded or couldn't get out of it. The murder allegedly occurred within 10 blocks of my home. Normally one would think that the proximity of the crime to a juror was a disqualifier but the murder rate was very high in the late '70s, jurors in summer were desperately needed, and DQing us never came up. A second juror, a Spanish-speaking gentleman (more on that later), also came from our neighborhood.

The case was a drug deal gone bad in a kitchen with a half-dozen witnesses, all of whom but one (more on that later also) gave eyewitness testimony. One of the witnesses was a little boy, 10 years old. Another witness testified in Spanish. The judge, the colorful and late Justice Sybil Hart Cooper, a trailblazer for her gender in 1977, cautioned the Spanish-speaking juror to disregard the testimony that he heard in Spanish and only to deliberate on the testimony provided by the translator, a legal fiction at best.

All the witnesses had their say and and we were surprised that the ADA or the defense lawyer did not call the final witness to testify. As I paraphrase, the ADA said in his summation, "You're probably wondering why all the eyewitnesses to the crime except Mr. Jones [not his real name--1OTT, Summer Intern] were called to the stand. Well, you see, ahem, harrumph, brachk-brachk, this gentlemen is a transvestite, and I was concerned that he would show up in Your Honor's courtroom in full regalia and make a mockery of the proceedings." You have to recall that this was 1977. Phil Dohahue had only recently had gay folk on his talk show and the term LGBT had not yet been coined. We all nodded in agreement, imagining puppeteer Waylon Flowers and Madame sashaying across the courtroom with flair. Madame, by the way, has come out of retirement with a new partner.

I was the 13th juror and not called to deliberate. Two hours went by and I as the alternate waited in the courtroom in case a juror fell ill. No-nonsense Judge Cooper cracked out of earshot of the jury room, "I don't know what's taking them so long!" She eventually dismissed me and I'm pretty sure the accused was found guilty.

Next post: the grand jury.

I Love My Gadgets--Sony ebook and Insignia portable HD radio

2010-06-19T13:43:00.004-04:00

SONY EBOOK

I'm still enjoying the Sony Reader Touch. I've probably read more books in the last eight months than in any eight-month period since before there was a World Wide Web. Word on the street is that Dad may be getting a cool accessory for Fathers' Day tomorrow.

The titles I've read include Falling Man (DeLillo), The Pillars of the Earth, World Without End (Follett)--Pillars is soon to be a Starz mini-series (which I can watch on the Netflix Starz channel), His Last Bow [Sherlock Holmes] (Doyle)--from the Google library, Flags of Our Fathers (Bradley), The Guns of August (Tuchman)--gave up a little past the middle, the story was too hard to follow without large maps (sorry, tiny ebook screen).

And then there was The Phony Marine (Lehrer), Double Play (Parker), The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe (Smith), 13 Things That Don't Make Sense (Brooks), Gold Coast (Leonard), The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo (Larsson)--the publishing phenomenon, I have the other two books in the trilogy already loaded in the ebook, Home (Julie Andrews' memoir)--I got this from the library and bought the paperback for Mom.

His Last Bow [Sherlock Holmes] (Doyle)--from the Google library: there were many OCR errors but still enjoyable to read, especially the eponymous title tale, where the boys are "surprisingly" revealed in the end to be two on the trail of German WWI saboteurs in England. It is a rare Holmes yarn written in the third person, because Watson's (spoiler alert) identity is revealed during the denouement.

INSIGNIA PORTABLE HD RADIO

An infinitesimal portion of the radio audience listens on public transportation. Thanks to my new Insignia HD Radio (FM only, no AM), I can listen to Imus in the Morning on WPLJ-HD3. The amount of electrical noise in a train has made AM radio reception problematic. Also, I'm enjoying Jeff Spurgeon and the morning crew on WQXR-FM, via WNYC-HD2. The regular QXR FM signal is on 105.9 and much harder to pull in than the powerful blast from the WNYC stick. I sent an amplified TV antenna to a friend's mother on the island, who could no longer pick up QXR when they switched from 96.3. It's sad to think how many people in the fringe areas were disenfranchised when this switch occurred.

HD radio isn't catching on, because it doesn't offer the correspondingly big leap in sound quality that HDTV provides in picture quality over standard TV. I was watching yesterday's 2-2 draw by the US against Slovenia, on the edge of my seat, and the picture quality was outstanding, if not the vuvuzela din.

The Insignia charges through the USB port of a computer; it is not an Internet device. It may be time to retire some of my old rechargeable batteries that used to feed the AM/FM radio. I bought a bunch for $90 years ago when the kids had constant need for them for video games devices. I've probably re-used them hundreds of times and saved boku bux.

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL

2010-06-07T23:13:00.001-04:00

I'm thoroughly enjoying the iconic TV series HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL on Netflix streaming. Tonight's episode from the first season tackled the subject of religious phonies imposing their mindless views on medicine on cowed cowardly cowpokes. The great Richard Boone as Paladin, with guest star June Lockhart as one of the first lady doctors, try to save a baby from a lynch mob. The God-besotted wagon master has diagnosed typhoid and has left the mother and the baby in the desert to die. Paladin wants to bring them in town to the doctor's office, to the displeasure of the townfolk.

Especially striking is Paladin's attitude toward the idea of a lady doctor. His attitude, other than a comment that she looks like she should be perched on a divan instead of serving these miserable townfolk, is 100% acceptance. Fast forward to 2010 and crap like GRAY'S ANATOMY, where underwear models of both genders masquerade as brain surgeons while having office sex, and you see that television has been in decline since 1957, the broadcast year of this episode.

The lyrics of the show's theme song:

Have Gun Will Travel reads the card of a man.
A knight without armor in a savage land.
His fast gun for hire heeds the calling wind.
A soldier of fortune is the man called Paladin.

Paladin, Paladin
Where do you roam?
Paladin, Paladin,
Far, far from home.

Mjöllnir's Shame

2010-06-03T11:29:00.000-04:00

Very disappointing costume shots from the new Thor movie.

http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=28049

I thought Barry Gibb was too old to play Thor.

IANA artist, but to show strength, you hold a hammer by the far end, sinews bursting under the weight. And the block is way out of proportion to the shaft. This looks more like a Will Ferrell parody. Where's the glory? Whoever designed the hammer and shot the pix has never held anything at arm's length heavier than a stylus.

Avenge Me, Boy

2010-06-01T09:58:00.001-04:00

RED DAWN (1984) is one of my favorite movies (not to mention there is a similar novel by CM Kornbluth, NOT THIS AUGUST). The former is about a Soviet takeover and the latter about a joint Sino/Russo subjugation of the US. The final scenes of Kornbluth's novel still give me goosebumps just thinking about it.

Can a RED DAWN remake play today? I doubt it. As long as people are fed, have HD3DTV, and don't have to go to or send their sons to war, 21st c. consumers will reject this plot. Those who remember the 20th c., whom we used to call "citizens," might find this plot appealing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/red-dawn-remake-china

Women's History Month: Ella, Kathryn Bigelow, Mom

2010-03-09T22:37:00.008-05:00

Coming up: Ella in Hollywood: side 2. And congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow on winning the Oscar for THE HURT LOCKER. Maybe now we'll get more pix with real people instead of CGI? Nah.

Side 2

Nice Work If You Can Get It Straight delivery...comfortable as an old hat...

I Can't Get Started After the 1:00 mark, Ella gives it to someone talking in the audience saying, "Yak, yak, yak"...I'll bet whomever that was was glad it wasn't Sinatra or Tony Bennett...Bennett's autobio says he and a buddy worked over Don Rickles for an insult as Bennett walked into a club during Rickles' act (this was early in Rickles' career and Bennett claimed he didn't know this was Don's stock in trade)...

Give Me the Simple Life Rollicking in under 2:00...followed by a swinging...

Caravan Wide vocal range show, the high notes teasingly sound like she's thinking of scatting...but no...

The track One for My Baby opens with Ella referring to the last song she sang, remarking “They let me sing it this time.” She must have been hypersensitive to crowd noise or this was an above average boisterous audience. After a slow gallop dum-de dum-de countryish piano intro, a howl of recognition from one audience member is heard when she begins.

Lorelei is downright naughty, “that gal on the river…who had the goods and could deliver.” The audience hoots at the bridge when Ella declares, “this is where the striptease comes in!”

A-Tisket A-Tasket is Ella’s signature tune. The peppy intro of her contemporary Verve recording is familiar to us but apparently not yet to this audience and the entire audience is euphoric when they hear the first lyric. Later on, I dug when the band put down their instruments and sang in a call and response “so do we so do we so do we so do we so do we.” I’m thinking the style of Pennsylvania 6-5000 or Whatcha Know Joe. It doesn’t happen often but when it does it’s unexpected, like a hockey game breaking out at a boxing match. But no, once again, no one in the band can find that little yellow basket, lost in Ella’s first big hit (1938) and still lost in 1942 on a bus in “Ride ‘Em Cowboy” with Abbott and Costello. If you see it, let me know.

Coming soon: Witchcraft, Gone with the Wind

Happiness is Just a Thing Called Joe, It's Delovely, The Lady is a Tramp, That Old Black Magic

Lullaby of Birdland, Ella Introduces the Band, Imagination, Blue Moon, Joe Williams' Blues

Ella Fitzgerald: Twelve Nights in Hollywood

2010-02-27T23:36:00.016-05:00

Memories of Ella:

Ella and Mel Tormé at the Grammys. The story goes that Ella's manager would not let her record with Mel, not wanting people to compare the two artists. How do you compare the incomparable?

One day I heard William B. Williams on WNEW-AM interviewing Ella Fitzgerald. "How are you Ella?" "I'm much better now that I'm talking to you Bill." Ella was recovering from surgery to remove her leg due to diabetes. Ella revealed in the interview that watching the soaps was one of her leisure time activities.

I heard an interview that musician André Previn conducted with Ella and the topic turned to musicianship. Ella said "Of course I'm not a musician..." and was stopped by Previn, who said, "then none of us are musicians."

ELLA FITZGERALD: TWELVE NIGHTS IN HOLLYWOOD

I'm listening to the next-to-last track of the 4-CD set and what a blast. Ella is riffing on fellow singers Sophie Tucker, Della Reese, Pearl Bailey. Just a lot of fun doing the old saw horse "Bill Bailey." And then she encores on the final track with...a commentary/reprise on the same Bill Bailey with impressions of Louis Armstrong, Dinah Washington and...herself! Let's go back to the beginning and listen again.

The Crescendo emcee announces that Mort Sahl will be appearing soon; after Mort you'll see Errol Garner and that "sparkling new comedy personality" Dick Gregory. Ella comes out to do a breathless "Lover Come Back to Me" in 1:51 and a smooth "Too Close For Comfort." I don't know exactly if this was the same order as in her actual twelve nights. She slows it down with "Little White Lies" but picks up the mood again with "The Sunny Side of the Street" with topical references to being "rich like Frank Sinatra." [The real lyric is "rich like Rockefeller" and if I were singing it today I would say "rich like that Gates fellow."] It's amazing how many of these tracks clock in under two minutes, most under four. This was an era when a movie could tell a good story in under two hours.

This great collection is not a scatter's delight, if that's what you're looking for with Ella; but wait until "Perdido." Ella says they have a request for it but she sings that she doesn't know the lyrics. No biggie. She'll write them as she scats, joke through famous song titles, and call on Ella's fellas (the band) to wail and blow some "Perdido." She's all that, a bag of chips, and an ice cold Coke with an extended scat in the middle that you wish would never end. Even a little "Laura" shows up near the finish to make up for the lack of real lyrics. At this point you're glad she supposedly doesn't have or know the lyrics. This is pre-Google, the Mad Men era (May 1961) so it might have the added advantage of being true, as Kissinger said to Nixon.

Is it possible I'm only on the 10th of the 76 songs? Ella, if I'm ever feeling blue, this album will be my bad mood buster. It is a delight, a great introduction to the American Songbook for the uninitiated and a welcome addition to the music collections for lovers of beautiful music, created by a special lady.

Tavis Smiley on PBS

2010-02-15T21:54:00.010-05:00

If I had a TV talk show I'd have on smart people and some laughs. Tavis Smiley, who follows Charlie Rose on PBS in New York, accomplishes this most nights from a studio in Los Angeles. It's not surprising he has a radio background because when I watch him, I'm taken back to an era when literate men ruled the AM radio waves, such as Barry Gray, Barry Farber, and Long John Nebel. Johnny Carson used to have authors on regularly and Travis carries on this tradition.

I caught up with a typical episode, from Cablevision On Demand. Tavis had on Joel Kotkin of Chapman University, author of THE NEXT HUNDRED MILLION. The book is an optimistic look at the population growth projected in the U.S. in the next forty years. Rather than the usual gloom and doom over our depleted resources and teeming cities, Kotkin noted the benefits of energy savings for a population that can increasingly work at home (I did it twice last week thanks to the Internets). He also said that working at home is great for parents and involvement with their children.

Improvements in farming have resulted in more open land; cities such as Detroit are depopulating. Kotkin pointed out that this creates more room for the extra population.

The social climate will also continue to improve. As an example, he cited a survey that showed that the attitudes toward interracial dating have changed from intolerance in all previous surveys to 90% tolerance in young people today.

Tavis's next guest was directory Garry Marshall, director of the new release VALENTINE'S DA Y. He plugged the movie and also talked about his ubiqutous on cable classic, PRETTY WOMAN. This prosty-makes-good movie was the feelgood rom com of 1990.*

He told a story about going to see Martin Short's Broadway show. Marshall called the show and asked if he could get tickets for a Wednesday performance. "Wednesday is great," the voice on the phone told him. There was a bit in the show each night where Marty would notice a celebrity in the audience, then invite on stage for shtick. Marshall was asked if he would take part in the bit. "You must have a bigger celebrity than me," he said to the booker. The booker replied "Not on a Wednesday."

If you haven't seen Travis Smiley on PBS, give him a shot. If I see one more lame late-night bit where the host asks the director to roll a taped bit, I'll Elvis the screen. Turn off Jay, Dave, Conan, Jimmy, Jimmy, and the Seinfeld repeat and learn and laugh with this underrated throwback to good talk late at night. He asks smart questions, fawns sometimes, but with L.A.'s A-list guests it's forgivable, and lets the guest talk, never one-upping, or ruining the rhythm of a good storyteller.

__________
*Hector Elizondo was a standout as the concierge. Hector got off one of the all-time lines at an old Emmy awards show. He came out to the podium with Sam Waterston, and before reading out the nominees looked up at Sam and said, "I always wanted to work with Lincoln."

DOUBLE PLAY by Robert B. Parker

2010-02-13T22:02:00.012-05:00

I've been reading Robert B. Parker novles for a long time, going back to my Ur-blog, the Blackboard, in the late '90s to early '00s. I finally got around to reading DOUBLE PLAY from 2004, Parker's imagining of the job of Jackie Robinson's bodyguard in 1947, the year Jackie became the first modern-era African American MLBer for the Brooklyn Dodgers. There's a little bait-and-switch here if you think you're going to get much Jackie. Parker creates a character, Burke, and the third-person narrator gives us his backstory of a WWII Marine, recovering from martial and marital injuries, looking to make a living after the war. He is a trained rifleman. A sojourn as a boxer leads to another tough guy profession--bodyguard, and in the best noir tradition, to a rich man's nymphomaniacal daughter.

Word about Burke reaches Branch Rickey about two-fifths of the way into the novel and that's what I meant about the bait-and-switch. Once Jackie appears, he is not fully realized, but we do get enough to see that he was the one man who could have endured the viciousness. It's been reported many times but bears repeating: Rickey asked Robbie, for the first year in the bigs, not to fight back, to take every slur, insult, and object thrown at him. In this novel it includes bullets, so Rickey hires help.

Burke's emotional scars from a bad marriage heal from being around Jackie and family and a cause to fight for, and Jackie gets in Burke an unimpeachable ally, at a time when even some of his own teammates hate his Dodger blue guts. One wonders about his second year on the Dodgers and if the threats subsided in any way. Did the haters all call each other and move on to other interests, like keeping innocent black children from integrating school? How did they communicate with each other before FOX News and WABC talk radio? I digress.

The novel continues Parker's love of short chapters. His chapters and sentences got shorter and shorter as his career progressed. There are two quirky forms between the regular chapters, a series of interludes about his bad marriage titled "Pentimento," and several chapters each titled "Bobby," which read autobiographically about an older man's look back at his younger self, musing on race, love, and baseball.

The writing is too Spenserish. Phrases from Spenser novels populate this one, like Bobby's "Hubba hubba," or his Burke's wartime girl friend reflecting on the way he confronts the danger of battle, "But you do it."

The eBook experience: there are nine box scores included and they are hard to read on the eBook. The images are surrounded by a lot of white space and it makes enlarging and scrolling hard to do, but this may also be a fault of an insensitive scroll bar. Also, Box Score 4 is titled but the image is missing. I do book production for one of the world's oldest publishers and I'd hate to be the production editor who missed this. (I've done worse.)

You expect more out of the people you admire and I expected more from DOUBLE PLAY.

Postscript: The Daily News used to run an ad in the subway, a picture of Jackie Robinson riding the subway and reading the Daily News. It's impossible to imagine today. John Rocker of the Braves is the last recorded MLB subway passenger. My mother saw the Gas House gang take the train to the Polo Grounds to play the NY Giants, carrying their equipment. She went to Ladies Day with her mother and upgraded her ticket for a box seat, sitting not far from the Vanderbilts. There was a time when the richest people sat amongst us and professional athletes rode the subway. Today we have luxury boxes for the wealthy and big leaguers don't even have roommates any more.

Black History Month 2010

2010-02-07T14:25:00.010-05:00

Welcome to the third annual Black History Month celebration. Let's open with last night's funky stylings of DJA-Rara, Bk's own Haitian rara band. Where can I buy a big horn like that?

Here are some other shots from the African Art exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum's First Saturday in February 2010. I had hoped the bitter wind and cold would keep the crowd down but if anything even the coat check was marked "Full."

This month we're going to look at a novel by the late Robert B. Parker (it stinks to write that), DOUBLE PLAY, an imaginary scenario about Jackie Robinson's bodyguard in 1947. Then, there's a new album by Ella Fitzgerald, a live recording called TWELVE NIGHTS IN HOLLYWOOD that's causing a sensation. The worst thing I ever read about Ella was that she was too technically perfect.

And more... Stay logged in.

Sunday NY Times for 75 Cents; Robert B. Parker; Ricky Gervais joke of the day

2010-01-25T09:37:00.001-05:00

You can't beat the Sunday NY Times for $0.75 on the Sony Ebook. Everything is there, almost (the Book Review w/o the Best Seller list), and I estimate it's the equal of a 300-350 page book. It's great for a lazy Sunday and train reading but unfortunate that the daily edition, also 75 cents, isn't available the night before. I don't have time to download it in the morning before I go to work and it's too late to read at night.

Robert B. Parker died last week. I'm a big fan and laughed when an early report noted that after he was found slumped over at his writing desk, "no foul play was suspected." Seemed like a tip of the hat to the writer of tough-guy detective yarns. R.I.P.

Ricky Gervais got off an oldie but goodie at the Golden Globes. Sipping from a beer which he nursed during the telecast, he said, "You know, I like a beer as much as the next man... ...unless that man is Mel Gibson. Come on out Mel!" After he waved him on, DUI Gibson did a few tasteless seconds of Foster Brooks.

I'm with Coco

2010-01-13T15:48:00.007-05:00

Leno's ban (he blamed his producer) of guests who appeared with Dennis Miller, Arsenio, Dave et al. is coming home to roost. This may be the greatest media fall since Winchell or Godfrey.

"Coco" was given to Conan by funnyman and Oscar winner Tom Hanks. As soon as Hanks said it and led the audience in a rhythmic "Coco" clap, you could see Conan think, "oh, no, this is going to stick."

Letterman must hate Leno. I had thought it was an act but no, this is no Fred Allen/Jack Benny feud.

image courtesy Mike Mitchell
http://sirmikeofmitchell.com/

Merry Christmas from Mel Tormé 2; bailout meets zeitgeist; my new TV

2009-12-21T11:51:00.010-05:00

Overwhelming demand from last year made me go back to the vault for this gem. You will not find it on Facebook, YouTube, MeTube, or anywhere else. Until some genius at PBS puts together the Best of Mel on PBS, this is your go to site for rare and impossible to find Mel. I still can't figure why they run great stuff like this as an inducement to pledge. It disappears as soon as pledge week is over.

BAILOUT MANIA
More common themes in the culture: in SUNSHINE CLEANING, a woman gets in a big money jam and gets bailed out, kind of like the last post where I referenced Broadway's SUPERIOR DONUTS. The bailout has entered the zeigeist. In real life, George Bailey jumps off the bridge. There may really be angels but the fantasy is people throwing piles of dough at you when you're in the hole.

NEW SONY
My old Toshiba died after 16 years. The last image: Gene Kelly, SITR. A 20 amp house blew when it died. I had thought the microwave was on the fritz (making a lot of funny noises lately) but when I put in the new fuse, it blew that too.

The new Sony Bravia rocks in over the air HD. First show we saw was a CHARLIE BROWN CHRASTMAS (not in HD). Football is awesome and I can't wait to see how bad the Mets are in 16:9. ~~For now I'm putting off gettng Cablevision's "free" HD. They charge you a premium fee for the HD box, not the service, and somehow the FTC lets them get away with this fradulent claim of free HD.~~

[Correction: I got my bill and can confirm that the HD box from Cablevison carries no extra charge.]

Tales of Redemption; Sony ebook

2009-12-06T20:08:00.005-05:00

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.

Electric Cooking with the Silver Anniversary Wok; 1-Cup Coffee Maker; The Most Annoying Character in Literature

2009-09-12T23:37:00.009-04:00

I like electric cooking devices. The coffee maker and the wok will be celebrating their 25^th 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 Madison & 30^th) and decided to experiment with it. This is the first time I ever bought squash to cook, to my best recollection. I also picked up some mushrooms.

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 Philadelphia. I’ve looked in several likely NY stores and nobody had it—BB&B, Target, JC Penney, etc. I’ve been making ½ pots of coffee on the weekend but that’s probably too much coffee to drink in a day, at least for me.

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.

On a Most Diffucult Decision; Amy Dorritt or Owen Meany?; THE PRISONER; More JULIE AND JULIA

2009-08-30T20:31:00.014-04:00

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?

Something Terribly Wrong

2009-08-23T20:32:00.009-04:00

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

Happy Birthday Mom

2009-03-25T20:41:00.001-04:00

Number 90.

STREET FIGHT (2005)

2009-02-28T20:20:00.005-05:00

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.

Amos 'n Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy

2009-02-22T20:10:00.004-05:00

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.

SLOW FADE TO BLACK by Thomas Cripps

2009-02-15T15:48:00.007-05:00

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.

2009-02-08T20:58:00.004-05:00

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.

Pettigrew: As unlikely as it seemed, this prescient comic book from the '60 forecast the election of the first African-American POTUS. Just as unlikely one year ago was the candidacy of Barack Obama.

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.

Hang on, it all starts next week here at Black History Month 2.

XM Radio--Addition by Subtraction

2009-01-18T11:11:00.001-05:00

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.

TV Worth Watching by David Bianculli

2009-01-18T11:00:00.000-05:00

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

Righteous Indignation

2009-01-15T21:06:00.003-05:00

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.

Patrick McGoohan, 1928-2009

2009-01-15T21:00:00.002-05:00

Joke; KUNG FU PANDA; DOUBT; SHUT UP AND SING; What's in the Daily News? Not much

2009-01-11T20:44:00.010-05:00

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.

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.

Year in Review/A Look Ahead

2008-12-31T20:14:00.002-05:00

Coming up next month: KUNG FU PANDA and a tribute to Mom, counting them down to her 90th in March.

Here's a look back at 2008.

▼ 2008 (28)
- ▼ December 2008 (3)
- ▼ November 2008 (2)
  - PIECES OF MY HEART, by Robert J. Wagner with Scott...
  - Let Freedom Ring
- ▼ October 2008 (1)
  - Baseball; Margie and the Super Bug
- ▼ September 2008 (1)
  - Happy 98th Birthday Dad
- ▼ August 2008 (1)
  - Looks at 5 Books
- ▼ July 2008 (1)
  - Memo to Self: Don't Quit Your Job
- ▼ June 2008 (1)
  - What's Nu?
- ▼ May 2008 (2)
  - GREEDY LITTLE PIGGY: THE STIMULUS REBATE; BATTLEST...
  - Reader Mail
- ▼ April 2008 (4)
- ▼ March 2008 (3)
- ▼ February 2008 (5)
- ▼ January 2008 (4)

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

2008-12-30T23:28:00.005-05:00

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 Chicago School economists, fell under Rand’s influence and it is the late Nobel laureate who is the villain of THE SHOCK DOCTRINE.

Roll call of nations: Chile, Argentina, U.K., Bolivia, Poland, China, S. Africa, Russia, S. Korea, Indonesia, Israel. Lists of cataclysms: political upheavals, 9/11, the Iraq war, Katrina, tsunami. Klein’s thesis states that societal shock is exploited by Chicago School economists and their students, who are invited by the governments to implement an economic program of low taxes for the rich, privatization of government functions, mass layoffs, sale of natural resources to foreigners, and loans from the IMF and World Bank that make even revolutionary governments pay off the debts of their former oppressors.

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 Argentina junta in its final days. Big corporations supported the junta and were rewarded for their loyalty:

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 Iraq. We are doing nation creating.” This is the clean slate that (Milton) Friedmanites crave. Poor Friedman (Thomas). I used to see him on Charlie Rose, in the early years of the war claiming that the government didn’t take his advice in the months following the toppling of Saddam Hussein; now he claims that no one could have foreseen the disastrous results in post-victory nation-building in Iraq.

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 England, for to blame the king would be to blame themselves for following him loyally and allowing him to rule. So they punished the king’s advisors for giving him bad advice. This is how my wife sees the eight years of Bush 43 (after we saw W.).

Merry Christmas from Mel Tormé

2008-12-26T20:54:00.008-05:00

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.

44 and 43

2008-12-06T18:04:00.004-05:00

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 Kansas.

After high school he lived in Gotham, where he worked as a writer and then moved to America's second largest metropolis with the goal of "making himself useful." His father figure was hard-nosed Jerry Wright (rhymes with Perry White).

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 Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris.

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.

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 Hollywood that he was forced, he said, to do regular TV (on a show I liked, The Education of Max Bickford, which introduced Katee Sackhoff to a network audience). Evil Dick Cheney is played with a twinkle in his eye as his policies come to fruition, his Halliburton portfolio bulges, and hundreds of thousands die.

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.

PIECES OF MY HEART, by Robert J. Wagner with Scott Eyman

2008-11-23T16:27:00.006-05:00

A parade of senior thesps is rolling through Manhattan bookstores this season promoting their autobiographies, including Christopher Plummer, Roger Moore, George Hamilton, Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine, Don Rickles, William Shatner, Robert Vaughn, and the subject I’ll get to in a minute, Robert J. Wagner with Pieces of My Heart, with Scott Eyman. A quick digression on Robert Vaughn: he appeared in the office of my old publisher to sell his manuscript, originally titled FLYING SOLO (he played Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). I looked over the wall and saw the top of his head as he headed into the conference room, his deep voice and charm filling the small hallway. They offered him an extremely small advance for a man of his substance and he took his business to another house, with a different title for the book: A Fortunate Life.

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 United States

Let Freedom Ring

2008-11-04T23:14:00.002-05:00

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.

Baseball; Margie and the Super Bug

2008-10-31T21:02:00.004-04:00

BASEBALL

We 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.

Happy 98th Birthday Dad

2008-09-20T21:07:00.014-04:00

Happy birthday Dad.

Love,
Brian

Looks at 5 Books

2008-08-24T15:01:00.010-04:00

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 St. Paul, MN featured some very attractively designed covers, real eyecatchers. I picked up another $10 bargain, Pocketful of Names by Joe Coomer, a novel that is 'a deeply human tale about the unpredictability of nature, art, family and the flotsam and jetsam that comprise our lives.' The main character is a young woman, so when Clare Danes is finished playing Shaw in NY this year, her agent might take a flyer on this." Now that I've actually read it, I found the main character so self-assured in her art (a lot of it is rocks from the island with stuff glued to it), as I got through the first half of the book, that I wondered where the author was going. The plot takes a twist as the island-dwelling artist learns that the source of her steady income is not from a wide range of the art-buyng community (who buy her work from her agent's gallery in the big city), but from a single source of questionable decency. I see why the author placed her on an island because it seemed odd that an artist, curious about the world and interpreting it through art, could be so uncurious as to not try to find out at an earlier point in the plot who these patrons are. I liked the story better after the big reveal, when Hannah, the artist, disassembles her painted and glued rocks and returns them to the shores from whence they came. Coomer is a talented writer who can create a believable world populated by characters speaking with distinctive voices.

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?

Memo to Self: Don't Quit Your Job

2008-07-27T20:10:00.006-04:00

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.

What's Nu?

2008-06-29T21:28:00.014-04:00

Dear Blog:

A lot has happened this past month. I finally found a full-time job after almost 15 months of part-time and freelance. This is a solid company and has been in business for over 500 years, no kidding. I just want to put in 15 good ones and retire, no desire to reinvent the wheel or get ahead.

Before I started the new job, I took a trip to Gouverneur, NY to visit my friend and his wife on their sheep farm.

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.

I cried for the first time since my mother-in-law died. Speedy was brought home by my wife in 1993 at the approximate age of two. When he was palm-sized, my wife did most of the care but in recent years as he grew to Whopper proportions, he was all mine. He had a health crisis three Super Bowls ago and I pulled him through it with the vet’s advice of vitamins and extra clean water. In the last two months he seemed to have gained a lot of weight and in the last week the tank seemed cleaner. I’m thinking he had some kind of intestinal failure.

Speedy, I want to tell you about an English TV show called Red Dwarf. Lister, the last surviving member of the human race awakens from suspended animation on an interstellar ship, all alone. To help prevent him from going crazy, the ship’s computer creates a holographic companion for him, Rimmer. Even though Rimmer is an annoying prig, he does his job and eventually becomes mates with Lister.

Speedy, when I was underemployed twice in the last few years, you were there for me, giving me something to do. Now that my kids are young adults, I don’t get the satisfaction and fun of caring for anybody who totally depends on me, but you gave me that. There was this lady who watered the plants at Applause Books and she told me about her cat. I told her about my turtle and she reacted that of course having turtle was not like having a cat. I disagreed.

MINI-REVIEW: THE SAVAGES on DVD

I just saw THE SAVAGES. Let me start by saying that I've met Phil Bosco, who played the father, and I'm a fan of his since THREEPENNY OPERA back in the day. Laura Linney is as good as Meryl Streep without the fluttery eyes and accent. PS Hoffman was chaneling my oldest brother, permanently pissed but getting it done. I thought there would be more laughs based on the DVD cover. That little exercise LL does cracked me up, like Elaine from SEINFELD. She also jogs in the last scene and has jogged in other movies. This may be a clause in her contract.

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.

GREEDY LITTLE PIGGY: THE STIMULUS REBATE; BATTLESTAR GALACTICA; I Want MY DTV: Part 2

2008-05-18T22:48:00.005-04:00

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 Sheepshead Bay and while the report is better that the results in my building (see http://1onthetown.blogspot.com/2008/04/free-ebook-beautiful-children-by.html)

the reception was not perfect, even with roof antennas in Gravesend and Sheepshead. For example, while were able to get channels 11.1 and 11.2 in Gravesend, we could not receive either in Sheepshead. Gravesend received a blocky channel 2.1 but Sheepshead received 2.1 without incident.

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.

Reader Mail

2008-05-10T13:59:00.004-04:00

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.

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 Las Vegas. I’m only half way through it so I’m hoping it will pick up.

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 Rio, the grandfather of the iPod. Lately I’ve been debating myself whether it’s legal to record a stream (not a downloaded file per se, but a stream of data that you would need to record off your system mixer) and whether that is covered in the same way as the courts ruled on VHS taping. We used to tape off the air back in the day with tape decks and FM radios and it seems like the same thing to me. I've been listening to George Jones, Glen Campbell, Charlie Pride.

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.

The New York Radio Message Board (NYRMB)

2008-04-29T21:12:00.002-04:00

Do you listen to the radio? So do I. There’s a place online where people who love radio can talk about the industry in New York. The New York Radio Message Board (NYRMB) has been a unique institution since 1998, a place where professionals and fans chat, debate, and in many cases catch the eye of decision makers looking for ideas.

To be allowed to post on the NYRMB you have to send an email to the moderator, Allan Sniffen, who issues your password. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the board is that the moderator asks each poster in this mostly male board to use his real name. Most follow this rule and it leads to a higher level of civil discourse that any other board I have seen. Not much flaming goes on. Allan has been known to bounce people from the board for going off-topic.

Many professionals sign on and it’s a treat to hear the opinions of well-known radio personalities in an informal setting. For example, I’ve seen posts from Johnny Donavan, Big Jay Sorensen, Jay Diamond, and Cubby Bryant.

The range of topics this past week included the new Arbitron ratings, baseball on the radio, Opie and Anthony, and the move of WNYC’s studios. My own postings on the board have been about Imus, Whoopi, Boomer and Carton, Bob & Ray, and wherever I think I might have some fact to add to the discussion. I recently started a thread after a visit to my sister’s house to look after her cats. She uses a roof antenna and as I sat on the couch and channel surfed I checked out a topic that shows up on the board, Pulse 87, an FM station is actually VHF Channel 6. I heard the FM signal but was surprised to find that they were broadcasting a video loop of Texas wildlife. This generated some interest on the board as seen in this thread. Just spend 10 minutes on the NYRMB and you’ll learn something new.

· VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Brian Black 19:20:40 04/22/08 (6)

Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Robert Casey 20:14:30 04/22/08 (2)

Re: Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - MikeN 23:20:14 04/22/08 (0)
Re: Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Brian Black 20:24:46 04/22/08 (0)

Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Greg Tallman 19:53:56 04/22/08 (2)

Re: Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - MikeN 23:18:22 04/22/08 (0)
Re: Re: VHF Channel 6 (home of Pulse 87 FM) running wildlife video - Tony Santiago 20:06:39 04/22/08 (0)

Posted by Brian Black on April 22, 2008 at 19:20:40:

I'm seeing scenes of Texas wildlife and hearing hot dance rhythms on VHF Channel 6 tonight. Could Pulse 87 be testing in order to begin using the video carrier?

John Adams on HBO

2008-04-24T15:53:00.006-04:00

JOHN ADAMS flew under my showbiz radar until last month when I saw it advertised on a bus shelter. This looks like a good movie, I said to myself, one that I would pay to see instead of waiting for the rental. I was surprised to read in the ad that it was to be a miniseries for HBO. I had canceled HBO years ago after Chris Rock left his talk/sketch show and my kids were staying up later than me. Some of their late night programming is very raunchy.

Paul Giamatti stars as John Adams with Laura Linney as his wife, Abigail, David Morse as Washington, Stephen Dillane as Jefferson, Tom Wilkinson as Franklin, and Danny Huston as cousin Sam Adams. The nine-hour series cuts to the chase, the Boston Massacre (1770), so we lose the first 35 years of Adams life. I read the source material, David McCullough’s biography (which is enjoying a revival in paperback and well worth the effort to get through) and was surprised at first that, with nine hours, the producers chose to ignore the young Adams’ life that the author covered in great detail. But the choice to portray young America instead of young Adams is a good one as the period of American history from 1770-1800 is so interesting that it deserves the time devoted to it.

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, England and France. We also see the very tender lifelong love story between John and Abigail, as history knows from their famous correspondence. The final episode also portrays another famous correspondence, the one beween between Jefferson and Adams. Both men became too old to travel in their post-presidencies and would write long thoughtful letters to each other about everything: their past achievements, the new republic, their places in history.

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 Jefferson again in his own miniseries. He’s the great enigma of American history, claiming all men are created equal but owning slaves. Many long shots of the Adams’ house show a white man working in the field, making a subtle point that Adams never owned slaves.

If you don’t have HBO, get it for this or rent it when the DVD comes out. You’ll be glad you did.

Free Ebook: Beautiful Children by Charles Bock; I Want my DTV

2008-04-18T20:41:00.003-04:00

Free Ebook: Beautiful Children by Charles Bock

Beautiful Children by Charles Bock: how do you make a profit by giving 15,000 ebooks away? The Feb 2008 issue of Wired had an article about this new/old business model. You make up the loss in free advertising or in other products tied in to the freebie. For example, Wired reported that King Gillette sold the razors at deep discount and made it up on the sale of blades.

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

I finally got my $40 gummint coupon toward the purchase of a digital-to-analog converter for my old television. Come February 2009, these old war horses will need the converter box to pull in and convert the digital signal. As a member of the coop board, I have to recommend whether or not we should spend the money to upgrade the roof antenna and my test was very discouraging. I tried pulling in a signal many ways, using:

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 New York if they stay on the air. I am recommending to the board to make the investment to upgrade the system and pull in these signals, which for the most part are from the old UHF band which was always hard to tune in. (Although I read that some channels after February 2009, such as Channel 13, may move back to the their old signal on the VHF band).

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.

Blockbuster vs. Netflix

2008-04-08T01:39:00.003-04:00

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.

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.

I went back to Blockbuster, which last week had the complete series on DVD, to get Season 1 Disc 2. The single copy they had was out. Usually I delay gratification, but I went home and signed up for Netflix and put BSG Season 1, Discs 2-5 on my queue, plus CURB YOUR ENTHUSUASM Season 6.

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.

Blockbuster has its own Netflix-like mail service, which they started a little too late to catch up with the competition. I don’t know if the Netflix streaming service will increase their selection in the future but streaming gives them an awesome advantage over Blockbuster.

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.

Blockbuster has been closing stores and for awhile it looked like they were putting most of their effort into starting up the mail service. Unless they make a strong response to Netflix’s streaming service, I don’t see how they will survive. If they do intend to keep the stores going, they should keep more than one copy of hot TV shows in stores, or find a way to check what’s popular and triage a few more copies in there. About half of the three seasons of GALACTICA was out. Like my old boss Mr. Ron Gettinger used to say when I ran the toy department in a small Woolworth’s, “Don’t ever run out of the Batmobile.”

Live Video Exclusives: The Giants' Victory Parade, St. Patrick's Day, Mom's Birthday

2008-03-27T11:13:00.022-04:00

GIANTS VICTORY PARADE 2008

Somehow 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 PARADE

The 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.

Off-Broadway: ADD1NG MACH1NE

2008-03-16T18:31:00.005-04:00

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.

Justice League: The New Frontier on DVD

2008-03-09T23:58:00.002-04:00

Justice League: The New Frontier is a PG-13 direct-to-DVD animation from the DC Comics universe, from a story by Darwyn Cooke. Based on a six-part comic book, it takes place in the 1950s, before any of these heroes were updated or killed or became evil and then good again. You know it’s not for kids when we see Superman (Kyle MacLachlan) come upon a scene in Southeast Asia. His old friend Wonder Woman (Lucy Lawless) is celebrating with a roomful of local women with guns. Wha’ happened? asks the big Boy Scout. These women were raped and left in cages by their brutalizers, she explains. I just disarmed the men, left their guns in a clearing, and liberated the women from their cages. What happened next was up to the women. Superman is horrified and Wonder Woman tells him, hit the road spaceman. She’s even a smidge taller than Superman, letting you know who’s boss here.

Full disclosure: I am a big fan of the Flash (first two versions) and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan of course) and was thrilled to see their prominent roles in this movie. Flash rescues his reporter/girl friend (what it is with superheroes and beautiful reporters?) from Mr. Freeze in ring-a-ding-ding Las Vegas and Green Lantern’s origin is retold. Unlike most origins, GL’s is simple and unchanging: man finds dying alien in desert, receives his power ring, and his job. The ring actually seeks out Hal, bravest person on Earth, to take the place of Abin Sur, who had been the Green Lantern for our sector of the galaxy. Any more on this would be TMI for people who don’t follow comics and too trivial for those who do.

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.

Black History Month: PETTIGREW FOR PRESIDENT

2008-02-29T23:38:00.005-05:00

When I was 6 years old we used to get a Catholic publication for children called TREASURE CHEST. It was a comic book and contained stories with moral teachings worked in with history and general informaton, not necessarily religious doctrine. In January of 1964 they began a six-month series on the presidential electoral process. Titled Pettigrew for President, the story is so forgotten that I only got 87 Google hits on it, although I have a feeling that might change soon. The hook was to follow the candidacy of one man in his quest for the presidency in the near-future (although far away to a kid) year of 1976. They never mention the political party. We learned about the primary system, raising money for the campaign, and traveling around the country looking for support. There are even dirty tricks from his opponents trying to tarnish his military record.

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.

Black History Month: HOTEL RWANDA

2008-02-25T21:25:00.009-05:00

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.

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 CASABLANCA. Paul is used to doing favors for the powerful and seemed to be an unlikely savior. Early on in the movie he and his family peer through their front gate and see a Tutsi neighbor beaten and taken away. He tells his wife there’s nothing anyone can do. At great risk to his life he makes a decision (at his wife’s urging) not to turn refugees away from his hotel, first under the tenuous protection of the blue helmeted U.N troops and then the ominous oversight of the General Bizimungu. He concocts a fable for his “protector,” General Bizimungu, to be mindful of the Americans and their spy satellites; they will be used to show evidence against him in war crime trials. It’s the one bit of comic relief in the movie. Amazingly, General Bizimungu, indicted in 2002, is still on trial which began in September 2005. The charges are genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

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.

Black History Month: PRIDE AGAINST PREJUDICE: THE LARRY DOBY STORY

2008-02-17T21:12:00.005-05:00

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 Brooklyn Dodgers and comes up very well.

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 Minneapolis at the convention.

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.

Black History Month: TALK TO ME on DVD

2008-02-10T22:28:00.001-05:00

I was first was impressed by Don Cheadle playing a lawyer on the CBS-TV drama PICKET FENCES. He was featured in BOOGIE NIGHTS and his career got another big boost playing Sammy Davis, Jr. in THE RAT PACK cable movie. Artistic triumph came in HOTEL RWANDA and he hit multiplex mega-consciousness in the OCEAN’S 11 series.

Personal recollections of other great Cheadle moments include two television appearances: a very funny MADtv sketch where he plays a couples therapist and a crazy duet with Adam Sandler when Sandler guest hosted for an ailing David Letterman.

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.

Chiwetel Ejiofor steals this movie deftly playing the unexpected twists that his character takes. Dewey starts out as his boss and becomes mentor, friend, and agent. This is as much the Dewey Hughes story as it is Petey Greene’s. For a film with an African-American theme you’ll be surprised to find that an underlying theme is the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson as we see Dewey watching Johnny. Carson is his idol, not only professionally but personally.

The central event of the movie is the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dewey’s presence on the air that night and a free public concert the next day by James Brown, with Dewey as emcee, is credited with helping to bring order to the besieged city.

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.

Cheadle plays Petey as a human being with flaws and there’s no attempt to excuse his drinking, infidelity, or letting people down. There’s no Rocky-type ending as his career peaks on television in Washington. He doesn’t want what his agent wants: national fame. He speaks the truth about corrupt politicians, sexual mores, and the bad things that people in his own community did, except that this was the first time anyone ever heard it on the radio. In one of the DVD extras, a reflective Cedric the Entertainer (deejay “Nighthawk” Bob Terry) ruminates on the state of expression today and notes that people were more free to speak back in the 1970s. Sad but true and maybe TALK TO ME will remind people of their freedom to speak and act.

90s Flashback: The Dana Carvey Show (1996)

2008-02-02T22:32:00.001-05:00

The word “outrageous” is overused but The Dana Carvey Show (1996) truly was just that. Carvey’s sketch ensemble was tasteless and funny and even today seems too edgy for broadcast. You catch episodes 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 on a new website called hulu.com.

Carvey does many of his old familiar characters such as Ross Perot, Paul McCartney, and Regis Philbin. He keeps it up to the minute by playing the Unabomber on an MTV dance show (the unknown Selma Blair can be spotted as an MTV hottie) and Kato Kaelin in an OJ Simpson sketch. Simpson is selling a video tape telling us how he committed the murder of his wife, exactly like the book he was hawking in 2007. Series regular Stephen Colbert does a spot-on Geraldo Rivera grilling Kaelin and Simpson.

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!

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

2008-01-27T17:52:00.001-05:00

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 Disneyworld. Regarding the declining quality of the cartoons, he told his masseuse, “what the hell. It’s going to help build Disneyworld, kid.”

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.

Regardless of how one feels about the art of Disney (I think the Warner and Fleischer Bros. were funnier) you will come away with a new admiration for Disney’s position as an artist of commerce. He used ABC’s money in the 1950s to produce a TV show (a virtual weekly infomercial) that financed Disneyworld. Then years later, Disney (the company) buys ABC. Corporate synergy doesn’t contribute much to art, but the birth of it as described by Gabler makes an interesting read.

Vintage Books paper back, 2007. Originally published by Knopf, 2006.

JUNO

2008-01-20T22:10:00.001-05:00

TOOTSE (1982) was the first major movie I saw featuring a single woman who had a child out of wedlock, presented as a matter of fact, no biggie. The baby isn’t even part of the plot. The situation mirrored the real life of Jessica Lange who played that role in TOOTSOE. Flash forward to the 21^st century and unwed motherhood has hit the zeitgeist (see http://1onthetown.blogspot.com/2007/10/knocked-up-on-dvd-unrated-and.html, http://1onthetown.blogspot.com/2007/11/slam-by-nick-hornby-or-bamboozled.html, et al.).

The latest entry in the series is JUNO, starring Ellen Page as Juno, a 16-year-old who decides to have her baby but give it up for adoption. Also starring are Michael Cera as the Dad, J.K. Simmons as her father, and Allison Janney as the good stepmother. Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner are the rich couple who want to adopt Juno’s baby.

Juno has a wicked sense of humor that she inherited from Dad. I can’t say enough about J. K. Simmons (J. Jonah Jameson from the SPIDERMAN trilogy), who is perfect as Mac MacGuff, military veteran turned HVAC repairman, who can tell Juno with a squint that she’s an idiot but he loves her. He’s the rock of the movie.

There’s a subversive flashback shown with voiceover of a sex ed instructor using a banana to teach the boys and girls how to put on a condom. I call it subversive because it illustrates how schools taught sex but not love. JUNO fills in that missing lesson, a primer on how love is the answer, at least when it comes to bringing a life into the world. A rocking soundtrack helps too.

DVD Review: POPEYE 1933–1938

2008-01-13T20:03:00.002-05:00

Don’t be fooled by any overnight cable versions, ‘80s VHS public domain slap-togethers, or YouTube streams. This collection of POPEYE is the one for which fans have salivated for a long time. Full disclosure: I love Popeye and would excuse any minor flaws but this nearly seven-hour package is perfect and what the DVD player was made for: pristine prints of classic toons.

The four-disc set contains:

sixty Popeye cartoons, many with commentary
eight Popumentaries
16 silent cartoons starring Krazy Kat, Mutt and Jeff, and others from the dawn of animation

Disc 1 opens with Popeye the Sailor’s 1933 film debut, a cartoon eponymously titled but presented under the banner of another Fleisher Bros. cartoon star, Betty Boop. Popeye was already a popular King Features comic strip character, created by E. C. Segar, and the one-eyed* sailor’s first appearance in the movies is heralded in the first scene. Newspapers (remember them?) come rushing off the presses and a close-up of one paper reveals the headline:

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.

We have a long shot of the carnival to the tune of “The Band Played On.” There’s an unbelievable amount of movement in this scene: a tunnel of love that pours people out and up into a spinning Ferris wheel, which drops patrons in two directions: onto a floating-in-air/ rotating merry-go-round and into the cars of a moving roller coaster. Here come the laughs: Bluto brutalizing the peacock ticket taker followed by Popeye eschewing the hammer to test his strength and using his fist to hit the block, which rings the bell so hard that it flies 93 million miles to give the sun a black eye.

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.

I’m in Disc 2 now and every night I watch one or two cartoons with one of my sons. He’s an aspiring voice artist and theater major. He’s learning a lot from Popeye, Olive, Bluto and the genius of the Fleisher’s Bros. and Segar’s greatest and long-missed creation. The Popumentaries are great too, especially the one on the men (and 1 woman!) who voiced Popeye.

__________

*One-eyed or just permanently squinty? I’m not sure.

Three-Hour Philly Phormat Phlush on WPHT-AM

2008-01-01T13:14:00.000-05:00

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.

No narrowcasting back then.] During that period I remember Mark Simone and Jonathan Schwartz on WNEW-AM having fun at Sid’s expense, claiming that “there’s this guy on another station” that just lets the Sinatra albums track without offering any special insight to the music. They joked about Sid calling his show the “official” Sinatra show. Twenty-five years later Sid is still going strong on AM radio with a signal that anyone would love to have. Although I get some static from the speaker and from my wife (who doesn’t enjoy radio static), it was great to hear Tony, Lena, Lou Rawls in glorious AM mono from Philadelphia.

Year in Review/A Look Ahead

2007-12-31T12:28:00.001-05:00

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:

▼ 2007 (43)
- ▼ December 2007 (3)
- ▼ November 2007 (4)
- ▼ October 2007 (6)
- ▼ September 2007 (4)
- ▼ August 2007 (4)
- ▼ July 2007 (4)
- ▼ June 2007 (4)
- ▼ May 2007 (4)
- ▼ April 2007 (4)
- ▼ March 2007 (6)

Sweeney Todd: Comments on the Film Itself and in Relation to TOS

2007-12-21T17:24:00.001-05:00

Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. I’ll only make comments and not a full review.

I can’t pretend I didn’t see the stage production as the best film critics do and simply look at the film in a vacuum. For example, the phrase, “Don’t I know you mister?” is repeated several times by a certain character in the play but used one time in the movie. It ruins the setup for the final scene.

There’s a major goof in the script: Mrs. Lovett tells Sweeney she was with his wife and tried to talk her out of taking poison. In a later scene, she’s making conversation and asks him what she looked like. Right there he should have known she was lying and been suspicious of her motives.

Judge Turpin has to be hideously unappealing. Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin is not. Maybe because I saw LOST IN TRANSLATION or DADDY LONG LEGS or have seen any number of Douglas/Z.-Jones-like marriages in Hollywood, I believed he had a shot at a hottie like Johanna. The judge is addicted to porn, like Jud in OKLAHOMA! But other than a little stubble on the judge’s face, director Burton didn’t show the terror that Johanna is supposed to have at the thought of being with the judge, her legal guardian. We might need a female director to empathically convey this revulsion.

I posted this on imdb today: I saw the original Sweeney Todd on Broadway and was genuinely shocked during the last scene when a character's true identity is revealed. Can imdb lead the way and show some respect for the story by editing the cast list to hide this point? This is the info that the production company has released for listings in reviews. I compare this to the cooperation that the producers of THE CRYING GAME encouraged when it debuted: Don't reveal the shock to your readers! This being a fan board, you all know what I'm referring to, but I'm thinking of the young fan whom will miss the emotional jolt that isn't a slit throat and a spurt of blood. In addition to this comment, let me add that I went back to my original Playbill and yes, the Cast did not give away this dual role.

Zaniness, simplemindedness, fey qualities: Mrs. Lovett lacks the first, Toby the second, and the Beadle the third in the movie.

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.

There’s a world of difference, between singing “wait” in one beat and waiting for the word “wait” to end on a nicely-held note. You need a singer who can hold a note for this song.

TOBY

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.”

BEADLE BRAMFORD

His kooky “Parlor Songs” with Mrs. Lovett is not in the movie. Onstage I suspect it’s a delaying tactic for the crew to set up the final scene in the basement and give the lead singer a breather. On film you don’t need to kill time or let people rest. Plus, you need a screwball performance from Mrs. Lovett to pull it off and that’s not the concept this time.

In the play, Antony is told by Sweeney Todd in the opening scene that he will not long forget the young man who saved his life when they were shipmates. In the film, this is watered down to something like, “helping me get through” the voyage. I’m giving the gist, I can’t recall the exact line. Why would you want to water down this bond? Perhaps to show the soullessness of Todd?

THE UNBEARABLY INSANE JOY OF “Have a Little Priest”

This of course is what encores were made for and on stage it’s a riot. I recently saw Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou on You Tube do this at a charity event in L.A. The movie cuts this duet short, as it does several other numbers. Maybe double entendres don’t have the humor they used to have, or the bloodthirsty audience this movie is aimed at just wouldn’t appreciate this delay to getting back to the action.

An imdb poster named B_Crawley made this comment:

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. . But Helena...I just don't know what to say.
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 Hollywood he's a no name and she's too old. I'll see it today and if you're right, maybe we'll live long enough for this version to be forgotten and a great movie will be made.

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.

Holiday Concert

2007-12-13T19:56:00.000-05:00

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.

Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet

2007-12-09T16:35:00.000-05:00

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 Lithuania to teach English. As a dividend he learns Lithuanian in return. Tammet starts a website, http://www.optimnem.co.uk/index.php, offering online language courses in French and Spanish using a technique he developed that is “intuitive and jargon-free.”

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.”

BEE MOVIE; Book preview: Born on a Blue Day

2007-11-30T10:39:00.000-05:00

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.

I Built It One Piece at a Time: The Amazingly Durable Rio S10; This American Life

2007-11-18T19:11:00.000-05:00

I got it one piece at a time And it didn't cost me a dime
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.

March 13, 2003: cnet news reported that a $329.99 1GB SD card will be available in the third quarter.

According to the inverse ratio of the original Moore’s law (roughly, memory doubling in the same space every 18 months) the price of that card should have halved every 18 months. Let’s see, we’re in the third 18-month period since then. Let’s round down 329.99 to 320 because the math is prettier.

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 Moore’s law predicted, like Tiki Barber receptions before Tom Coughlin bought him a jar of pine tar. I bought a 2 GB card (2000 pictures) for $19.99 for my digital camera and remembered that my old Rio S10 from 2002 could take this card too. I had never considered buying an SD card before because of the expense. Now my old $79 10-song mp3 player can play over 300 songs on the same 2 GB card. I bought a new 1 GB card for the camera for $14.99 on the idea that I’ll be okay with having a 1,000 picture capability instead of 2,000.

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 Chicago calls me the poster boy for delayed gratification.

Rio transferring software is clunky. iPods work easily. You just think about a song and it’s transferred from hard drive to device. [Wireless SD cards just came out so this is almost a reality. You can now transfer pictures from camera to web without cabling into a computer.] Users who own both Rio and iPod claim that Rio software isn’t as elegant as Apple’s, but now there’s 3^rd party software available to make the Rio process smoother. A significant Rio advantage over the iPod is that I can use 1 AA rechargeable NiMH. When iPod internal batteries die it’s soldering time.

What’s on my Rio? Regina Spektor, Wilco, Alison Krauss, Mel Tormé, Sweeney Todd, Harry Shearer’s Le Show, This American Life, Barenaked Ladies, Steely Dan, Bing Crosby, and room for more.

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).

SLAM by Nick Hornby, or Bamboozled!: The Responsibility of the Critic

2007-11-11T14:50:00.000-05:00

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 Hollywood to translate to an American setting, such as Hornby’s Fever Pitch and High Fidelity, because of the Romeo/Juliet age range of the parents. I’m sure it can be funny but I found it hard to laugh at this version of teen pregnancy. A 15-year-old boy (whose mum was 16 when he was born) getting a 16-year-old girl pregnant can only be the subject of a YA novel if it’s not explicit and this book isn’t. It makes a best case scenario; she has well-educated parents, his mother is young enough to help him, they have a roof over the head for the baby.

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.

I found one redeeming feature for you kids out there. Be wise enough to pick good parents who can get you out of life’s biggest jam.

Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 2007.

2 Books: Janey A and Teenage Pregnancy

2007-11-05T16:17:00.001-05:00

I can't get Johnny U out of my mind, so much so that when I just finished Jane Austen's first novel, Sense and Sensibility, I thought of her as Janey A and tried to find the comparisons to Johnny U. Let's see, when the Dashwood sisters and Mom fall on hard times, they have to reduce the number of servants down to two and move into a smaller grand estate of a relative. Johnny U helped his poor widowed Mom by delivering dirty bags of filthy coal.

Yet Sense has much to offer. Right up front, Austen lays out the basic plot: Old Man Dashwood dies and, by law, must leave his estate to his eldest son (product of his first marriage). If only Lear had a son he could have died in bed and avoided all that bloodshed. Mr. Dashwood's surviving second wife and their three daughters get nada. All four have to leave the mansion to fend for themselves. The eldest son, at the urging of his shrewish wife, reneges on the father's deathbed charge to very generously look after the half-sisters. He arranges instead, a pittance. This bit of nasty business, made me think long on how much of life is like this, things out of one's control that we can't know about. I remember the story of my father having to wrest his mother's bequest to him from his evil executrix sister. That has to be bad karma to deny your parent's last request, let alone all the other ones.

After Mom and brood are taken in by a relation, the mystery left is whom will the sisters marry? That's the only life destination these ladies can hope for. There is talk of them doing "work" as they talk away the day and I look forward to seeing the 1995 film to see what it is Janey was talking about. There is a scene where the ladies are working, literally basket weaving, and I thought this must be where the joke started about make-work jobs or easy classes for college athletes.

Inverted sentences and double negatives made my reading slow, about a chapter a day. We might say, "His friends would be happy to hear how much you like him," but Janey writes:

"I am sure," replied Elinor, with a smile, "that his dearest friends could not be dissatisfied with such commendation as that. I do not perceive how you could express yourself more warmly."

The characters are fully realized, which means you think you know them, then Janey gives you a jolt of the unexpected. Characters leave without warning, fueling one of the prime activities of this social glass, gossiping. I have read that most real-life dialogue among people today is also gossip so I won't judge 19th c. England harshly.

The teen sister, Margaret, appears so briefly that she's almost not there, disappearing for dozens of chapters at a time and making a cameo in the last scene. Not being an English major I wondered if it this was some well-known literary joke and the inspiration for famous unseen characters of radio and TV such as Duffy of Duffy's Tavern, Norm's wife on Cheers, Niles' wife on Frasier.

Idle talk and speculation and a bit of mistaken identity coupled with a secret romance conspire to make the happy ending. Good character is rewarded and low character is given a comeuppance. The sisters are supposed to represent SENSE (Elinor, the older and proper) and SENSIBILITY (Marianne, the younger and instinctive). My interpretation is a little more didactic in terms of Anglo history. Property rights and orderly transfer of property (SENSE) is the foundation of English and American stability, but it gets in the way of romance (SENSIBILITY).

Up next: Slam by Nick Hornby

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