When I sat down to brainstorm ideas for this post, it came down to a toss-up between clotheslines and goat hygiene. I don't know anything about goat hygiene, so clotheslines it is.
I've seen a lot of TV commercials for washing machines and tumble dryers over the years, but I've yet to see an ad for a clothesline or a clothespin. Clotheslines and clothespins used to be as common in American life as iPads and restraining orders are today. What happened? We all know nature is a better and cheaper energy source than electricity. Fresh air smells so much nicer than a fabric softener. Your child can't close the cat inside a clothesline and then press the "on" button.
Chalk it up to progress. Someone thought it would be a good idea to invent a machine that cost about 800 times as much as a clothesline, replace warm summer breezes with a rotating tumbler that drowns out all human communication (especially if you're drying sneakers), and then replace the fresh aromatic smell of the outdoors with an artificially scented dryer sheet that prevents clothes from clinging together, which is fine but would be totally pointless on a clothesline.
I enjoy looking at old sepia photos of New York from the turn of the century (not this turn, but the last one). All those dozens of clotheslines crisscrossing high over alleyways from one tenement to the next-- now that was laundry! Every last inch of line was taken up with petticoats and bloomers and undershirts -- it's a wonder people weren't naked on washdays. When all that clothing was reeled inside after a day in the sun, I'll bet not even Yankee Candle could match such a scent.
My family owned just one house when I was a kid; otherwise, we moved from apartment to apartment. That house had the biggest back yard in Palm Springs North, which was a new development not too far from the Everglades. (We didn't see alligators, but we saw plenty of swamp mosquitoes so big they wore their own gang colors.) Kids would come over to play in our back yard and never be seen again. I'm talking about a big yard. Along with the yard came four lengths of clothesline, our first, and my mother was out there every weekend with her basket of clothes and sheets. I didn't have many chores, but one of the most important was Official Clothespin Pail Carrier. I would stand beside her holding up a pail with a rooster painted on it, and she would take two clothespins from it for each article of clothing (more for sheets). She held one clothespin between her teeth while she fastened the first one on the line, and then she'd take the other one from her mouth and fasten it to the other end of whatever she was hanging. Then we'd take a couple steps and the ritual would repeat itself. Odd, but I can still remember the sound the few remaining wooden clothespins made as they scraped against the bottom of that metal pail.
Automatic dryers don't sound like that. I don't think anything sounds like that. It's a loss, really. Things just don't sound like the things they've replaced. The new sounds are impersonal, not at all tactile. Take personal computers. Click-clacking away on one of those keyboards sounds like rodents doing a two-step. I know whereof I speak -- I'm using one right now and it still makes my teeth ache. But think back -- if you're old enough -- to manual typewriters. Folks, when you hit those keys, that sheet of paper knew you meant business. Not even the YMCA could give you a better workout. Electric typewriters weren't as taxing, but the sound still implied permanence. Remember All the President's Men? Remember that very first shot, a tight, silent closeup of a blank sheet of paper, then the thunderous whump of the key as it hammers home the first enormous letter? Could you imagine opening that movie with a tight closeup of a blank computer screen, the silence suddenly shattered with the sound of -- of what? A gerbil fart?
But I digress. I'm not saying these newfangled contraptions are a setback of some sort. They're a godsend for large families. Women would weep when they won one on Queen for a Day. I've even heard women say that when you sit on one, the vibration is good for -- um, good for drying clothes. But I digress again.
I've often used Laundromats, but I think they could be improved upon. Even if I took along an autographed copy of the New Testament, I couldn't get past the first two paragraphs without thinking, "God, I'm sitting in a Laundromat." Maybe it's those curvy plastic chairs. Maybe it's the magazines with cover stories about Lincoln's assassination. Maybe it's the coin changers that make me flatten my dollar bill about fifty times before it'll suck it in. I don't know what it is. I use one now, but it's full-service, so I can drop my clothes off in the morning and pick them up all clean and folded in the afternoon. I don't mind spending the extra money, since to me it's not just a service but a survival tactic. Each time I leave with my bulky plastic bag in hand, I wave a dollar bill and stick my tongue out at the coin changer.
I'm been cat-sitting for some friends. They have a clothesline in the backyard, some wooden clothespins on a shelf, and they've left instructions on how to use their washer/dryer.
My clothes feel awfully dirty. Guess what I'll be doing later on. (No, not sitting on the dryer.)
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Monday, April 27, 2015
Holidays I Didn't Get Around To Last Time
I set out to write my previous post about various holidays, but I ended up having too much to say about Christmas. Let's see if I can stay on track this time.
Birthdays are my second favorite time of year (after Christmas). I know that the older we get, the more miserable we're supposed to be about getting older, but my aging brain hasn't gotten the message yet. Maybe it's because I've always had this problem of living for the moment and never planning ahead. Consequently, on my birthday I'm focused strictly on the day itself and not my impending decrepitude.
When I was working and my birthday fell on a weekday, I always made sure I could take the day off; I didn't need pesky projects and meetings to interfere with my happiness. Of course, the workplace can be fun, especially when your coworkers fill the office with black Mylar balloons. Then, around midafternoon, you might walk into the lunchroom on a break and find everyone gathered around a cake bought just for you. Last time I was surprised like that, just one little candle burned in the center -- I had reached the age when it would be too labor-intensive to put in all the rest. I could sense that not all of my coworkers were happy about this cake, since I've rarely worked anyplace where donuts didn't magically appear in the lunchroom every other day. A cake was just one more reason to keep your hopeless treadmill in the basement.
My mother threw me a birthday party when I turned seven. My mother liked kids if they were hers, but I invited about a dozen and a half schoolmates to this event. So anyway --
Whoops, never mind. I forgot to focus on other holidays, and I don't want to stretch this topic into mid-August.
Labor Day
The best and worst thing about Labor Day: Jerry Lewis. The Muscular Dystrophy Telethon was probably his greatest achievement (well, besides The Nutty Professor), but he refused to change with the times. In the new millennium he was still featuring some of the same guests he'd had on in the 1960s (40 years of Norm Crosby was way more than enough), and his taste in music and beautiful women (they had to be beautiful, it seemed, to be his co-hosts) was growing out of fashion. The older and sicker he got, the more naps he took during the show. I wasn't surprised when he finally disappeared altogether, but I think it was horrid the way MDA unceremoniously dumped him. Then the next year the telethon was only six hours long. They showed a brief tribute to Lewis, which I thought was just hypocritical. By last year, the show was dramatically shorter (I think it aired between two commercials for Coke and Nissan). Not only were the hosts pointedly young, but I suspect the performers were chosen because their fans have no idea who Jerry Lewis is. The telethon got to be a tradition with me through its good times and its bad (sort of like SNL). One year, I even took calls for the full length of the show at MDA's remote hookup in Miami (back before volunteers were split into two shifts to preserve sanity). Nowadays, there's only one way to really recapture the essence of the Jerry Lewis MDA experience: find a copy of Hardly Working. It was the comeback film Lewis made after The Jerk opened; he wanted to remind people who the original jerk was. (I'm serious -- that was the tagline of the movie.) I call it an MDA experience because the film was shamelessly, hilariously filled with product placements from the telethon's most loyal sponsors. Budweiser, Dunkin' Donuts, 7 Up, the U.S. Postal Service -- they're all there, and trust me, you won't miss them if you blink. You won't even miss them if you doze off, which you're likely to do.
Halloween
I'm conflicted about this one. As a kid, I enjoyed going out. I liked everything about it -- the candy, waiting to put on my store-bought costume and mask that came in a box with a cellophane cover, the candy, being allowed to roam the streets after dark, and of course the candy. During the '80s and part of the '90s, I stopped liking the idea of it because it was "sinful." These days, if I had kids, I'd let them go trick or treating, but I'd have to be with them because this isn't the world I grew up in, and I'd prefer they didn't dress up as flesh-eating zombies or tweenie trollops. Kids can't find my door now, but back when I lived in a busier neighborhood, I'd always go somewhere else on Halloween night and come home after 10 p.m. A ringing doorbell can make me jumpy when it happens 20 times in an hour. (I still bought the candy, though. Why waste a perfectly good holiday?)
April Fool's Day
It would have to be a brilliant, and I mean brilliant, prank for me to enjoy it. Also, it would need to happen to someone else.
Fourth of July
I like looking at fireworks, but not listening to them. They frighten animals and can seriously mess with PTSD. Plus, amateurs seldom know what they're doing and have a way of losing digits in the process. I do like what the holiday stands for, though, and I like that so many people, as with Memorial Day, really do remember its meaning.
Indigenous Peoples' Day
Last year, the Seattle City Council decided to rename Columbus Day. I don't even have a punch line for this.
Birthdays are my second favorite time of year (after Christmas). I know that the older we get, the more miserable we're supposed to be about getting older, but my aging brain hasn't gotten the message yet. Maybe it's because I've always had this problem of living for the moment and never planning ahead. Consequently, on my birthday I'm focused strictly on the day itself and not my impending decrepitude.
When I was working and my birthday fell on a weekday, I always made sure I could take the day off; I didn't need pesky projects and meetings to interfere with my happiness. Of course, the workplace can be fun, especially when your coworkers fill the office with black Mylar balloons. Then, around midafternoon, you might walk into the lunchroom on a break and find everyone gathered around a cake bought just for you. Last time I was surprised like that, just one little candle burned in the center -- I had reached the age when it would be too labor-intensive to put in all the rest. I could sense that not all of my coworkers were happy about this cake, since I've rarely worked anyplace where donuts didn't magically appear in the lunchroom every other day. A cake was just one more reason to keep your hopeless treadmill in the basement.
My mother threw me a birthday party when I turned seven. My mother liked kids if they were hers, but I invited about a dozen and a half schoolmates to this event. So anyway --
Whoops, never mind. I forgot to focus on other holidays, and I don't want to stretch this topic into mid-August.
Labor Day
The best and worst thing about Labor Day: Jerry Lewis. The Muscular Dystrophy Telethon was probably his greatest achievement (well, besides The Nutty Professor), but he refused to change with the times. In the new millennium he was still featuring some of the same guests he'd had on in the 1960s (40 years of Norm Crosby was way more than enough), and his taste in music and beautiful women (they had to be beautiful, it seemed, to be his co-hosts) was growing out of fashion. The older and sicker he got, the more naps he took during the show. I wasn't surprised when he finally disappeared altogether, but I think it was horrid the way MDA unceremoniously dumped him. Then the next year the telethon was only six hours long. They showed a brief tribute to Lewis, which I thought was just hypocritical. By last year, the show was dramatically shorter (I think it aired between two commercials for Coke and Nissan). Not only were the hosts pointedly young, but I suspect the performers were chosen because their fans have no idea who Jerry Lewis is. The telethon got to be a tradition with me through its good times and its bad (sort of like SNL). One year, I even took calls for the full length of the show at MDA's remote hookup in Miami (back before volunteers were split into two shifts to preserve sanity). Nowadays, there's only one way to really recapture the essence of the Jerry Lewis MDA experience: find a copy of Hardly Working. It was the comeback film Lewis made after The Jerk opened; he wanted to remind people who the original jerk was. (I'm serious -- that was the tagline of the movie.) I call it an MDA experience because the film was shamelessly, hilariously filled with product placements from the telethon's most loyal sponsors. Budweiser, Dunkin' Donuts, 7 Up, the U.S. Postal Service -- they're all there, and trust me, you won't miss them if you blink. You won't even miss them if you doze off, which you're likely to do.
Halloween
I'm conflicted about this one. As a kid, I enjoyed going out. I liked everything about it -- the candy, waiting to put on my store-bought costume and mask that came in a box with a cellophane cover, the candy, being allowed to roam the streets after dark, and of course the candy. During the '80s and part of the '90s, I stopped liking the idea of it because it was "sinful." These days, if I had kids, I'd let them go trick or treating, but I'd have to be with them because this isn't the world I grew up in, and I'd prefer they didn't dress up as flesh-eating zombies or tweenie trollops. Kids can't find my door now, but back when I lived in a busier neighborhood, I'd always go somewhere else on Halloween night and come home after 10 p.m. A ringing doorbell can make me jumpy when it happens 20 times in an hour. (I still bought the candy, though. Why waste a perfectly good holiday?)
April Fool's Day
It would have to be a brilliant, and I mean brilliant, prank for me to enjoy it. Also, it would need to happen to someone else.
Fourth of July
I like looking at fireworks, but not listening to them. They frighten animals and can seriously mess with PTSD. Plus, amateurs seldom know what they're doing and have a way of losing digits in the process. I do like what the holiday stands for, though, and I like that so many people, as with Memorial Day, really do remember its meaning.
Indigenous Peoples' Day
Last year, the Seattle City Council decided to rename Columbus Day. I don't even have a punch line for this.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
My Most Special Occasion
Can you believe I started this silly little blog 30 days ago? I guess that makes this a special occasion, which brings me to today's topic. . . .
Christmas, my favorite holiday. I've always felt this way, although I have friends for whom Christmastime is the worst time of the year -- the commercialism, the pressure to buy gifts, the same incessant carols. What should be the most special time of the year becomes a nightmare for them. I'm not sure how I've managed to avoid this mindset. Maybe it's because the memory of my first Christmases still have the power to reduce me to an eight-year-old. My little sister would wake up in the dark on Christmas morning and shake me until my eyeballs rattled. Then we'd crack open the bedroom door, and behold -- it looked as if Santa's sleigh had crashed into our living room and left his entire planet's worth of presents scattered all around the tree. Then she'd stand in our parents' doorway and inform them that it was time to get up. If she'd had a military bugle, she couldn't have been more effective.
My sister was a tiny terror come December. One year, my parents had our family doctor phone us on Christmas Eve pretending to be Santa. He didn't time it quite right, as the two of us had already been in our twin beds for about an hour. When our mom walked in and woke us up to say that Santa was on the phone, my sister, whose bed was farther from the door than mine, tore out of the bedroom as fast as she could. She couldn't be bothered with making a detour around my bed; she trampled right over it -- and me -- to reach the phone first. I still have little footprints on my stomach.
Because we lived in Miami in the early 1960s, we had a silver tree like many other families we knew. Silver trees had their advantages -- for one thing, you didn't need to drape tinsel all over them because that was redundant. The best advantage was the color wheel, which was to a silver tree what strings of colored lights are to a real tree. The color wheel used electricity, and when our parents plugged it in, its motor hummed as the wheel slowly revolved, casting red, blue, green, and orange lights onto the branches. The Miami equivalent of a roaring fire was a color wheel illuminating its silver tree in the dark. These days, both the tree and the wheel are considered to be anachronistic kitsch, but they'll always be my anachronistic kitsch.
I think it was 1990 when I first encountered a grownup -- my boss, actually -- who never listened to Christmas music. In fact, he hated it and wouldn't allow me to play it on my office radio. How could anyone not like "Silent Night" or "Silver Bells" or "Greensleeves"? Maybe it was those other songs that had turned him into such a musical Grinch, songs such as "Jingle Bells" (particularly as rendered by barking dogs), "All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)," those vermin Frosty and Rudolph (and let's not forget Nestor the Christmas Donkey), and the ultimate offender, "The Twelve Days of Christmas." That's probably what did it. I suspect that when he was younger he got as far as the four calling birds before hurling the record like a discus through the nearest window.
When I was growing up, Andy Williams was considered to be the voice of Christmas cheer, with his holiday specials that always included the Osmond Brothers, who never seemed to appear anywhere else. "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" was Williams' yuletide anthem, and back then it never occurred to me that it might not be the most wonderful time of the year for everyone. That revelation would come later in life. These days, when I think of Christmas music, I think of Amy Grant, whose beautiful collections of songs and carols, not to mention her annual holiday tour, represent for me and many others the real music of the holiday. Her song "Tennessee Christmas" can make me forget I've never been there. Other Christmas songs she's recorded that I enjoy are "Breath of Heaven" (whichh Grant co-wrote) and "My Grownup Christmas List" (which she didn't write).
Besides Amy Grant's music, there are other annual favorites I always pull out, some of which are a traditional part of my present because they were part of my past. These days, my absolute favorite song is "A Baby Changes Everything," originally recorded by Faith Hill. Shivers and chills. My mandatory playlist also includes "The Chipmunk Song" (don't say a word about my Chipmunks), "River" (you really have to hear Robert Downey Jr. sing it on the Ally McBeal Christmas soundtrack -- this was back when he hadn't yet exorcised his demons, and that makes it all the more heartbreaking), Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas," Brett Williams' "My Christmas" (so hard to find it on CD, though; I was present at Calvary Chapel in Everett, Washington, when he performed it for the first time), and CDs by Ray Conniff (this is the true miracle of Christmas -- me listening to the Ray Conniff Singers), Sarah McLachlin, She and Him, the Roches, and others. (One note about Conniff -- his 1959 album Christmas with Conniff includes the very pretty song "Christmas Bride," which I always loved. Yet I've never heard it performed by any other artist, even though its authorship is "Traditional.")
I agree that the holiday has become way too commercialized. I've seen Christmas commercials as early as September (and next year perhaps on the Fourth of July). Jesus might be "the reason for the season" in other cultures, but here in the U.S. it's the newest Chia Pet. So I'm with Charlie Brown and Linus on this one. I think we're all indoctrinated at an early age (my generation took Santa sliding down a snowy hill on a Norelco shaver for granted), and it's hard to break free of all that initial brainwashing. I've learned to accept Madison Avenue's assault on our traditional values as something to be amused by and then promptly ignore. This takes practice, but it can be done.
However -- however -- there is one new wrinkle in all this commercialization that is absolutely making my blood boil, and I should have seen it coming: Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving night. Why otherwise sane Americans would risk being anywhere near a store on Black Friday itself (it seems Walmart in particular has become the new American Pamplona) beats me. But don't even tell me people are going to leave their homes on a day set aside for food, family, and football to go Christmas shopping while still in the stuporous throes of turkey-induced Tryptophan. (Actually, that's a medical myth; chicken has more Tryptophan than turkey does. What we suffer from on Thanksgiving is called "overeating.") It's bad enough that people are willing to cut short one of the most special days of the year to go shopping, but what about those poor retail employees who have to be there? I'm sure they receive some sort of extra compensation for their sacrifice (at least they'd better), but it shouldn't even have to be an option. That's beyond shameful; it's inhumane.
*** BREAKING NEWS ***
Just as I started wondering how long I could keep cranking these posts out six days a week, a friend yesterday mentioned that she was having trouble keeping up with so many. So that pretty much made my mind up for me. I'm going to cut back to just Mondays and Thursdays; that should keep my brain cells fresh. So see you next week!
Christmas, my favorite holiday. I've always felt this way, although I have friends for whom Christmastime is the worst time of the year -- the commercialism, the pressure to buy gifts, the same incessant carols. What should be the most special time of the year becomes a nightmare for them. I'm not sure how I've managed to avoid this mindset. Maybe it's because the memory of my first Christmases still have the power to reduce me to an eight-year-old. My little sister would wake up in the dark on Christmas morning and shake me until my eyeballs rattled. Then we'd crack open the bedroom door, and behold -- it looked as if Santa's sleigh had crashed into our living room and left his entire planet's worth of presents scattered all around the tree. Then she'd stand in our parents' doorway and inform them that it was time to get up. If she'd had a military bugle, she couldn't have been more effective.
My sister was a tiny terror come December. One year, my parents had our family doctor phone us on Christmas Eve pretending to be Santa. He didn't time it quite right, as the two of us had already been in our twin beds for about an hour. When our mom walked in and woke us up to say that Santa was on the phone, my sister, whose bed was farther from the door than mine, tore out of the bedroom as fast as she could. She couldn't be bothered with making a detour around my bed; she trampled right over it -- and me -- to reach the phone first. I still have little footprints on my stomach.
Because we lived in Miami in the early 1960s, we had a silver tree like many other families we knew. Silver trees had their advantages -- for one thing, you didn't need to drape tinsel all over them because that was redundant. The best advantage was the color wheel, which was to a silver tree what strings of colored lights are to a real tree. The color wheel used electricity, and when our parents plugged it in, its motor hummed as the wheel slowly revolved, casting red, blue, green, and orange lights onto the branches. The Miami equivalent of a roaring fire was a color wheel illuminating its silver tree in the dark. These days, both the tree and the wheel are considered to be anachronistic kitsch, but they'll always be my anachronistic kitsch.
I think it was 1990 when I first encountered a grownup -- my boss, actually -- who never listened to Christmas music. In fact, he hated it and wouldn't allow me to play it on my office radio. How could anyone not like "Silent Night" or "Silver Bells" or "Greensleeves"? Maybe it was those other songs that had turned him into such a musical Grinch, songs such as "Jingle Bells" (particularly as rendered by barking dogs), "All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)," those vermin Frosty and Rudolph (and let's not forget Nestor the Christmas Donkey), and the ultimate offender, "The Twelve Days of Christmas." That's probably what did it. I suspect that when he was younger he got as far as the four calling birds before hurling the record like a discus through the nearest window.
When I was growing up, Andy Williams was considered to be the voice of Christmas cheer, with his holiday specials that always included the Osmond Brothers, who never seemed to appear anywhere else. "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" was Williams' yuletide anthem, and back then it never occurred to me that it might not be the most wonderful time of the year for everyone. That revelation would come later in life. These days, when I think of Christmas music, I think of Amy Grant, whose beautiful collections of songs and carols, not to mention her annual holiday tour, represent for me and many others the real music of the holiday. Her song "Tennessee Christmas" can make me forget I've never been there. Other Christmas songs she's recorded that I enjoy are "Breath of Heaven" (whichh Grant co-wrote) and "My Grownup Christmas List" (which she didn't write).
Besides Amy Grant's music, there are other annual favorites I always pull out, some of which are a traditional part of my present because they were part of my past. These days, my absolute favorite song is "A Baby Changes Everything," originally recorded by Faith Hill. Shivers and chills. My mandatory playlist also includes "The Chipmunk Song" (don't say a word about my Chipmunks), "River" (you really have to hear Robert Downey Jr. sing it on the Ally McBeal Christmas soundtrack -- this was back when he hadn't yet exorcised his demons, and that makes it all the more heartbreaking), Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas," Brett Williams' "My Christmas" (so hard to find it on CD, though; I was present at Calvary Chapel in Everett, Washington, when he performed it for the first time), and CDs by Ray Conniff (this is the true miracle of Christmas -- me listening to the Ray Conniff Singers), Sarah McLachlin, She and Him, the Roches, and others. (One note about Conniff -- his 1959 album Christmas with Conniff includes the very pretty song "Christmas Bride," which I always loved. Yet I've never heard it performed by any other artist, even though its authorship is "Traditional.")
I agree that the holiday has become way too commercialized. I've seen Christmas commercials as early as September (and next year perhaps on the Fourth of July). Jesus might be "the reason for the season" in other cultures, but here in the U.S. it's the newest Chia Pet. So I'm with Charlie Brown and Linus on this one. I think we're all indoctrinated at an early age (my generation took Santa sliding down a snowy hill on a Norelco shaver for granted), and it's hard to break free of all that initial brainwashing. I've learned to accept Madison Avenue's assault on our traditional values as something to be amused by and then promptly ignore. This takes practice, but it can be done.
However -- however -- there is one new wrinkle in all this commercialization that is absolutely making my blood boil, and I should have seen it coming: Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving night. Why otherwise sane Americans would risk being anywhere near a store on Black Friday itself (it seems Walmart in particular has become the new American Pamplona) beats me. But don't even tell me people are going to leave their homes on a day set aside for food, family, and football to go Christmas shopping while still in the stuporous throes of turkey-induced Tryptophan. (Actually, that's a medical myth; chicken has more Tryptophan than turkey does. What we suffer from on Thanksgiving is called "overeating.") It's bad enough that people are willing to cut short one of the most special days of the year to go shopping, but what about those poor retail employees who have to be there? I'm sure they receive some sort of extra compensation for their sacrifice (at least they'd better), but it shouldn't even have to be an option. That's beyond shameful; it's inhumane.
*** BREAKING NEWS ***
Just as I started wondering how long I could keep cranking these posts out six days a week, a friend yesterday mentioned that she was having trouble keeping up with so many. So that pretty much made my mind up for me. I'm going to cut back to just Mondays and Thursdays; that should keep my brain cells fresh. So see you next week!
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Working Out, or The Pleasures of Procrastination
Exercise is a lot like love. You meet, pledge your troth, have a long honeymoon period, and then after a while you start coming home later and later, you forget birthdays and anniversaries, and if things get bad enough you stop speaking altogether. Later on, you look at old photos and sadly remember the way it used to be.
Last June, I stepped into a thrift store fitting room to try on a shirt. I have no full-length mirrors at home, so I hadn't seen my body for a few years. I took off the shirt I was wearing, looked in the mirror, and screamed. Would I make it to the delivery room before my water broke?!
I was always the skinny kid, the one with the pet tapeworm that ate everything anyone set before it. But somewhere along the way the tapeworm moved out and left a vacant stomach behind. So who was this stranger staring back at me in the dressing room? It wasn't me. It was the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
I left the store empty-handed and got off the bus at the downtown YMCA. The front desk staff rushed me into the ICU, where I filled out a membership form before being taken through the facility to see the machines that would save my life.
(I know what you're thinking right now: "Pledge your troth?")
Long story short: in three months I lost the weight. That was the easy part. I maintained the new weight up through October, eating right and working out five or six days a week. But then came . . . The Holidays. I thought I was impervious to setbacks. I said to myself, "What's one potato chip going to do to me? Haven't I earned it? OK, now what are two going to do?" Do you have any idea how difficult it is to regain momentum after 8,628 potato chips? My holidays lasted four months because I started listening to The Little Voice Inside. You might recognize it:
"You're already home. Why go out again just to get all sweaty?"
"You've kept the weight off all this time. Have another Ding Dong."
"That's OK, you'll work out tomorrow. Well, that depends on when the big game will be televised."
I call it procrastination by rationalization. No, it isn't fun. But don't most of us do it? No matter how accomplished I might feel, picking up where I left off feels like the hardest thing in the world because I've allowed myself to stand still. Mercifully, mysteriously, I've managed to keep my weight down, even though only I work out half the time now and can't resist the occasional strawberry shake at my local Fanci Freez. But why isn't it easy anymore? I want to go back to that thrift store mirror and say, "Motivate me!" But because I now look like I'm done giving birth to triplets, there's no more urgency. I have to jump-start the momentum on my own.
Writer's block is another serious impediment to doing what I love. I sit down every day and devote a set amount of time in front of a blank notebook, scribbling down whatever brainstorms drizzle their way into my head. Some days nothing comes. That's OK. Two days? Mere child's play. But when it gets to be a week or two, I suddenly realize this has the potential to become the Berlin Wall of writer's blocks. Pacing won't help. Distracting myself with other tasks won't do it, either. Short of having Ronald Reagan come over and say, "Mr. Corvaia, tear down that wall," I feel just the way I do when I've been away from the gym for a few days -- it's becoming too comfortable not doing what I love. How can I not want to? Sometimes I think the worst word God ever invented is "complacency." How did He even know what it was? If He had been complacent, we might still be waiting around for Him to get on with the eighth day.
But then an amazing thing happens. One day the block disappears, and the next poem I write turns out to be the best poem ever produced in Western civilization. I'm telling you, the angels weep. Of course, this doesn't actually happen, but I feel as if I've climbed another rung up the ladder of creativity; I'm convinced this new poem is slightly better than anything else I've ever done. So what feels like death is really dormancy. This process usually lasts a few weeks at most. My last block, though? It lasted a year. I was almost done traversing the five stages of grief (I'd just gone from depression to acceptance -- I literally thought I would never write again, and that was OK) -- when I sat down to write a grocery list and out popped a first draft. I had to continue it on paper larger than the list sheets that stuck to my refrigerator, but there was no stopping me. I think I even wrote across the tabletop on my way from one sheet to the other because I was afraid even a pause would kill the momentum.
Although the story has two happy endings -- I liked the poem and I eventually got it placed -- my plan to be a lean, mean writing machine proved to be premature. Poems are coming out far and few between lately; each one seems to take more and more effort. Plus, I don't like the new stuff very much. That first poem set the bar high, and, except for rare blessings like that, I'm easily disappointed.
So, while it sounds like I'm shifting topics here, I'm really not. Exercise is a lot like writing. Either we keep going, or we learn to tell the difference between speed bumps and Berlin Walls. In fact, writing is a lot like love, too. (Not really. I was just going for a syllogism.)
Last June, I stepped into a thrift store fitting room to try on a shirt. I have no full-length mirrors at home, so I hadn't seen my body for a few years. I took off the shirt I was wearing, looked in the mirror, and screamed. Would I make it to the delivery room before my water broke?!
I was always the skinny kid, the one with the pet tapeworm that ate everything anyone set before it. But somewhere along the way the tapeworm moved out and left a vacant stomach behind. So who was this stranger staring back at me in the dressing room? It wasn't me. It was the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
I left the store empty-handed and got off the bus at the downtown YMCA. The front desk staff rushed me into the ICU, where I filled out a membership form before being taken through the facility to see the machines that would save my life.
(I know what you're thinking right now: "Pledge your troth?")
Long story short: in three months I lost the weight. That was the easy part. I maintained the new weight up through October, eating right and working out five or six days a week. But then came . . . The Holidays. I thought I was impervious to setbacks. I said to myself, "What's one potato chip going to do to me? Haven't I earned it? OK, now what are two going to do?" Do you have any idea how difficult it is to regain momentum after 8,628 potato chips? My holidays lasted four months because I started listening to The Little Voice Inside. You might recognize it:
"You're already home. Why go out again just to get all sweaty?"
"You've kept the weight off all this time. Have another Ding Dong."
"That's OK, you'll work out tomorrow. Well, that depends on when the big game will be televised."
I call it procrastination by rationalization. No, it isn't fun. But don't most of us do it? No matter how accomplished I might feel, picking up where I left off feels like the hardest thing in the world because I've allowed myself to stand still. Mercifully, mysteriously, I've managed to keep my weight down, even though only I work out half the time now and can't resist the occasional strawberry shake at my local Fanci Freez. But why isn't it easy anymore? I want to go back to that thrift store mirror and say, "Motivate me!" But because I now look like I'm done giving birth to triplets, there's no more urgency. I have to jump-start the momentum on my own.
Writer's block is another serious impediment to doing what I love. I sit down every day and devote a set amount of time in front of a blank notebook, scribbling down whatever brainstorms drizzle their way into my head. Some days nothing comes. That's OK. Two days? Mere child's play. But when it gets to be a week or two, I suddenly realize this has the potential to become the Berlin Wall of writer's blocks. Pacing won't help. Distracting myself with other tasks won't do it, either. Short of having Ronald Reagan come over and say, "Mr. Corvaia, tear down that wall," I feel just the way I do when I've been away from the gym for a few days -- it's becoming too comfortable not doing what I love. How can I not want to? Sometimes I think the worst word God ever invented is "complacency." How did He even know what it was? If He had been complacent, we might still be waiting around for Him to get on with the eighth day.
But then an amazing thing happens. One day the block disappears, and the next poem I write turns out to be the best poem ever produced in Western civilization. I'm telling you, the angels weep. Of course, this doesn't actually happen, but I feel as if I've climbed another rung up the ladder of creativity; I'm convinced this new poem is slightly better than anything else I've ever done. So what feels like death is really dormancy. This process usually lasts a few weeks at most. My last block, though? It lasted a year. I was almost done traversing the five stages of grief (I'd just gone from depression to acceptance -- I literally thought I would never write again, and that was OK) -- when I sat down to write a grocery list and out popped a first draft. I had to continue it on paper larger than the list sheets that stuck to my refrigerator, but there was no stopping me. I think I even wrote across the tabletop on my way from one sheet to the other because I was afraid even a pause would kill the momentum.
Although the story has two happy endings -- I liked the poem and I eventually got it placed -- my plan to be a lean, mean writing machine proved to be premature. Poems are coming out far and few between lately; each one seems to take more and more effort. Plus, I don't like the new stuff very much. That first poem set the bar high, and, except for rare blessings like that, I'm easily disappointed.
So, while it sounds like I'm shifting topics here, I'm really not. Exercise is a lot like writing. Either we keep going, or we learn to tell the difference between speed bumps and Berlin Walls. In fact, writing is a lot like love, too. (Not really. I was just going for a syllogism.)
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Restaurants I Have Known and Loved (a sequel)
Yesterday I wrote about the fast food restaurants of my youth while growing up in Miami. But that was 44 years ago, and I've eaten a few meals since then. Hence, a sequel (and, as sequels like to say, This Time It's Personal).
I'm not quite finished with Miami:
Florida is of course known for its seafood. But my family, which, as I wrote yesterday, moved there from New Jersey when we were all pretty young, never caught on to that. The only seafood I ate at home came from a can. Maybe twice in 15 years, my parents treated visiting relatives from up north to dinner at a seafood restaurant. My sister and I came along, of course, so that our cousins wouldn't be bored stiff. But afterwards, my mother never said to my father, "Hey, remember that lobster we had that time? Why don't you pick up a few on your way home?" It just never became an acquired taste, for any of us. I had my first shrimp when I was 20; it opened a whole new world.
I had my first deep dish pizza at My Pi, which opened during the 1970s in Sunny Isles. I thought it was strange and exotic, but once I moved to New Jersey, I learned that a slice of hot New York pizza is the only way to go.
New Jersey/New York:
As I mentioned yesterday, I got my fill of White Castle burgers during the four years I lived there. But for hot dogs, the place to be was Nathan's Famous. On the streets of Manhattan, you could stop at any Sabrett sidewalk stand for a decent dog, but Nathan's Famous was the filet mignon of wieners, and Nathan's in Times Square was the place to be. Many times I sat in the window watching the flotsam and jetsam of what was midtown New York in the 1970s as I savored a frank and those legendary fries. It was one of those places I never thought would vanish, like the Bleecker Street Cinema and Tower Records, but it turned out that nothing was forever, not even disco. (Well, we were pretty happy about that.)
But that was just one side of the river. It surprised me how many Garden State residents refused to cross over to the Dark Side that was New York City. For them, there was only one place in New Jersey to go for a true, all-American meal. They went to the diner. Any diner, actually. You've probably been to one almost wherever you are, or likely a facsimile of one. The original diners were prefab structures, many of which had a stainless steel exterior. They stayed open late. Their laminated menus did not include sushi. It was the place for almost anything -- lovers' assignations, late-night kibitzing with the gang, reunions, even funeral parties. I once accompanied a large family as they made a beeline for the nearest diner following a relative's burial service. Diners fit any mood and serve any purpose (including eating). Don't be fooled by imitations.
Kansas:
When most people who've never been there think of Kansas, they think of The Wizard of Oz. When I think of Kansas, I think of In Cold Blood. Different strokes, I guess. But where food is involved, most native Kansans probably think the same thing: chicken fried steak. It was difficult to avoid in any town you went to, and who'd want to try? It was great for breakfast with biscuits and gravy, great for dinner with mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. So what if every time you pulled up to a restaurant, your arteries began acting like a dog going to the vet? It was worth the risk. One of the best places for chicken fried steak in Wichita (all my favorite Kansas meals were in Wichita) was the Cowboy, where they cut off your necktie if you walked in wearing one. The Cowboy closed before the 1980s ended, though, probably because the whole country was moving toward healthier eating. I'm sure that's why Grandy's must have gone under. Grandy's was a popular chain best known for its generous country breakfasts. It was fast food, but you sure couldn't eat it fast. People probably stopped going when they realized it was cheaper just to inject Crisco into their veins.
If I should ever find myself on Death Row for some silly reason (still stuck on In Cold Blood, I guess), I know what I want my last meal to be: a chicken salad sandwich from downtown Wichita's Old Mill Tasty Shop. It's just over 80 years old and still has the original lunch counter. The shakes are to die for, but it's the chicken salad that makes me wish I'd never moved away. I once pestered the owner for the recipe, but she handed me a menu instead. My favorite employee was Gale, who was an Old Mill veteran with an eternally sunny disposition and who always wore a button that said, "Why Be Normal?" Getting seated at lunchtime was a challenge; there are plenty of booths and tables, but the place really does need more space. That being said, though, I wouldn't change a thing. (Once, years later, I wrote to ask if they could ship me a chicken salad sandwich. The owner mailed me a menu instead.)
I should mention Spangles, just your basic burger chain that originated in Wichita and expanded to include many locations throughout south central Kansas. I mention it because I lived there when the first store opened, and in the months preceding that grand event, the owners held a citywide contest to see who could come up with the best name for it. The woman who came up with Spangles won free meals for a year for, I'm not certain anymore, probably at least a year. I remember thinking it should have been for life.
Washington:
I've never had a geoduck (pronounced "gooey-duck"), but apparently people ate them in Western Washington. (Nobody I knew, but certainly someone.) They're clams, but how they fit into the clamshell I haven't a clue. The geoduck looks like -- there's no getting around it -- an elephant schlong. I've never seen an elephant schlong, but I'm willing to bet there's a resemblance. Google some images and see if you don't agree. My friends and I did that at a party recently, and it was all we could do -- all of us trying to be good Christians -- to refrain from saying what we were thinking. Hysterical laughter ensued instead.
If you're looking for a good steak, the Metropolitan in Seattle is pricey but outstanding. I prefer Daniel's Broiler, which is in Seattle but there's also one in downtown Bellevue, on the other side of Lake Washington (the area known as the Eastside). It's pricey but outstanding -- and also the best steak I've ever eaten. I loved that steak. I wanted to marry it and take it on a cruise.
Being on the Pacific Rim, the region has a large Japanese population, and what I liked best about Seattle and the Eastside was the proliferation of teriyaki restaurants. I acquired an insatiable appetite for it and must have ordered teriyaki chicken with white rice (hold the veggies) at least once a week for 14 years. If you're ever on the Eastside, visit Teriyaki Madness in Kirkland. Not only is it delicious, but the portions are so large that I'm still working on a dinner I ordered in 2004.
Maine:
I'm almost 62 and still can't negotiate a lobster. (Yes, after 19 years in Florida, I finally had lobster.) I mean all the pulling and the twisting and trying to use that nutcracker thing. The one time I finally figured it out, the paucity of meat wasn't worth the month I spent in physical therapy. Mainers love them, though, like most seafood aficionados. I took the easy route and ate lobster rolls instead. Lobster rolls are sandwiches filled with lobster meat, soaked -- soaked -- in butter and slathered -- slathered! -- in mayonnaise. When you order one, you might as well just scrape half of it onto your lap, since that's where it's going to end up anyway.
Idaho:
So far, I can only vouch for Idaho cuisine here in Boise, my latest hometown. You have no idea how happy I was to come here from Maine and find Yokozuna Teriyaki after five years of deprivation in the Northeast. It's easily as good as the teriyaki in Washington. Once a month or so, I walk to their downtown location and order my usual -- chicken teriyaki with white rice (hold the veggies) -- then sit in their window overlooking 8th Street and read a book or watch the passersby.
Chandler's is the most expensive steakhouse in Boise and possibly the whole state. In order to eat there, I'd need a couple of friends to cash out their 401(k)'s. That would take care of dessert.
Finally, Black Bear Restaurant specializes in large portions. It's so named because not even a black bear could finish a meal there. You're guaranteed to bring home leftovers, but you'll need two people to haul the takeout box to your car.
I'm not quite finished with Miami:
Florida is of course known for its seafood. But my family, which, as I wrote yesterday, moved there from New Jersey when we were all pretty young, never caught on to that. The only seafood I ate at home came from a can. Maybe twice in 15 years, my parents treated visiting relatives from up north to dinner at a seafood restaurant. My sister and I came along, of course, so that our cousins wouldn't be bored stiff. But afterwards, my mother never said to my father, "Hey, remember that lobster we had that time? Why don't you pick up a few on your way home?" It just never became an acquired taste, for any of us. I had my first shrimp when I was 20; it opened a whole new world.
I had my first deep dish pizza at My Pi, which opened during the 1970s in Sunny Isles. I thought it was strange and exotic, but once I moved to New Jersey, I learned that a slice of hot New York pizza is the only way to go.
New Jersey/New York:
As I mentioned yesterday, I got my fill of White Castle burgers during the four years I lived there. But for hot dogs, the place to be was Nathan's Famous. On the streets of Manhattan, you could stop at any Sabrett sidewalk stand for a decent dog, but Nathan's Famous was the filet mignon of wieners, and Nathan's in Times Square was the place to be. Many times I sat in the window watching the flotsam and jetsam of what was midtown New York in the 1970s as I savored a frank and those legendary fries. It was one of those places I never thought would vanish, like the Bleecker Street Cinema and Tower Records, but it turned out that nothing was forever, not even disco. (Well, we were pretty happy about that.)
But that was just one side of the river. It surprised me how many Garden State residents refused to cross over to the Dark Side that was New York City. For them, there was only one place in New Jersey to go for a true, all-American meal. They went to the diner. Any diner, actually. You've probably been to one almost wherever you are, or likely a facsimile of one. The original diners were prefab structures, many of which had a stainless steel exterior. They stayed open late. Their laminated menus did not include sushi. It was the place for almost anything -- lovers' assignations, late-night kibitzing with the gang, reunions, even funeral parties. I once accompanied a large family as they made a beeline for the nearest diner following a relative's burial service. Diners fit any mood and serve any purpose (including eating). Don't be fooled by imitations.
Kansas:
When most people who've never been there think of Kansas, they think of The Wizard of Oz. When I think of Kansas, I think of In Cold Blood. Different strokes, I guess. But where food is involved, most native Kansans probably think the same thing: chicken fried steak. It was difficult to avoid in any town you went to, and who'd want to try? It was great for breakfast with biscuits and gravy, great for dinner with mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. So what if every time you pulled up to a restaurant, your arteries began acting like a dog going to the vet? It was worth the risk. One of the best places for chicken fried steak in Wichita (all my favorite Kansas meals were in Wichita) was the Cowboy, where they cut off your necktie if you walked in wearing one. The Cowboy closed before the 1980s ended, though, probably because the whole country was moving toward healthier eating. I'm sure that's why Grandy's must have gone under. Grandy's was a popular chain best known for its generous country breakfasts. It was fast food, but you sure couldn't eat it fast. People probably stopped going when they realized it was cheaper just to inject Crisco into their veins.
If I should ever find myself on Death Row for some silly reason (still stuck on In Cold Blood, I guess), I know what I want my last meal to be: a chicken salad sandwich from downtown Wichita's Old Mill Tasty Shop. It's just over 80 years old and still has the original lunch counter. The shakes are to die for, but it's the chicken salad that makes me wish I'd never moved away. I once pestered the owner for the recipe, but she handed me a menu instead. My favorite employee was Gale, who was an Old Mill veteran with an eternally sunny disposition and who always wore a button that said, "Why Be Normal?" Getting seated at lunchtime was a challenge; there are plenty of booths and tables, but the place really does need more space. That being said, though, I wouldn't change a thing. (Once, years later, I wrote to ask if they could ship me a chicken salad sandwich. The owner mailed me a menu instead.)
I should mention Spangles, just your basic burger chain that originated in Wichita and expanded to include many locations throughout south central Kansas. I mention it because I lived there when the first store opened, and in the months preceding that grand event, the owners held a citywide contest to see who could come up with the best name for it. The woman who came up with Spangles won free meals for a year for, I'm not certain anymore, probably at least a year. I remember thinking it should have been for life.
Washington:
I've never had a geoduck (pronounced "gooey-duck"), but apparently people ate them in Western Washington. (Nobody I knew, but certainly someone.) They're clams, but how they fit into the clamshell I haven't a clue. The geoduck looks like -- there's no getting around it -- an elephant schlong. I've never seen an elephant schlong, but I'm willing to bet there's a resemblance. Google some images and see if you don't agree. My friends and I did that at a party recently, and it was all we could do -- all of us trying to be good Christians -- to refrain from saying what we were thinking. Hysterical laughter ensued instead.
If you're looking for a good steak, the Metropolitan in Seattle is pricey but outstanding. I prefer Daniel's Broiler, which is in Seattle but there's also one in downtown Bellevue, on the other side of Lake Washington (the area known as the Eastside). It's pricey but outstanding -- and also the best steak I've ever eaten. I loved that steak. I wanted to marry it and take it on a cruise.
Being on the Pacific Rim, the region has a large Japanese population, and what I liked best about Seattle and the Eastside was the proliferation of teriyaki restaurants. I acquired an insatiable appetite for it and must have ordered teriyaki chicken with white rice (hold the veggies) at least once a week for 14 years. If you're ever on the Eastside, visit Teriyaki Madness in Kirkland. Not only is it delicious, but the portions are so large that I'm still working on a dinner I ordered in 2004.
Maine:
I'm almost 62 and still can't negotiate a lobster. (Yes, after 19 years in Florida, I finally had lobster.) I mean all the pulling and the twisting and trying to use that nutcracker thing. The one time I finally figured it out, the paucity of meat wasn't worth the month I spent in physical therapy. Mainers love them, though, like most seafood aficionados. I took the easy route and ate lobster rolls instead. Lobster rolls are sandwiches filled with lobster meat, soaked -- soaked -- in butter and slathered -- slathered! -- in mayonnaise. When you order one, you might as well just scrape half of it onto your lap, since that's where it's going to end up anyway.
Idaho:
So far, I can only vouch for Idaho cuisine here in Boise, my latest hometown. You have no idea how happy I was to come here from Maine and find Yokozuna Teriyaki after five years of deprivation in the Northeast. It's easily as good as the teriyaki in Washington. Once a month or so, I walk to their downtown location and order my usual -- chicken teriyaki with white rice (hold the veggies) -- then sit in their window overlooking 8th Street and read a book or watch the passersby.
Chandler's is the most expensive steakhouse in Boise and possibly the whole state. In order to eat there, I'd need a couple of friends to cash out their 401(k)'s. That would take care of dessert.
Finally, Black Bear Restaurant specializes in large portions. It's so named because not even a black bear could finish a meal there. You're guaranteed to bring home leftovers, but you'll need two people to haul the takeout box to your car.
Monday, April 20, 2015
Memories of Fast Food
Boise, Idaho, has its innumerable charms, but there's one thing it doesn't have -- a White Castle. Nevertheless, I suppose I'll go on living here if I have to.
Growing up in Miami, I'd never heard of White Castle, but we did have its tropical knockoff, Royal Castle. Both chains were much the same, the chief feature being sliders, those miniature burgers with the pickles, the grilled onions, and the soft, soft buns. I believe, though I'm no longer certain, that each patty had five holes in it, like its northern counterpart, so that it would cook faster and wouldn't have to be flipped over. But Royal Castle had one thing White Castle didn't -- birch beer. The champagne of soda, nectar of the gods. It was like root beer, only it wasn't. I'm amazed that I've never seen it sold anywhere else in the country. If you've seen it, please let me know where and what their shipping address is.
The term "sliders" was originally a derogatory term. So was "belly bombers." The two chains eventually capitulated and made "sliders" part of their business vernacular. ("Belly bombers" never did catch on.) These days, many restaurants offer "sliders" on their menus, but most of the ones I've tried are just your basic ground beef cooked the way any other hamburger would be made. The magic is gone. So are Royal Castles. In fact, only one remains today (or did as of last year), on 79th Street in Miami. It should be declared a historical landmark and birch beer placed on a list of endangered species.
Miami was also the birthplace of "the king on the bun," Burger King. My sister's first job was at a Burger King; I think she might still have her name tag. The jingle went, "It takes two hands to handle a Whopper," and when I was a kid it was certainly true for me, anyway. Burger Kings were everywhere; I don't know when McDonald's first appeared, but I was in high school before I ever saw one. Burger King was the first restaurant down there to encourage patrons to "have it your way." I often did -- I went to Royal Castle.
In the early 1960s, we had a drive-in restaurant at the end of our block called the Majorette. This was a holdover from the previous decade, when carhops wore roller skates and you had to lower your windows halfway so trays could be hooked onto them. When we were in first grade, my best friend Mike and I had never had tasted French fries. So one day we pooled our lunch money and bought one small order of fries from the Majorette on our way home from school. My parents weren't home yet, so we sat on the steps in front of the apartment and savored our first bites. I remember they were a little bit crispy and a whole lot salty. Mike immediately encouraged his mother to buy big bags of crinkly fries to keep in the freezer, and the two of us gorged ourselves on them whenever I spent the night there.
Like many cities nationwide, Miami was blessed with Woolworth's lunch counters. My favorite was downtown on Flagler Street. It was actually called Woolworth's 5&10, as in you could actually buy a few things for five and ten cents. It was more than a drug store and less than a department store, but the lunch counter was its true claim to fame. Their hamburgers were notes for their sublime greasiness. The fries, like the buns, had a nice crispiness to them. The counters were amazingly long, and the tireless waitresses, who worked hard and looked as if 40 were the new 80, must have put in a few miles each day. Unfortunately, the kitchen windows weren't nearly as long as the counters, so the waitresses often had to shout your order for the cook to hear. I imagine pedestrians on Flagler must have wondered what the racket was about.
A local restaurant chain called Lum's was famous for its hot dogs steamed in beer. That might not sound appealing, but you'd be surprised. One of its managers, a man named Hal, opened his own restaurant in North Miami Beach and called it Hal's Mug 'n Munch. He served hot dogs and fries in the same red plastic dishes as Lum's, and I think he had a few other things Lum's did as well. I'm sure he came by them honestly, but I never wanted to ask. (His dogs weren't steamed in beer; Lum's surely must have had a patent on that.) My first job was at the Mug 'n' Munch, working in the kitchen. Hal was, oh, how to put this gently . . . parsimonious? I earned a dollar an hour and, after a year or so, had to pledge my future firstborn child to get a twenty-five cent raise. But he was a great guy, and he never forgot me. Four years after I'd left Miami to join the Navy, I dropped by the Mug 'n Munch when I returned home. He was elated to see me, and he served me a Coke while we stood on either side of the counter and recalled old times. Good old Hal. If he hadn't charged me for the soda, I would have been disappointed.
Because my parents both worked, we had a catering service deliver suppers to our door, which whoever got home first would find on the outside steps. They came in stacked tins, and the food was still hot when my mother opened them on the kitchen counter. It wasn't a bad meal, but the menu got old pretty quickly, and some of the selections were less than stellar. (To this day, my sister won't go near candied yams.) But on those weeknights when we felt like a change, the four of us would eat dinner at Walgreen's, which had a small dining area in those days. I wouldn't exactly call what they served fast food, but, like meals at Woolworth's, you ate quickly because the noisy retail environment discouraged leisurely dining.
In North Miami Beach, we had a Coney Island, part of the Northeast chain of outdoor fast food restaurants. Coney Island sold egg creams, which I had avoided all those years until my friend Rich insisted I have one went I returned for a visit in the mid-1980s. Just the sound of it -- "egg" and "cream" -- conjured up all kinds of unsavory associations. But it turned out to be delicious. It had nothing to do with either eggs or cream; instead, it was milk, soda water, and chocolate syrup whipped together to create a kind of fizzy confection. If it had only been called "chocolate surprise" or something alluring like that, I'd have been drinking them all those years.
Ultimately, though, when my sister and I recall our favorite childhood restaurants, one place stands high above the rest, even Royal Castle. It was Fun Fair, a long since defunct outdoor fast food emporium located along the Biscayne Causeway between Miami Beach and the city. After a day at the ocean, the four of us would stop by there in our bathing suits on the way home. My mother and sister would wait at one of the picnic tables under the large covered patio while my father and I ordered at the counter. I always got a foot-long hot dog. It's funny how some sensations stay with you. I can still taste that hot dog today, the juiciness inside, the slightly overcooked skin outside. When we were finished eating, my sister and I would climb on a few mechanical rides in back. I do believe that sometimes she and I went along to the beach with our parents just so we could stop at Fun Fair at the end of the day.
I began this post by mentioning White Castle. When I moved from Florida to New Jersey in 1977, White Castles became my new go-to place for comfort food. One of them was just half a block from where I was living, and sometimes late on a Saturday night I would walk over for six burgers and a large order of fries, then bring the sack home ("Buy 'em by the sack") and eat while watching Saturday Night Live. It wasn't the same without birch beer, though; even the flavor of the burgers wasn't quite the same as the sliders I grew up on. The employees served you through an opening in wire mesh that protected them from crime, and the parking lots were scavenged by pigeons instead of seagulls. But the stomach aches were still the same, and after eating that late, I had all night long to remember those candied yams and the first French fry I ever tasted.
Tomorrow: Restaurants I Have Known and Loved (a sequel)
Growing up in Miami, I'd never heard of White Castle, but we did have its tropical knockoff, Royal Castle. Both chains were much the same, the chief feature being sliders, those miniature burgers with the pickles, the grilled onions, and the soft, soft buns. I believe, though I'm no longer certain, that each patty had five holes in it, like its northern counterpart, so that it would cook faster and wouldn't have to be flipped over. But Royal Castle had one thing White Castle didn't -- birch beer. The champagne of soda, nectar of the gods. It was like root beer, only it wasn't. I'm amazed that I've never seen it sold anywhere else in the country. If you've seen it, please let me know where and what their shipping address is.
The term "sliders" was originally a derogatory term. So was "belly bombers." The two chains eventually capitulated and made "sliders" part of their business vernacular. ("Belly bombers" never did catch on.) These days, many restaurants offer "sliders" on their menus, but most of the ones I've tried are just your basic ground beef cooked the way any other hamburger would be made. The magic is gone. So are Royal Castles. In fact, only one remains today (or did as of last year), on 79th Street in Miami. It should be declared a historical landmark and birch beer placed on a list of endangered species.
Miami was also the birthplace of "the king on the bun," Burger King. My sister's first job was at a Burger King; I think she might still have her name tag. The jingle went, "It takes two hands to handle a Whopper," and when I was a kid it was certainly true for me, anyway. Burger Kings were everywhere; I don't know when McDonald's first appeared, but I was in high school before I ever saw one. Burger King was the first restaurant down there to encourage patrons to "have it your way." I often did -- I went to Royal Castle.
In the early 1960s, we had a drive-in restaurant at the end of our block called the Majorette. This was a holdover from the previous decade, when carhops wore roller skates and you had to lower your windows halfway so trays could be hooked onto them. When we were in first grade, my best friend Mike and I had never had tasted French fries. So one day we pooled our lunch money and bought one small order of fries from the Majorette on our way home from school. My parents weren't home yet, so we sat on the steps in front of the apartment and savored our first bites. I remember they were a little bit crispy and a whole lot salty. Mike immediately encouraged his mother to buy big bags of crinkly fries to keep in the freezer, and the two of us gorged ourselves on them whenever I spent the night there.
Like many cities nationwide, Miami was blessed with Woolworth's lunch counters. My favorite was downtown on Flagler Street. It was actually called Woolworth's 5&10, as in you could actually buy a few things for five and ten cents. It was more than a drug store and less than a department store, but the lunch counter was its true claim to fame. Their hamburgers were notes for their sublime greasiness. The fries, like the buns, had a nice crispiness to them. The counters were amazingly long, and the tireless waitresses, who worked hard and looked as if 40 were the new 80, must have put in a few miles each day. Unfortunately, the kitchen windows weren't nearly as long as the counters, so the waitresses often had to shout your order for the cook to hear. I imagine pedestrians on Flagler must have wondered what the racket was about.
A local restaurant chain called Lum's was famous for its hot dogs steamed in beer. That might not sound appealing, but you'd be surprised. One of its managers, a man named Hal, opened his own restaurant in North Miami Beach and called it Hal's Mug 'n Munch. He served hot dogs and fries in the same red plastic dishes as Lum's, and I think he had a few other things Lum's did as well. I'm sure he came by them honestly, but I never wanted to ask. (His dogs weren't steamed in beer; Lum's surely must have had a patent on that.) My first job was at the Mug 'n' Munch, working in the kitchen. Hal was, oh, how to put this gently . . . parsimonious? I earned a dollar an hour and, after a year or so, had to pledge my future firstborn child to get a twenty-five cent raise. But he was a great guy, and he never forgot me. Four years after I'd left Miami to join the Navy, I dropped by the Mug 'n Munch when I returned home. He was elated to see me, and he served me a Coke while we stood on either side of the counter and recalled old times. Good old Hal. If he hadn't charged me for the soda, I would have been disappointed.
Because my parents both worked, we had a catering service deliver suppers to our door, which whoever got home first would find on the outside steps. They came in stacked tins, and the food was still hot when my mother opened them on the kitchen counter. It wasn't a bad meal, but the menu got old pretty quickly, and some of the selections were less than stellar. (To this day, my sister won't go near candied yams.) But on those weeknights when we felt like a change, the four of us would eat dinner at Walgreen's, which had a small dining area in those days. I wouldn't exactly call what they served fast food, but, like meals at Woolworth's, you ate quickly because the noisy retail environment discouraged leisurely dining.
In North Miami Beach, we had a Coney Island, part of the Northeast chain of outdoor fast food restaurants. Coney Island sold egg creams, which I had avoided all those years until my friend Rich insisted I have one went I returned for a visit in the mid-1980s. Just the sound of it -- "egg" and "cream" -- conjured up all kinds of unsavory associations. But it turned out to be delicious. It had nothing to do with either eggs or cream; instead, it was milk, soda water, and chocolate syrup whipped together to create a kind of fizzy confection. If it had only been called "chocolate surprise" or something alluring like that, I'd have been drinking them all those years.
Ultimately, though, when my sister and I recall our favorite childhood restaurants, one place stands high above the rest, even Royal Castle. It was Fun Fair, a long since defunct outdoor fast food emporium located along the Biscayne Causeway between Miami Beach and the city. After a day at the ocean, the four of us would stop by there in our bathing suits on the way home. My mother and sister would wait at one of the picnic tables under the large covered patio while my father and I ordered at the counter. I always got a foot-long hot dog. It's funny how some sensations stay with you. I can still taste that hot dog today, the juiciness inside, the slightly overcooked skin outside. When we were finished eating, my sister and I would climb on a few mechanical rides in back. I do believe that sometimes she and I went along to the beach with our parents just so we could stop at Fun Fair at the end of the day.
I began this post by mentioning White Castle. When I moved from Florida to New Jersey in 1977, White Castles became my new go-to place for comfort food. One of them was just half a block from where I was living, and sometimes late on a Saturday night I would walk over for six burgers and a large order of fries, then bring the sack home ("Buy 'em by the sack") and eat while watching Saturday Night Live. It wasn't the same without birch beer, though; even the flavor of the burgers wasn't quite the same as the sliders I grew up on. The employees served you through an opening in wire mesh that protected them from crime, and the parking lots were scavenged by pigeons instead of seagulls. But the stomach aches were still the same, and after eating that late, I had all night long to remember those candied yams and the first French fry I ever tasted.
Tomorrow: Restaurants I Have Known and Loved (a sequel)
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Coppertone Days
When I went to grade school in Miami and wanted to write, I didn't think I had anything interesting to say about where I lived. I just assumed it was all palm trees and cocoanuts everywhere you went. It took finally moving away and looking back to see how different living there was, especially Miami Beach. That's where I developed my first crush.
She was tall, much taller than I was, taller even than my parents. I would see her as we crossed the 79th Street Causeway from Miami going east. If I remember correctly, she greeted us on the roof of a motel just as we passed over the second drawbridge and arrived in the city, leaving Biscayne Bay behind. She always greeted us with the same message: “Tan . . . Don't Burn. Use Coppertone!' She was blond, about my age, and always wore a bikini that a little black dog was pulling down from behind. She was motorized, so her bikini bottom was forever going up and down, revealing the pale flesh that was the point of the billboard. It was my first sight of a girl's rear end. I was smitten.
My father had uprooted my mother, my sister, and me from New Jersey in 1958 and followed in the wake of his parents, who had already settled in Miami, where his father opened a shoe repair shop. All my mother's relatives were in Jersey, all her brothers and sisters, all my sister's and my cousins. Snow was in Jersey. My mother loved snow. She never forgave my father for moving us away. Maybe that was why she took to the beach so easily. Maybe there she could be mistaken for just another tourist, someone for whom Up North was still home.
We crossed Biscayne Bay as a family often in those days, always on weekends because my parents both worked. No matter how many times we went, my sister and I would always grow giddy with excitement as we climbed in the back seat of the blue Impala with our plastic pails and shovels. I was around ten, Terry five. The Coppertone girl with her little peep show was my mother's signal for everyone to roll down our windows and let the car fill with the smell of salt and brine.
My father angle-parked in front of the low sea wall that separated the beach from the sidewalk. (Many years later, Hurricane Andrew would separate the sea wall from existence.) We didn't call our shoes thongs or flip-flops then. They were simply "rubber shoes." I never understood why we had to put them on before climbing over the wall -- the sand was scorching, and they provided no protection as we tried to run and hop simultaneously to whatever spot our parents picked out. But our mom was insistent.
My parents spent the next six hours lying on a blanket under their beach umbrella, except for very brief forays into the surf. I never understood this. What was the point of being there if you weren't going to swim all day? But some days we didn't swim at all. On those days, the sand at the water's edge would be strewn with dead pink or blue jellyfish, or streaks of black tar, or an endless rope of seaweed, and we knew the water would be the same way. At least once, a shark sighting kept us dry. But even once the shark had been led back out to sea, my day was as good as over, and Terry and I resigned ourselves to making little pail-shaped mounds around our parents' blanket.
When we got back to the door of our apartment, our mother always instructed us to remove our shoes outside, and then, just one of us at a time, run through the living room and into the bathroom, where we removed our suits in the tub. Sand in her house was as serious as bedbugs (which we never had because they were terrified of her). First Terry would run, then me, then our parents, who I think just walked. A few days later, our new tans would begin to flake, and the four of us would take turns peeling the long strips of skin from one another's backs like some sort of zombie grooming ritual.
One day, when the shoreline was yet again littered with ocean debris, my parents decided it was no longer worth the drive just to have to turn around and go back home. That's when my father got the idea of taking us to a motel and not checking in.
The Sandy Shores was farther up the beach, all the way to Sunny Isles. (Our beach was around 71st Street, and the motel was just past 167th.) It was your basic two-story oceanfront motel, with a pool deck overlooking the ocean and rows of chaise longues overlooking the pool. We made ourselves at home out there as if we were residents. I think that's where my mother most felt like a tourist. She parked herself on a chaise and lit a cigarette. Terry parked herself in the shallow end of the pool while I jumped into the deep end. I still wore my plastic Treasure Island inner tube, though; I didn't think I was ready for swimming lessons. My father, meanwhile, spent more time in the pool than he had in the surf. Maybe he didn't like the turbulence of waves, or maybe he was just into chlorine.
I'm certain a Miami Beach motel experience today is nothing like it was in 1963, and I don't just mean the rates. The manager, overweight with a big cigar, a northern accent, and always grinning, spent time out on the deck, greeting everyone and welcoming us to buy drinks (soda for the kids) at the outdoor pool bar when it opened at noon. At 3:00, when Terry and I were buzzed from caffeine and the adults were liquored up, the manager would come back outside to clear everyone from the pool. Then in a stentorious voice he would turn into a ringmaster and announce the arrival of the motel's clown-in-residence (whose name is on the tip of my tongue, where it's been for 50 years and drives me crazy), who would do a special act on the diving board just for us. I have no idea whether this was standard fare for other motels, maybe so. This clown, who resembled Bozo, spent the next fifteen minutes pretending he was afraid to jump. The kids howled with laughter. (This was long before Stephen King turned clowns into horrific nightmare figures.) Their parents laughed appreciatively. When he finally plunged in as if by accident, he got a great round of applause, climbed onto the side of the pool, and skipped merrily into the building.
For Terry and me, the clown was nothing compared to the next attraction -- hamburgers and hot dogs. They were free, too, which was my father's favorite part. The manager and a helper set up a grill beside the rear wall that separated us from the beach. The men lined up with paper plates in hand (the women waited on their chaises) and their children jumped back into the water, frolicking even more than before because now lunch was coming. I stood with my father because he needed help carrying the four plates. I thought nothing of what we were doing. The food was free for the guests; we were guests; ergo, the food was free for us. Ethics didn't play into it (or into my head at that age, either). Besides, whatever our father did had to be OK. I mean, he was our father, right?
The Sandy Shores became our home away from home for the next year, maybe two. It was where my mother, sitting up sideways on her chaise one morning, burst my inner tube with her cigarette and said that if a clown could swim, so could I. (I did, eventually. Who wanted to be shamed by a clown?) It was where Terry screwed up the courage to move to the deep end, but always holding on to the side of the pool and wearing the football-shaped float strapped to her back. It was where something happened I would never forget.
Just before we left the motel for the last time, the faux Bozo finished his act, and the manager rolled his grill out to the wall. My father and I got in line as usual. But when there were only three or four men ahead of us, we both noticed something. Each of them was holding a room key out for the manager to see before receiving his food. This was something new. It meant we didn't belong there.
We gathered our things and walked back to the car. On the drive out to the causeway, I thought hard about what had just happened. My father had been wrong to bring us there, and he must have known it. So the four of us had been trespassing all this time. My mother must have known it, too. This was going to take a major reassessment on my part; all I knew at that moment was that I was confused and, in a way that would only become clear in the coming days, crushed. A seismic shift had taken place in my journey toward adulthood -- I was learning not to trust.
I would spend much of my remaining youth hanging out on Miami Beach with friends, but this part was over. Just as we approached the causeway for the last time as a family, I turned around to look through the back window at my favorite billboard. The Coppertone girl's motorized bikini bottom was waving goodbye.
When we got back to the door of our apartment, our mother always instructed us to remove our shoes outside, and then, just one of us at a time, run through the living room and into the bathroom, where we removed our suits in the tub. Sand in her house was as serious as bedbugs (which we never had because they were terrified of her). First Terry would run, then me, then our parents, who I think just walked. A few days later, our new tans would begin to flake, and the four of us would take turns peeling the long strips of skin from one another's backs like some sort of zombie grooming ritual.
One day, when the shoreline was yet again littered with ocean debris, my parents decided it was no longer worth the drive just to have to turn around and go back home. That's when my father got the idea of taking us to a motel and not checking in.
The Sandy Shores was farther up the beach, all the way to Sunny Isles. (Our beach was around 71st Street, and the motel was just past 167th.) It was your basic two-story oceanfront motel, with a pool deck overlooking the ocean and rows of chaise longues overlooking the pool. We made ourselves at home out there as if we were residents. I think that's where my mother most felt like a tourist. She parked herself on a chaise and lit a cigarette. Terry parked herself in the shallow end of the pool while I jumped into the deep end. I still wore my plastic Treasure Island inner tube, though; I didn't think I was ready for swimming lessons. My father, meanwhile, spent more time in the pool than he had in the surf. Maybe he didn't like the turbulence of waves, or maybe he was just into chlorine.
I'm certain a Miami Beach motel experience today is nothing like it was in 1963, and I don't just mean the rates. The manager, overweight with a big cigar, a northern accent, and always grinning, spent time out on the deck, greeting everyone and welcoming us to buy drinks (soda for the kids) at the outdoor pool bar when it opened at noon. At 3:00, when Terry and I were buzzed from caffeine and the adults were liquored up, the manager would come back outside to clear everyone from the pool. Then in a stentorious voice he would turn into a ringmaster and announce the arrival of the motel's clown-in-residence (whose name is on the tip of my tongue, where it's been for 50 years and drives me crazy), who would do a special act on the diving board just for us. I have no idea whether this was standard fare for other motels, maybe so. This clown, who resembled Bozo, spent the next fifteen minutes pretending he was afraid to jump. The kids howled with laughter. (This was long before Stephen King turned clowns into horrific nightmare figures.) Their parents laughed appreciatively. When he finally plunged in as if by accident, he got a great round of applause, climbed onto the side of the pool, and skipped merrily into the building.
For Terry and me, the clown was nothing compared to the next attraction -- hamburgers and hot dogs. They were free, too, which was my father's favorite part. The manager and a helper set up a grill beside the rear wall that separated us from the beach. The men lined up with paper plates in hand (the women waited on their chaises) and their children jumped back into the water, frolicking even more than before because now lunch was coming. I stood with my father because he needed help carrying the four plates. I thought nothing of what we were doing. The food was free for the guests; we were guests; ergo, the food was free for us. Ethics didn't play into it (or into my head at that age, either). Besides, whatever our father did had to be OK. I mean, he was our father, right?
The Sandy Shores became our home away from home for the next year, maybe two. It was where my mother, sitting up sideways on her chaise one morning, burst my inner tube with her cigarette and said that if a clown could swim, so could I. (I did, eventually. Who wanted to be shamed by a clown?) It was where Terry screwed up the courage to move to the deep end, but always holding on to the side of the pool and wearing the football-shaped float strapped to her back. It was where something happened I would never forget.
Just before we left the motel for the last time, the faux Bozo finished his act, and the manager rolled his grill out to the wall. My father and I got in line as usual. But when there were only three or four men ahead of us, we both noticed something. Each of them was holding a room key out for the manager to see before receiving his food. This was something new. It meant we didn't belong there.
We gathered our things and walked back to the car. On the drive out to the causeway, I thought hard about what had just happened. My father had been wrong to bring us there, and he must have known it. So the four of us had been trespassing all this time. My mother must have known it, too. This was going to take a major reassessment on my part; all I knew at that moment was that I was confused and, in a way that would only become clear in the coming days, crushed. A seismic shift had taken place in my journey toward adulthood -- I was learning not to trust.
I would spend much of my remaining youth hanging out on Miami Beach with friends, but this part was over. Just as we approached the causeway for the last time as a family, I turned around to look through the back window at my favorite billboard. The Coppertone girl's motorized bikini bottom was waving goodbye.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Sinatra's Canine Accompanist and Other Musical Disasters
A friend asked me on Wednesday if I wanted to write about bad songs. Who doesn't want to write about bad songs? So here are the ones that I would most want on a desert island -- without me.
First off, there are three reviled songs that I think have gotten a bad rap. Get ready to throw your tomatoes at me. I like "Muskrat Love." I know I might be the only person over the age of five who does, but it's not even a guilty pleasure with me. I like it, and I'm proud. I also like "Feelings." This was a big hit, which mystified me considering how vocal its detractors were. But I liked it. I never understood the naysayers, especially when Morris Albert gets to the "whoa, whoa whoa" part. Kills me every time. Finally, and this comes with a big proviso, "You're Having My Baby." The proviso is, I don't exactly like this song -- I just think all the vitriol toward it could have been better spent over, say, anything by Helen Reddy. I understand why people -- mostly women -- would like to strand Paul Anka in the Bermuda Triangle. He's saying, after all, "you're having my baby," not "our baby." But I always thought that since "our" implied him as well as the woman having the baby, it would already be a given. Well, clearly not. Let's move on.
There are two songs I liked listening to the first time until someone told me what they were about. "Ben" featured a young Michael Jackson singing a tender love song . . . to a rat. The other, "Timothy," is a catchy tune about cannibalism. You can never hear too many of those.
"You Are So Beautiful" by Joe Cocker and "She's Out of My Life" by an older Michael Jackson -- both of them moving love songs, until someone broke into the studio and throttled them just as they were hitting their last notes. Would one more take have been so difficult?
"Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart. I think Tom Cruise's sunglasses in Risky Business might have inspired this one. I haven't heard anything from Hart since then, so maybe he was crossing a freeway at the time.
Three country songs make my list (out of gazillions). "I Love" by Tom T. Hall is a laundry list of things Hall loves. "I love little baby ducks, old pickup trucks. . . ." There's nothing edgy about it; everybody loves little baby ducks. Now if he'd sung, "I love mudslides in the spring, extramarital flings," that at least would have been memorable. Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy, Breaky Heart" almost goes without saying here. But it's a tossup as to which Billy Ray gift to the world is worse, that song or Miley. Finally, Brad Paisley, whom I otherwise like, sang a love song that might or might not be meant in good fun. I don't think it is. Even if it's meant to be a total goof, any song that includes the line "I'd like to check you for ticks" (from the song "Ticks") deserves to be laughed at, but probably not in the way it was intended.
Chicago, back when it was cool to dismiss time as a creation of the Establishment, sang, "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" Well, yeah, if you're trying to get someplace, like far away from you guys. Plus, it makes no sense. The lead singer says that "a guy walked up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch." So you have a watch on? Are you being a rebel by not winding it or something? That song drove me crazy in the 70s (where admittedly a lot of these songs come from). I think the whole time thing and its hypocrisy was immortalized at the beginning of Easy Rider, when Peter Fonda, getting ready to hit the road as Captain America, takes off his watch, looks at it, and throws it on the ground. I learned later that the watch in his hand was a Rolex, but what he actually threw was a Timex. I don't know whether that story's true, but it ought to be.
"Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas. Enough said.
Justin Bieber's first hit, "Baby," rivaled the songs of Cole Porter with its witty wordplay and cosmopolitan sophistication:
"And I was like baby, baby, baby, oh
Like baby, baby, baby, oh
Like baby, baby, baby, oh
Like oy.
Back in the 1950s, when Frank Sinatra was in a slump, Mitch Miller got him to record a song with a blond bombshell named Dagmar called "Mama Will Bark," complete with someone yelping like a dog in the background. Sinatra later said that it was the low point of his career and hoped the record would be forgotten. If only he could have foreseen the miracle that is YouTube. . . .
In the wake of American Graffiti's enormous popularity, the Canadian group Guess Who came out with the song "Clap for the Wolfman," featuring the Wolfman himself occasionally commenting on the storyline. Had that song been part of the film's extraordinary soundtrack, John Milner would have driven into a wall.
I have two dreaded Christmas songs, and I take these personally because I love Christmas music. There was a horrid little movie years ago called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It's as bad as it sounds. It came with an equally sorry theme song -- "Hooray for Santy Claus." What always makes me laugh when I remember the movie is the song's reprise at the end, where the words appear onscreen with a bouncing ball following along -- as if kids were actually supposed to sing it! (That was Pia Zadora's first appearance pretty much anywhere.) The other Christmas song is from another vehicle, this one a stop-motion TV special of the same name: "Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey." The first time I heard the song on the radio, the DJ came on afterwards and said in a voice rich with sarcasm, "Oh, yeah, you hear that one all the time around our house."
OK, just two more before I reveal what I won't even call a matter of opinion: it is the worst song ever recorded.
First there's "Telephone Man" by Meri Wilson. Lots of songs were full of sexual innuendos in the 1970s, as if composers wanted to titillate but still remain on the airwaves. What they produced was mostly just embarrassing. This one takes the cake. A woman makes an appointment for a telephone installer -- male, of course -- to come to her house and install her phones. When he arrives, no opportunity is wasted in turning a service call into a "service" call. This line is typical: "You just show me where you want it and I'll put it where I can."
I think what I dislike most about "I Dig Rock and Roll Music" by Peter, Paul, and Mary is just how difficult it is for me to accept that they're the ones singing it. It's like Patti Page singing "Anaconda." But when I think to myself that maybe someone in the real rock and roll trenches could do it justice, I realize, nope, nobody could save it.
I didn't even have to waste a nanosecond picking this song as the all-time worst ever, and I mean since cave men and women invented percussion by beating on animal skins. It's "D.O.A." by a band called Bloodrock. The premise is this: There's been a plane crash. Everyone's dead except the guy singing with his last breath. Here's the most upbeat line in the song: "The sheets are red and moist where I'm lying/God in heaven, teach me how to die." This was not a big request at weddings.
OK, I've done my part. Feel free to comment and let me know if you have a song that puts "D.O.A." to shame. (Good luck with that.)
First off, there are three reviled songs that I think have gotten a bad rap. Get ready to throw your tomatoes at me. I like "Muskrat Love." I know I might be the only person over the age of five who does, but it's not even a guilty pleasure with me. I like it, and I'm proud. I also like "Feelings." This was a big hit, which mystified me considering how vocal its detractors were. But I liked it. I never understood the naysayers, especially when Morris Albert gets to the "whoa, whoa whoa" part. Kills me every time. Finally, and this comes with a big proviso, "You're Having My Baby." The proviso is, I don't exactly like this song -- I just think all the vitriol toward it could have been better spent over, say, anything by Helen Reddy. I understand why people -- mostly women -- would like to strand Paul Anka in the Bermuda Triangle. He's saying, after all, "you're having my baby," not "our baby." But I always thought that since "our" implied him as well as the woman having the baby, it would already be a given. Well, clearly not. Let's move on.
There are two songs I liked listening to the first time until someone told me what they were about. "Ben" featured a young Michael Jackson singing a tender love song . . . to a rat. The other, "Timothy," is a catchy tune about cannibalism. You can never hear too many of those.
"You Are So Beautiful" by Joe Cocker and "She's Out of My Life" by an older Michael Jackson -- both of them moving love songs, until someone broke into the studio and throttled them just as they were hitting their last notes. Would one more take have been so difficult?
"Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart. I think Tom Cruise's sunglasses in Risky Business might have inspired this one. I haven't heard anything from Hart since then, so maybe he was crossing a freeway at the time.
Three country songs make my list (out of gazillions). "I Love" by Tom T. Hall is a laundry list of things Hall loves. "I love little baby ducks, old pickup trucks. . . ." There's nothing edgy about it; everybody loves little baby ducks. Now if he'd sung, "I love mudslides in the spring, extramarital flings," that at least would have been memorable. Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy, Breaky Heart" almost goes without saying here. But it's a tossup as to which Billy Ray gift to the world is worse, that song or Miley. Finally, Brad Paisley, whom I otherwise like, sang a love song that might or might not be meant in good fun. I don't think it is. Even if it's meant to be a total goof, any song that includes the line "I'd like to check you for ticks" (from the song "Ticks") deserves to be laughed at, but probably not in the way it was intended.
Chicago, back when it was cool to dismiss time as a creation of the Establishment, sang, "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" Well, yeah, if you're trying to get someplace, like far away from you guys. Plus, it makes no sense. The lead singer says that "a guy walked up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch." So you have a watch on? Are you being a rebel by not winding it or something? That song drove me crazy in the 70s (where admittedly a lot of these songs come from). I think the whole time thing and its hypocrisy was immortalized at the beginning of Easy Rider, when Peter Fonda, getting ready to hit the road as Captain America, takes off his watch, looks at it, and throws it on the ground. I learned later that the watch in his hand was a Rolex, but what he actually threw was a Timex. I don't know whether that story's true, but it ought to be.
"Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas. Enough said.
Justin Bieber's first hit, "Baby," rivaled the songs of Cole Porter with its witty wordplay and cosmopolitan sophistication:
"And I was like baby, baby, baby, oh
Like baby, baby, baby, oh
Like baby, baby, baby, oh
Like oy.
Back in the 1950s, when Frank Sinatra was in a slump, Mitch Miller got him to record a song with a blond bombshell named Dagmar called "Mama Will Bark," complete with someone yelping like a dog in the background. Sinatra later said that it was the low point of his career and hoped the record would be forgotten. If only he could have foreseen the miracle that is YouTube. . . .
In the wake of American Graffiti's enormous popularity, the Canadian group Guess Who came out with the song "Clap for the Wolfman," featuring the Wolfman himself occasionally commenting on the storyline. Had that song been part of the film's extraordinary soundtrack, John Milner would have driven into a wall.
I have two dreaded Christmas songs, and I take these personally because I love Christmas music. There was a horrid little movie years ago called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It's as bad as it sounds. It came with an equally sorry theme song -- "Hooray for Santy Claus." What always makes me laugh when I remember the movie is the song's reprise at the end, where the words appear onscreen with a bouncing ball following along -- as if kids were actually supposed to sing it! (That was Pia Zadora's first appearance pretty much anywhere.) The other Christmas song is from another vehicle, this one a stop-motion TV special of the same name: "Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey." The first time I heard the song on the radio, the DJ came on afterwards and said in a voice rich with sarcasm, "Oh, yeah, you hear that one all the time around our house."
OK, just two more before I reveal what I won't even call a matter of opinion: it is the worst song ever recorded.
First there's "Telephone Man" by Meri Wilson. Lots of songs were full of sexual innuendos in the 1970s, as if composers wanted to titillate but still remain on the airwaves. What they produced was mostly just embarrassing. This one takes the cake. A woman makes an appointment for a telephone installer -- male, of course -- to come to her house and install her phones. When he arrives, no opportunity is wasted in turning a service call into a "service" call. This line is typical: "You just show me where you want it and I'll put it where I can."
I think what I dislike most about "I Dig Rock and Roll Music" by Peter, Paul, and Mary is just how difficult it is for me to accept that they're the ones singing it. It's like Patti Page singing "Anaconda." But when I think to myself that maybe someone in the real rock and roll trenches could do it justice, I realize, nope, nobody could save it.
I didn't even have to waste a nanosecond picking this song as the all-time worst ever, and I mean since cave men and women invented percussion by beating on animal skins. It's "D.O.A." by a band called Bloodrock. The premise is this: There's been a plane crash. Everyone's dead except the guy singing with his last breath. Here's the most upbeat line in the song: "The sheets are red and moist where I'm lying/God in heaven, teach me how to die." This was not a big request at weddings.
OK, I've done my part. Feel free to comment and let me know if you have a song that puts "D.O.A." to shame. (Good luck with that.)
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Growing Old(er)
I'm about to turn 62. Do you realize what that means? In eight years, I'll be 70. I'm not happy about it. I suppose I could turn it around and say that just 50 years ago I was twelve, but that doesn't really help much. I can't think of one old friend who hasn't asked me at one time or another, "Where has the time gone?" I'm asking it now.
I torment myself annually by figuring out what year high school seniors were born. The majority of students graduating in two months were born in 1997. They don't remember Reagan. They barely remember Bill Clinton. When Kanye West recently recorded a song with Paul McCartney, social media wanted to know who that old guy singing with Kanye was and if he thought he could ride the coattails of a true superstar. (Well, I don't think any of them literally said "ride the coattails of.") No wonder my Junes are so depressing.
It's like movies. To me, an old movie is anything before 1967. But I'm told that in reality an old movie is anything before the original Pitch Perfect. Movies in the 1960s are to kids now what movies in the 1910s were to me when I was 14. So I understand that. But still, hadn't pop culture progressed by far greater leaps and bounds between 1917 and 1967 than since 1967? At 14, I'd never have sat through a silent movie, but kids today still seem to enjoy Jaws and Star Wars.
But I'm digressing. My point is that for some reason, I haven't been aware of myself aging. I've just lived my life until, one day, yikes! I'm not 39 anymore, or yikes! I'm not 59 anymore. Maybe that's what a midlife crisis is -- stopping for a moment on a journey through life and making the mistake of looking back. I'm guessing most of us have done that at some point. It's when we realize, hey, this isn't where I wanted to be 10, 20, 40 years ago. What happened to those goals I had? Why aren't I satisfied with myself? I hear all the time that it's a guy thing, but I see nothing sex-specific about it. Anyone can reassess and have regrets. (But why does it seem to be mostly guys who buy that snazzy sports car?)
There's one way to note the passage of years that I almost never think about. When we meet a friend's 14-year-old whom we haven't seen since she was a six-year-old, we say, "I can't believe how big you've grown!" But what I, at least, never realize is that I'm also saying, "I can't believe how much older I've gotten." Kids are a kind of measuring device by which we can gauge our own maturity. If you're 50, and I haven't seen you since you were 40, I'm not going to hit my forehead and go, "I can't believe how old you've gotten!" That's not only because it's gauche, but because it's just not as noticeable to me.
I joined the Navy in 1971 and left when my four years was up. Had I stayed in and become a "lifer," I could have retired in 1991 at the ripe old age of 38. In 1971, that seemed like a lifetime. Of course, now I see that it wasn't even half a lifetime. When I was 18, that seemed the height of maturity. Then 19 did, and then 20. The fact is that for every age I reach, I'm the oldest I've ever been. Maybe that's why I'm always surprised to realize that I can get even older.
When you think back on your grade school friends, do you see them as they were then, or do they seem like miniature contemporaries of yours now? That's how they seem to me, like little 61-year-olds in kids' clothing. Actually, no -- they look younger than 61 because I see them the way I feel, which is never my chronological age. Right now I'd say I'm about 35. I can't honestly say I've talked about this with anyone lately who said they felt older than they were. I did hear such talk years ago, particularly from my mother, who often said, "Your mama's gettin' old, Vin." She'd been saying that since she was 35. She wasn't the only one among her contemporaries, either, so do you suppose it's a generational thing? Has the country's youth culture of jeans and rock and ball caps worn backwards convinced us we're never going to die?
Which brings me back to turning 70 in eight years. I can kid myself for now and say I'm in my "late middle age." But once I hit 70, that won't wash anymore, will it? By then it will be too obvious that my youth is far away and my "Great Reward" is somewhere around the corner. (Who coined that phrase, anyway? The same geniuses who came up with "riding the coattails"?)
One favor, though. Never call me a senior citizen. I spent too much time teaching students to avoid euphemisms to be labeled with one. "Geezer" will do. "Codger" also works nicely. But whatever you come up with, just be polite about it if I ever tell you to get off my lawn.
I torment myself annually by figuring out what year high school seniors were born. The majority of students graduating in two months were born in 1997. They don't remember Reagan. They barely remember Bill Clinton. When Kanye West recently recorded a song with Paul McCartney, social media wanted to know who that old guy singing with Kanye was and if he thought he could ride the coattails of a true superstar. (Well, I don't think any of them literally said "ride the coattails of.") No wonder my Junes are so depressing.
It's like movies. To me, an old movie is anything before 1967. But I'm told that in reality an old movie is anything before the original Pitch Perfect. Movies in the 1960s are to kids now what movies in the 1910s were to me when I was 14. So I understand that. But still, hadn't pop culture progressed by far greater leaps and bounds between 1917 and 1967 than since 1967? At 14, I'd never have sat through a silent movie, but kids today still seem to enjoy Jaws and Star Wars.
But I'm digressing. My point is that for some reason, I haven't been aware of myself aging. I've just lived my life until, one day, yikes! I'm not 39 anymore, or yikes! I'm not 59 anymore. Maybe that's what a midlife crisis is -- stopping for a moment on a journey through life and making the mistake of looking back. I'm guessing most of us have done that at some point. It's when we realize, hey, this isn't where I wanted to be 10, 20, 40 years ago. What happened to those goals I had? Why aren't I satisfied with myself? I hear all the time that it's a guy thing, but I see nothing sex-specific about it. Anyone can reassess and have regrets. (But why does it seem to be mostly guys who buy that snazzy sports car?)
There's one way to note the passage of years that I almost never think about. When we meet a friend's 14-year-old whom we haven't seen since she was a six-year-old, we say, "I can't believe how big you've grown!" But what I, at least, never realize is that I'm also saying, "I can't believe how much older I've gotten." Kids are a kind of measuring device by which we can gauge our own maturity. If you're 50, and I haven't seen you since you were 40, I'm not going to hit my forehead and go, "I can't believe how old you've gotten!" That's not only because it's gauche, but because it's just not as noticeable to me.
I joined the Navy in 1971 and left when my four years was up. Had I stayed in and become a "lifer," I could have retired in 1991 at the ripe old age of 38. In 1971, that seemed like a lifetime. Of course, now I see that it wasn't even half a lifetime. When I was 18, that seemed the height of maturity. Then 19 did, and then 20. The fact is that for every age I reach, I'm the oldest I've ever been. Maybe that's why I'm always surprised to realize that I can get even older.
When you think back on your grade school friends, do you see them as they were then, or do they seem like miniature contemporaries of yours now? That's how they seem to me, like little 61-year-olds in kids' clothing. Actually, no -- they look younger than 61 because I see them the way I feel, which is never my chronological age. Right now I'd say I'm about 35. I can't honestly say I've talked about this with anyone lately who said they felt older than they were. I did hear such talk years ago, particularly from my mother, who often said, "Your mama's gettin' old, Vin." She'd been saying that since she was 35. She wasn't the only one among her contemporaries, either, so do you suppose it's a generational thing? Has the country's youth culture of jeans and rock and ball caps worn backwards convinced us we're never going to die?
Which brings me back to turning 70 in eight years. I can kid myself for now and say I'm in my "late middle age." But once I hit 70, that won't wash anymore, will it? By then it will be too obvious that my youth is far away and my "Great Reward" is somewhere around the corner. (Who coined that phrase, anyway? The same geniuses who came up with "riding the coattails"?)
One favor, though. Never call me a senior citizen. I spent too much time teaching students to avoid euphemisms to be labeled with one. "Geezer" will do. "Codger" also works nicely. But whatever you come up with, just be polite about it if I ever tell you to get off my lawn.
"Just a flesh wound."
Last night I came across a video compilation of old Road Runner cartoons. I hadn't seen any of them in years, so I kicked back and watched the whole thing. It was just like old times -- I swear I laughed for a solid 55 minutes. My stomach hurt and my eyes watered. All I had to do was see the name "Acme," and I lost it. That and Wile E. Coyote's facial expressions before plummeting down yet another steep ravine. I laughed just thinking of questions that never occurred to me as a child. Where did he get all those devices? Where exactly was his mailbox? How did he pay for them? I'd like to see their catalog. It got me thinking of every truly historic laugh I'd ever had. I'll only stick to movies and TV, since my personal memories wouldn't translate as well.
All I have to is write "Holy Grail" and most of you will get it right away. The "Black Knight" scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail was a tactical error because it came too soon in the movie. I got a cramp from laughing so hard, and as funny as the rest of the movie was, it never reached that height of hilarity for me. The king wants to pass through a forest, but the Black Knight blocks his way. They draw swords, and right away the king lops off one of the knight's arms, with much gushing of the group's patented fake blood.
King Arthur: Now, stand aside, worthy adversary!
Black Knight: 'Tis but a scratch!
King Arthur: A scratch? Your arm's off!
Black Knight: No, it isn't!
King Arthur: Well, what's that then?
Black Knight: I've had worse.
This goes on, with the king lopping off limb after limb ("It's just a flesh wound"). He insists there's no point in continuing, but the knight keeps baiting him. When the knight finally ends up on the ground, without arms or legs but still upright, he demands the king come back and threatens to bite his legs off. Kills me every time.
It seems no one can agree on just which scene from This is Spinal Tap is the funniest. The Stonehenge number? The band trying to find the stage? I pick their grand entrance as they emerge from lifesize pods onstage, except one of the pods malfunctions and the Derek Smalls character can't get out. As the other two proceed with their opening number, you see the crew noisily trying to extricate him in the background.
I wasn't old enough to watch Your Show of Shows in the 1950s, but I did see the compilation movie Ten From Your Show of Shows a few years later. I was still young enough to literally be rolling on the floor in front of the TV set, and one sketch did it: a parody of the old hit show This is Your Life called "This is Your Story." Carl Reiner plays the show's host and Sid Caesar the unsuspecting audience member who has to be chased and carried onto the stage. I just checked, and you're in luck -- it's available on YouTube! If that opening doesn't grab you, watch as Caesar is reunited with his childhood mentor "Uncle Goofy" (Howard Morris). It's a master class in physical comedy.
The original Honeymooners was and is my favorite TV show (again, I wasn't old enough to remember when it first aired). My favorite episode is "Pal o' Mine," in which Kramden and Norton have a falling out after a ring Ed has bought as a gift for his boss gets stuck on Ralph's finger. In what I call the funniest sequence of the whole series, Ralph is told that Ed has had an accident in the sewer, and so he rushes to the hospital, where he volunteers to give his pal a blood transfusion, only it's for another patient, not Ed. Here's perhaps the greatest double-double take ever: Ed walks over to the nurse's station, not seriously hurt after all. He's standing there waiting for the doctor to discharge him when Ralph is wheeled past him on a gurney. They acknowledge each other casually as he disappears into a room for the transfusion. Then we see Ed's face as he realizes who that was, and a second later Ralph comes storming out of the room in his hospital gown. For me, it's a great TV moment in any comedy genre. There's also a bonus, a perfect last line: Ralph realizes he has to do the right thing and go through with the transfusion. They shake hands, and, as Ralph walks away with the doctor, Ed says, "And hey, doc, can you see what you can do about getting that ring off of his finger?"
Silent Movie wasn't Mel Brooks' masterpiece, but it did have my favorite Mel Brooks moment (even moreso than the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles). Brooks himself, Dom DeLuise, and Marty Feldman are trying to raise capital for the silent movie they want to make. To do so, they pursue a number of celebrities who play themselves (and, in several instances, poke fun at their own image). In Liza Minnelli's scene, she's having lunch in a film studio commissary, and the trio decide to raid the costume department so she won't recognize them right away. So they enter the commissary dressed in big, clanking suits of armor, and Minnelli looks on with a straight face as they try to sit down on plastic chairs at her table. That's all there is to it, and it's a gut-buster, believe me. (Oh, and the only word spoken in the entire movie is "No," when Brooks calls Marcel Marceau to ask for the money.)
Stanley Kramer, who isn't known as a laugh riot, made one of the funniest comedies I've seen, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. This is one movie where it's practically impossible to select one single scene as the best, but I have two: Jonathan Winters singlehandedly demolishing an entire filling station, and the little Mexican boy waving goodbye to Phil Silvers as Silvers' car slowly sinks into the river.
Then there's Jack Lemmon dressed up as "Daphne" in Some Like It Hot. Joe E. Brown's last line of the movie, delivered to Lemmon in a motorboat, has been called the greatest last line of any comedy film. Brown, as the millionaire Osgood, has an answer for every argument as to why Lemmon can't marry him, until an exasperated Lemmon yanks off his wig and says, "I'm a man!" Brown just continues smiling and says, "Well, nobody's perfect." But I also like the hotel room scene between Tony Curtis (as "Geraldine") and Lemmon after Osgood (Brown) has proposed marriage. Shaking a pair of maracas as he moves around the room (still swooning from a night of dancing), Lemmon is oblivious to Curtis's insistence that he can't go through with a wedding. "Why would a guy want to marry a guy?" he says finally. "Security," Lemmon replies with another shake of the maracas.
I could cite so many more wonderful comedy moments -- Elaine's dance in Seinfeld, Latka Gravis's alter ego Vic Ferrari in Taxi, Sigourney Weaver trying to seduce Bill Murray while possessed by a demon in Ghostbusters (Weaver: "I want you inside me." Murray: "It sounds like you've got at least two or three people in there already") , the Marx Brothers trying to get off a ship by impersonating Maurice Chevalier in Monkey Business -- I'm sure you can think of your own favorites, too.
So finally, because I have to wrap this up somehow, there's Kevin Costner's immortal line in Bull Durham, a film filled with immortal lines. Costner's catcher, "Crash" Davis, has just told the batter what ball Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) is about to pitch because LaLoosh has been shaking off his signals. Sure enough, the guy hits a high flying homer out somewhere beyond the ballpark. The dumbfounded pitcher stands there staring into space where the ball disappeared as Davis walks up to him.
Davis: Man that ball got outta here in a hurry. I mean anything travels that far oughta have a damn stewardess on it, don't you think?
All I have to is write "Holy Grail" and most of you will get it right away. The "Black Knight" scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail was a tactical error because it came too soon in the movie. I got a cramp from laughing so hard, and as funny as the rest of the movie was, it never reached that height of hilarity for me. The king wants to pass through a forest, but the Black Knight blocks his way. They draw swords, and right away the king lops off one of the knight's arms, with much gushing of the group's patented fake blood.
King Arthur: Now, stand aside, worthy adversary!
Black Knight: 'Tis but a scratch!
King Arthur: A scratch? Your arm's off!
Black Knight: No, it isn't!
King Arthur: Well, what's that then?
Black Knight: I've had worse.
This goes on, with the king lopping off limb after limb ("It's just a flesh wound"). He insists there's no point in continuing, but the knight keeps baiting him. When the knight finally ends up on the ground, without arms or legs but still upright, he demands the king come back and threatens to bite his legs off. Kills me every time.
It seems no one can agree on just which scene from This is Spinal Tap is the funniest. The Stonehenge number? The band trying to find the stage? I pick their grand entrance as they emerge from lifesize pods onstage, except one of the pods malfunctions and the Derek Smalls character can't get out. As the other two proceed with their opening number, you see the crew noisily trying to extricate him in the background.
I wasn't old enough to watch Your Show of Shows in the 1950s, but I did see the compilation movie Ten From Your Show of Shows a few years later. I was still young enough to literally be rolling on the floor in front of the TV set, and one sketch did it: a parody of the old hit show This is Your Life called "This is Your Story." Carl Reiner plays the show's host and Sid Caesar the unsuspecting audience member who has to be chased and carried onto the stage. I just checked, and you're in luck -- it's available on YouTube! If that opening doesn't grab you, watch as Caesar is reunited with his childhood mentor "Uncle Goofy" (Howard Morris). It's a master class in physical comedy.
The original Honeymooners was and is my favorite TV show (again, I wasn't old enough to remember when it first aired). My favorite episode is "Pal o' Mine," in which Kramden and Norton have a falling out after a ring Ed has bought as a gift for his boss gets stuck on Ralph's finger. In what I call the funniest sequence of the whole series, Ralph is told that Ed has had an accident in the sewer, and so he rushes to the hospital, where he volunteers to give his pal a blood transfusion, only it's for another patient, not Ed. Here's perhaps the greatest double-double take ever: Ed walks over to the nurse's station, not seriously hurt after all. He's standing there waiting for the doctor to discharge him when Ralph is wheeled past him on a gurney. They acknowledge each other casually as he disappears into a room for the transfusion. Then we see Ed's face as he realizes who that was, and a second later Ralph comes storming out of the room in his hospital gown. For me, it's a great TV moment in any comedy genre. There's also a bonus, a perfect last line: Ralph realizes he has to do the right thing and go through with the transfusion. They shake hands, and, as Ralph walks away with the doctor, Ed says, "And hey, doc, can you see what you can do about getting that ring off of his finger?"
Silent Movie wasn't Mel Brooks' masterpiece, but it did have my favorite Mel Brooks moment (even moreso than the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles). Brooks himself, Dom DeLuise, and Marty Feldman are trying to raise capital for the silent movie they want to make. To do so, they pursue a number of celebrities who play themselves (and, in several instances, poke fun at their own image). In Liza Minnelli's scene, she's having lunch in a film studio commissary, and the trio decide to raid the costume department so she won't recognize them right away. So they enter the commissary dressed in big, clanking suits of armor, and Minnelli looks on with a straight face as they try to sit down on plastic chairs at her table. That's all there is to it, and it's a gut-buster, believe me. (Oh, and the only word spoken in the entire movie is "No," when Brooks calls Marcel Marceau to ask for the money.)
Stanley Kramer, who isn't known as a laugh riot, made one of the funniest comedies I've seen, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. This is one movie where it's practically impossible to select one single scene as the best, but I have two: Jonathan Winters singlehandedly demolishing an entire filling station, and the little Mexican boy waving goodbye to Phil Silvers as Silvers' car slowly sinks into the river.
Then there's Jack Lemmon dressed up as "Daphne" in Some Like It Hot. Joe E. Brown's last line of the movie, delivered to Lemmon in a motorboat, has been called the greatest last line of any comedy film. Brown, as the millionaire Osgood, has an answer for every argument as to why Lemmon can't marry him, until an exasperated Lemmon yanks off his wig and says, "I'm a man!" Brown just continues smiling and says, "Well, nobody's perfect." But I also like the hotel room scene between Tony Curtis (as "Geraldine") and Lemmon after Osgood (Brown) has proposed marriage. Shaking a pair of maracas as he moves around the room (still swooning from a night of dancing), Lemmon is oblivious to Curtis's insistence that he can't go through with a wedding. "Why would a guy want to marry a guy?" he says finally. "Security," Lemmon replies with another shake of the maracas.
I could cite so many more wonderful comedy moments -- Elaine's dance in Seinfeld, Latka Gravis's alter ego Vic Ferrari in Taxi, Sigourney Weaver trying to seduce Bill Murray while possessed by a demon in Ghostbusters (Weaver: "I want you inside me." Murray: "It sounds like you've got at least two or three people in there already") , the Marx Brothers trying to get off a ship by impersonating Maurice Chevalier in Monkey Business -- I'm sure you can think of your own favorites, too.
So finally, because I have to wrap this up somehow, there's Kevin Costner's immortal line in Bull Durham, a film filled with immortal lines. Costner's catcher, "Crash" Davis, has just told the batter what ball Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) is about to pitch because LaLoosh has been shaking off his signals. Sure enough, the guy hits a high flying homer out somewhere beyond the ballpark. The dumbfounded pitcher stands there staring into space where the ball disappeared as Davis walks up to him.
Davis: Man that ball got outta here in a hurry. I mean anything travels that far oughta have a damn stewardess on it, don't you think?
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
"There's no shower curtain. . . ."
My parents took my sister and me to see Psycho when it first opened in 1960. I was seven, Terry was two. "Scarred for life" is probably an overstatement, though we did both sleep with the lights on until late 1975.
Alfred Hitchcock has always been my favorite film director. I could spend a month writing every day about the impression his movies have made on me and why, but instead I think I'll get excited about some favorite individual moments, those few seconds that have made me gasp, go slack-jawed, or need to change my clothes.
We all remember the shower scene in Psycho and Janet Leigh getting chopped up just for standing under the shower head before turning on the water (something no sane person would do). But what about the moment just before, when the bathroom door opens and an unknown figure moves silently toward the curtain? I'm telling you, that could be a candygram instead of a knife and it wouldn't matter. Just the sheer dread of that idea, someone opening your bathroom door when you're at your most helpless and vulnerable, is enough to do me in. That one moment, when we know something Leigh's character doesn't and it's about to cost her her life -- for me, that's the single scariest moment in Hitchcock's entire filmography. Heck, the murder itself is just icing on the cake.
Cary Grant trying to outrun a crop duster in North by Northwest is another iconic sequence. So much has already been written about the scene's entire setup and execution that I'll mention only three moments within the scene itself that made me giddy with a moviegoer's delight. One: "That plane is dustin' crops where there ain't no crops." When the stranger says that to Grant right before boarding the bus, it's like that bathroom door opening, right? Something unexpected has presented itself and changed the situation from one of ennui to one of fear. But at least Grant's advantage over Leigh is that his character is being shown where the trouble will come from, and he has a chance to save himself. Two: This is my favorite camera shot in the whole movie. It's the third time the plane circles around and heads directly toward him. I love how Grant begin running as fast as he can toward us as we (the camera) keep retreating as the plane flies closer. This also reminds me of the shower scene because we're helpless to do anything. In Psycho, we know she's about to be killed, but we can't use that knowledge to save her. Likewise here, Grant is running straight at us, and it's like we're on a caboose moving farther away down the track. We can't reach out to him. Hitchcock drove me nuts when he implicated us like that. I just want to be a passive moviegoer and enjoy myself for a couple of hours. Don't make me feel guilty or responsible for your characters, too! (But who am I kidding? I always go back for more.) Three: Remember when Grant hides in the corn and thinks he's safe, only to have the duster make a low pass and gag him with pesticide? North by Northwest is full of such jokes, and this is one of my favorites.
Rear Window is the supreme example of a director implicating the viewer. In fact, it's my all-time favorite movie, and if I get started on it now, it'll be Labor Day before I finish. I really hope you've seen it, and that's another reason for my brevity -- I don't want to ruin it for you. I won't even summarize the plot, except just a tiny bit. But know that Hitchcock puts you right inside James Stewart's apartment so that you see only what he sees and know only what he knows. I once showed this in a writing class because I couldn't think of any better way to illustrate point of view. It's probably no secret to you by now that Stewart's character suspects his neighbor of murder. Through his binoculars, he begins to accumulate visual clues that could add up to evidence. We know everything he does -- and one thing more. One night while Stewart sleeps, we see something suspicious beyond his window, so that now, darn it, Hitchcock has implicated us once again. We want to get to the truth as much as he does because now we have our own piece of circumstantial evidence (if in fact we saw what we thought we did). Damn you, Master of Suspense!
What are your favorite moments? Here are a few more of mine. You might already remember them, but indulge me just a little longer.
In The Birds, when Jessica Tandy sees that her friend's eyes have been pecked out, she opens her mouth to scream, and I expect her to, but she doesn't. She's mute with fear, which is a whole mess of fear, and so much creepier. (I can remember seeing it for the first time on TV. Remember the last scene, how open-ended and inconclusive it is? Well, after the movie, the local news anchors asked viewers to stop calling in -- people wanted to know where the rest of the movie was.)
Likewise, in Topaz, some passengers (including John Forsythe) duck down in the back seat of a car that's speeding away from trouble. In the road behind them, a gunman takes a stance and aims his weapon to fire at them (and us). They're waiting for it, we're waiting for it, but the shot never happens. Again, it's like the shower scene and what the stranger says to Cary Grant. We find out something bad is about to happen, but, in these last two examples, Hitchcock proves that it doesn't even have to happen to be effective. (I remember watching Stand By Me -- Rob Reiner, not Hitchcock -- and reaching the part where those boys are on the railroad bridge and, if I remember correctly, one of them teases the others about what would happen if a train suddenly appeared. Anyway, the subject does comes up. I'd watched too much Hitchcock, I guess, because as soon as the statement was made, I felt fear, and I knew the train wouldn't appear. It didn't have to. Also, it would be way too movie-convenient if it did. But no, this wasn't Hitchcock, so of course the boys end up running in terror from a speeding train. I can forgive Reiner for that, but only because he gave us Spinal Tap.)
Saboteur is older than the others I've mentioned. I watch scenes like the climax of Saboteur and wonder why on earth contemporary filmmakers can't learn from him. Robert Cummings is the good guy, and he's on top of the Statue of Liberty (naturally) trying to save bad guy Norman Lloyd, who's hanging on for dear life. This is so great -- all you hear is the wind, as Cummings clings to Lloyd's coat sleeve to pull him up, and then you get a closeup of the shoulder seam starting to come apart. If this were remade today, why all the frantic music? Why the three-second camera shots? Why have the bad guy screaming obscenities? OK, I've tipped my geezer hand here, but still, you have to admit, less is definitely more when it comes to suspense.
I'll stop here, reluctantly. I haven't even touched on Notorious (!!!), Vertigo, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, The Thirty-Nine Steps -- all right, all right, I'm stopping.
(The Lady Vanishes . . . .)
Alfred Hitchcock has always been my favorite film director. I could spend a month writing every day about the impression his movies have made on me and why, but instead I think I'll get excited about some favorite individual moments, those few seconds that have made me gasp, go slack-jawed, or need to change my clothes.
We all remember the shower scene in Psycho and Janet Leigh getting chopped up just for standing under the shower head before turning on the water (something no sane person would do). But what about the moment just before, when the bathroom door opens and an unknown figure moves silently toward the curtain? I'm telling you, that could be a candygram instead of a knife and it wouldn't matter. Just the sheer dread of that idea, someone opening your bathroom door when you're at your most helpless and vulnerable, is enough to do me in. That one moment, when we know something Leigh's character doesn't and it's about to cost her her life -- for me, that's the single scariest moment in Hitchcock's entire filmography. Heck, the murder itself is just icing on the cake.
Cary Grant trying to outrun a crop duster in North by Northwest is another iconic sequence. So much has already been written about the scene's entire setup and execution that I'll mention only three moments within the scene itself that made me giddy with a moviegoer's delight. One: "That plane is dustin' crops where there ain't no crops." When the stranger says that to Grant right before boarding the bus, it's like that bathroom door opening, right? Something unexpected has presented itself and changed the situation from one of ennui to one of fear. But at least Grant's advantage over Leigh is that his character is being shown where the trouble will come from, and he has a chance to save himself. Two: This is my favorite camera shot in the whole movie. It's the third time the plane circles around and heads directly toward him. I love how Grant begin running as fast as he can toward us as we (the camera) keep retreating as the plane flies closer. This also reminds me of the shower scene because we're helpless to do anything. In Psycho, we know she's about to be killed, but we can't use that knowledge to save her. Likewise here, Grant is running straight at us, and it's like we're on a caboose moving farther away down the track. We can't reach out to him. Hitchcock drove me nuts when he implicated us like that. I just want to be a passive moviegoer and enjoy myself for a couple of hours. Don't make me feel guilty or responsible for your characters, too! (But who am I kidding? I always go back for more.) Three: Remember when Grant hides in the corn and thinks he's safe, only to have the duster make a low pass and gag him with pesticide? North by Northwest is full of such jokes, and this is one of my favorites.
Rear Window is the supreme example of a director implicating the viewer. In fact, it's my all-time favorite movie, and if I get started on it now, it'll be Labor Day before I finish. I really hope you've seen it, and that's another reason for my brevity -- I don't want to ruin it for you. I won't even summarize the plot, except just a tiny bit. But know that Hitchcock puts you right inside James Stewart's apartment so that you see only what he sees and know only what he knows. I once showed this in a writing class because I couldn't think of any better way to illustrate point of view. It's probably no secret to you by now that Stewart's character suspects his neighbor of murder. Through his binoculars, he begins to accumulate visual clues that could add up to evidence. We know everything he does -- and one thing more. One night while Stewart sleeps, we see something suspicious beyond his window, so that now, darn it, Hitchcock has implicated us once again. We want to get to the truth as much as he does because now we have our own piece of circumstantial evidence (if in fact we saw what we thought we did). Damn you, Master of Suspense!
What are your favorite moments? Here are a few more of mine. You might already remember them, but indulge me just a little longer.
In The Birds, when Jessica Tandy sees that her friend's eyes have been pecked out, she opens her mouth to scream, and I expect her to, but she doesn't. She's mute with fear, which is a whole mess of fear, and so much creepier. (I can remember seeing it for the first time on TV. Remember the last scene, how open-ended and inconclusive it is? Well, after the movie, the local news anchors asked viewers to stop calling in -- people wanted to know where the rest of the movie was.)
Likewise, in Topaz, some passengers (including John Forsythe) duck down in the back seat of a car that's speeding away from trouble. In the road behind them, a gunman takes a stance and aims his weapon to fire at them (and us). They're waiting for it, we're waiting for it, but the shot never happens. Again, it's like the shower scene and what the stranger says to Cary Grant. We find out something bad is about to happen, but, in these last two examples, Hitchcock proves that it doesn't even have to happen to be effective. (I remember watching Stand By Me -- Rob Reiner, not Hitchcock -- and reaching the part where those boys are on the railroad bridge and, if I remember correctly, one of them teases the others about what would happen if a train suddenly appeared. Anyway, the subject does comes up. I'd watched too much Hitchcock, I guess, because as soon as the statement was made, I felt fear, and I knew the train wouldn't appear. It didn't have to. Also, it would be way too movie-convenient if it did. But no, this wasn't Hitchcock, so of course the boys end up running in terror from a speeding train. I can forgive Reiner for that, but only because he gave us Spinal Tap.)
Saboteur is older than the others I've mentioned. I watch scenes like the climax of Saboteur and wonder why on earth contemporary filmmakers can't learn from him. Robert Cummings is the good guy, and he's on top of the Statue of Liberty (naturally) trying to save bad guy Norman Lloyd, who's hanging on for dear life. This is so great -- all you hear is the wind, as Cummings clings to Lloyd's coat sleeve to pull him up, and then you get a closeup of the shoulder seam starting to come apart. If this were remade today, why all the frantic music? Why the three-second camera shots? Why have the bad guy screaming obscenities? OK, I've tipped my geezer hand here, but still, you have to admit, less is definitely more when it comes to suspense.
I'll stop here, reluctantly. I haven't even touched on Notorious (!!!), Vertigo, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, The Thirty-Nine Steps -- all right, all right, I'm stopping.
(The Lady Vanishes . . . .)
Monday, April 13, 2015
Strange But Weird!
I carry around in my head the memory of three inexplicable things
that happened to me. I've never committed them to fiction
because they're coincidences, and it's hard to get away with
coincidences in fiction. I've never written poems about them because
that's just dumb. I've only shared them with friends when we've sat
around exchanging The Strangest, Weirdest Things That Ever Happened
To Me stories. Although it's not a competition, one of the following
stories has never failed to win my friends' award for the Strangest
and Weirdest. (See if you can guess which story.) For this post, it
would help if you were sitting around a campfire in the middle of a
thick woods with your iPad and some marshmallows. But since you're
not, wait for nightfall, turn out all the lights (well, you'll need
at least one), and prepare yourself for the unspeakable horror of . .
.
Strange But
Weird!
Coincidence #1:
I was staying at a bed and breakfast once in 1995, and on the first evening I
went downstairs to the parlor to read a book I was in the middle of.
I remember it was Possession, by A.S. Byatt, and it had been a
bestseller a few years before. Important note: It was not a big
bestseller now. So I'm sitting in an easy chair, reading and sipping
hot tea, when a woman who was also staying at the B&B comes in
and sits down across from me. She opens a book and begins reading,
too. At one point she lifts the book as she reaches over for a
pillow, and I say, “Wow, we're reading the same book.” (See this
blog from two entries ago concerning how I love interrupting
readers.) She agrees that that was really something. Then she
leaves the room, but only temporarily – her book remains
spreadeagled on the loveseat she has been occupying.
I'm switching back to past tense now because this is so horrifying
that I need to distance myself temporally to keep from
hyperventilating. Anyway, in her absence, I got curious and walked
over to the loveseat and lifted the book. It was open to the same two pages as mine. I sat back down right away, but when she returned,
guilt overtook me and I confessed my indiscretion. “That is so
amazing,” she said, at least as amazed as I was. Then she
laughed and said (here it comes), “OK, so which paragraph, smart
guy?” When I told her where I had left off, her mouth opened and
she looked for a moment as if she didn't care what flew into it.
Then a strange thing happened (less strange, still weird). We just
stopped talking. After another minute or two, she got up to go
upstairs. She said goodnight, but it was almost to herself, as if
she didn't want a reply. It was a vacation, of course, so I was out
during most of the day, but from that evening until I checked out two
days later, I didn't see her again. In a way, I was relieved. I think
neither of us wanted to risk being freaked out a second time..
Strange but
weird!
Coincidence #2 (longer this time):
Go back with me further now, all the way to 1973. I was
in the Navy, stationed at a naval air station in Pensacola, at that
time a small, sleepy city in the Deep South. (It's still in the Deep
South.) My enlisted friends and I woke up bored, worked bored, and
went to bed bored. The Navy was just part of it; mainly it was
Pensacola itself, because we could never find anything interesting to
do and we missed home. One E-4 was so desperate he submitted a
transfer request for Iceland. (It was denied.) On Saturdays, I
often rode the duty van downtown to the USO center, a big room about
the size of a hotel lobby with one pool table and two magazines. It
was boring there, too, so I usually wandered up and down Palafox
Street, the main drag, as if something might ever change.
One Saturday morning that spring, I had just stepped out of
a storefront diner when I noticed there weren't any cars around. I
looked right and there wasn't any traffic. I looked left and there
wasn't any traffic there, either; just two little girls walking down the street dressed as
carrots. I was so surprised by the sheer
idea of something unusual happening in Pensacola that at first I
didn't notice the two little boys coming around the corner behind
them, dressed as broccoli. Now I looked around me and saw that
people were slowly gathering at the curb, some of them opening their
folding chairs and sipping bottles of water. Oh, did I mention it gets hot
in the Florida panhandle during springtime? It was around 10:00 and
I was already sweating.
After about twelve pair of children walked by in their vegetative
states, I heard a drumbeat. Soon a band appeared at the same corner,
turning in the same direction down Palafox. It was a parade for sure
now, and the spectators had increased in front of me. Not many, but more than if there were no parade. I remained
against the diner wall. Not only was there shade, but I was so shy
back then that I didn't dare step forward and have some old seafarer
who recognized my regulation haircut start reminiscing about his own
bygone enlistment days (sort of like I'm doing right now).
About midpoint in the parade, after a few more bands had come and
gone, two majorettes approached with a banner announcing that the next band represented Hammonton High School from
Hammonton, New Jersey. I forget what song they were playing, but it
was livelier than the rest, so I perked up.
The band was halfway past me so that I was directly parallel to a row
of French horn players. The girl playing on the end closest to me
broke rank, walked right toward me, stumbled over the curb, and
landed hard on her behind. There was a gap between onlookers, so
no one was right there to catch her. Her French horn clattered
onto the asphalt, and just before she fell back in a dead faint, she
unstrapped her tall fuzzy hat so that it hit the sidewalk and rolled
to within three feet of me.
I froze. By this time, helpful locals were sitting her up, wiping
her with kerchiefs, and offering her water as she came to. A
middle-aged woman walked up to me, bent down, and retrieved the
errant hat. I was mortified and walked quickly down and stopped a
couple of storefronts away. What had happened? I had always
considered myself a kind person. I looked for any opportunity to
help people in distress. Now here was a girl in distress and I
couldn't form a single thought in my head.
Two women eventually lifted her up by the arms and began walking her
slowly toward the corner as the third woman followed with the hat in
her hands. As they passed me, the girl looked up just for a second
and our eyes met. There it was. She knew. I was the world's worst
human ever, and she nailed me with one glance.
I rode the duty van back to the base and sulked in the barracks all
afternoon.
At evening chow, a friend joined me at my table, and I related my
tale of woe.
“I sure wish I could see her again and apologize. Maybe I'll write
to the high school.”
“But you can see her again.”
He explained that today marked the annual Fiesta of Five Flags in
Pensacola. The morning parade was just a warm-up. The big parade
would take place in a couple of hours.
I told him that I was going to catch the duty van back into town and
hope her band would be back in the parade. It made sense – why
would a school send its marching band from New Jersey to Florida just
to follow a bunch of vegetables? Then I would keep up alongside it to
the end of the parade route, where I would seek her out and try to
make amends.
So. Back in the van. Back downtown. A huge crowd now, people
everywhere, and the honorary “king” and “queen” of the Fiesta
on the balcony of the San Marcos Hotel, overlooking the festivities.
Palafox was a four-lane street divided by a sloping grassy median. I
climbed to the top and planted myself right about opposite of where I
had been that morning. No reason for that; it's where I happened to
stop.
The parade went on for well over an hour, and I was beginning to
think that maybe a school in New Jersey really would send its
band all the way to Pensacola just to participate in the lesser of
two events.
Then I had a sinking feeling – if she was so unwell that morning,
maybe the band would show up but she wouldn't. Didn't that make sense? I knew I shouldn't have come back. What was I thinking? Just another dumb idea in my dumb life. But my fear
was relieved. There was the familiar Hammonton banner coming down
the street. I took a few steps forward to get a better look. Yes,
there she was, back with the other French horn players, only now on
the other end of the row, my side again. I can't explain the
change; I wish I could. But there she was.
And there she was, nearly parallel with me when – as God is my
witness – she broke rank once more, walked to the foot of the
median, and collapsed.
This time I acted quickly. Two women were already helping her sit up
and removing the fuzzy hat. I told them I would go get some water.
I eased my way between bands to the sidewalk, and the same waitress
in the same diner where I'd eaten breakfast gave me a sloshing paper
cup, which I gave to one of the women when I returned.
They got her to her feet and gently led her along the median and away
from me. I wasn't a spiritual person then, but I felt as if she had
been some sort of angel. All I wanted was to apologize, and here she
went and gave me the chance to fully redeem myself. I was going to
stay for the rest of the parade, but who cared now? I was happy, and I wasn't bored.
Strange but
really weird!
Coincidence #3 (mercifully shorter than #2):
I mentioned in a previous post that I had come in second in an essay contest when I was a high school senior. I won a trip to D.C. to see the sights and eat Navy bean soup lunch with my congressman. I saw everything I wanted to – the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol building, and the White House (where you can still get a guided tour like I did, but these days there are tight restrictions).
That was in June of 1971. OK, now flash forward to the summer of 1972. I'm stationed at the same naval air station in the same town as previously mentioned. One of my friends is the same guy you also met in #2. One Saturday night, we're in his room in the barracks, doing what many enlisteds do sooner or later – drink beer and share family photos. Sharing our homesickness, as it were. He pulls out some pictures his mom took while on business in Washington, D.C., the year before. "Look at this one," he said. "Looks like you, doesn't it?"
It was me. I was passing in front of her camera outside the Capitol. Same face, same glasses, same uncoordinated outfit, everything. As the Great Criswell told viewers watching Plan 9 from Outer Space, "Can you prove it didn't happen?" (OK, bad example. He was talking about graverobbing space aliens. But you see what I'm driving at.)
Strange but holy-crap weird and absolutely true!
Feel free to use the reply window at the bottom of this post and share your own amazing coincidences with me. I eat this stuff up with a spoon.
That was in June of 1971. OK, now flash forward to the summer of 1972. I'm stationed at the same naval air station in the same town as previously mentioned. One of my friends is the same guy you also met in #2. One Saturday night, we're in his room in the barracks, doing what many enlisteds do sooner or later – drink beer and share family photos. Sharing our homesickness, as it were. He pulls out some pictures his mom took while on business in Washington, D.C., the year before. "Look at this one," he said. "Looks like you, doesn't it?"
It was me. I was passing in front of her camera outside the Capitol. Same face, same glasses, same uncoordinated outfit, everything. As the Great Criswell told viewers watching Plan 9 from Outer Space, "Can you prove it didn't happen?" (OK, bad example. He was talking about graverobbing space aliens. But you see what I'm driving at.)
Strange but holy-crap weird and absolutely true!
Feel free to use the reply window at the bottom of this post and share your own amazing coincidences with me. I eat this stuff up with a spoon.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
"Can I Borrow That Magazine When You're Through?"
I've never been without at least one magazine
subscription. I've almost never been without a book to read, either,
and magazines are what I pick up when I'm between books. It's like a
book is a rooftop, and I need a magazine as a high wire to get me
across from one to the next one. I have to be reading or I'll die.
Do you have a favorite magazine? I'll bet it's no easier for you to say than it is for me, because there's a magazine for every interest, and interests change. Or maybe they don't. If you're a welder who lives for his work, then maybe you've always had a copy of Professional Welding Today lying around. I know I would.
The only other magazines I read these days are the literary magazines I review for The Review Review. I enjoy good fiction and good poetry, and there's a lot of it around. I once subscribed to Poetry for a year. It's the oldest poetry magazine in the country. The poems that excite me the most are those that, when I finish them, inspire me to sit down and write something myself. Poems that have something to say to the average reader, not just to other poets. That's why I like Stephen Dunn, Jonathan Holden, Mary Oliver, Louis Simpson. . . . Very little in Poetry makes me feel that way. (Now you'll probably say you read a poem of Dunn's or Oliver's in Poetry just last month. I would consider those exceptions to the rule.) Billy Collins is a real favorite among people who don't normally read poetry, but to me he's like Willie Nelson. I liked every song of his that I heard on the radio until I bought my first Willie Nelson album. That's when I realized that, for me, a little of Willie goes a long way. His thin, nasal quality began to grate on me, and he hasn't been a favorite since.
Do you have a favorite magazine? I'll bet it's no easier for you to say than it is for me, because there's a magazine for every interest, and interests change. Or maybe they don't. If you're a welder who lives for his work, then maybe you've always had a copy of Professional Welding Today lying around. I know I would.
When I say a magazine for every interest, you have no idea. If
you're into pretty women and necrophilia, try a copy of Girls and
Corpses, featuring articles such as “How to Drive Your Corpse
Wild in the Sack” and “How to Keep Her Hot Long After She's Gone
Cold.” (Think I'm making this up? www.girlsandcorpses.com.)
Or Modern Drunkard, whose top story this month is, “I Busted
Out of Rehab – They Weren't Serving Booze So I Wasn't Serving
Time.” The Miserablist is for people who hate everything.
(Their motto is, “Because Life is S&@#.”) I could go on, but
I'd really rather not. My point is you have no excuse not to
subscribe to magazines, because as you can see, whatever you're into,
you're probably in luck.
As a kid, I liked Highlights and then, a few years later,
Boys' Life. Boys' Life had that back page full of
jokes (I checked recently, and it still does), and I read Highlights
from cover to cover. It's a bit more politically correct these days:
Goofus of “Goofus and Gallant” is no longer a slob, and he's
also not as mean. That's no fun. Of course, Mad Magazine was must reading for people my age. Their movie parodies were some of the funniest things I'd ever seen (their sendups of King Kong and The Birds still make me smile thinking about them), and Don Martin's cartoons were inventive and deliriously goofy. Folding Mad's back page to reveal that issue's punch line was fun, but not so much for me – I didn't like folding a magazine any more than I liked dog-earing a book.
I understand Mad caters to advertisers these days, which is sad. That means readership is down. We all grew up, I guess.
My mom read Reader's Digest,
and I enjoyed all the jokes and anecdotes. But the last time I picked
one up, it had so many stiff advertising inserts that by the
time I tore them all out, I was too tired to read.
Until a year and a half ago, I was reading the New
Yorker. I don't live in New York, and I'm
not an effete snob. I started reading it in junior high just for
Pauline Kael's movie reviews. Kael, James Agee, and Roger Ebert are
the most film-savvy and entertaining film critics I can think of.
(Ebert was an acquired taste, meaning it took me a long time to
acquire it.) You could have no interest in movies and still enjoy Kael's writing. I also read the cartoons, which I think are the
wittiest. (Roz Chast cracks me up every time.) But these days, the New Yorker has
changed its focus from culture to politics, and it's gotten dull.
So I was reading just the cartoons and reviews until I realized those
were the only things I was reading. Hence, my departure. I still get form letters imploring me to please, please come back! But they don't need my readership any more than they need my poems. (I stopped collecting their rejection slips when I began to lose count.)
My sister used to read People and Entertainment Weekly, but
she let both lapse. I read EW because I like to keep
up with book and movie releases, and some of their articles are informative and good
fun. But it's really geared more toward their target demographic – that is to say, if it were sold only at Comic-Con conventions, it would
still clean up. (As far as I can recall, the only special issue
they've run that was dedicated to one personality was a recent
tribute to Leonard Nimoy, if that tells you anything.)
I subscribed to Sports Illustrated for a year, but I finally
had to admit that I was reading way more about sports than I cared or
needed to. I just thought it was the guy thing to do. (See my previous post about sports and me.) To me, the
swimsuit edition is like those women in bikinis who pose for no
apparent reason at car shows. What does one have to do with the
other? Don't women in general enjoy sports and cars, too?
The only other magazines I read these days are the literary magazines I review for The Review Review. I enjoy good fiction and good poetry, and there's a lot of it around. I once subscribed to Poetry for a year. It's the oldest poetry magazine in the country. The poems that excite me the most are those that, when I finish them, inspire me to sit down and write something myself. Poems that have something to say to the average reader, not just to other poets. That's why I like Stephen Dunn, Jonathan Holden, Mary Oliver, Louis Simpson. . . . Very little in Poetry makes me feel that way. (Now you'll probably say you read a poem of Dunn's or Oliver's in Poetry just last month. I would consider those exceptions to the rule.) Billy Collins is a real favorite among people who don't normally read poetry, but to me he's like Willie Nelson. I liked every song of his that I heard on the radio until I bought my first Willie Nelson album. That's when I realized that, for me, a little of Willie goes a long way. His thin, nasal quality began to grate on me, and he hasn't been a favorite since.
Right now I'm in the mood for a subscription to something, anything,
that I've never read before. I'm leaning toward film magazines, but
Film Comment is pricey and Premiere is only online; if I can't flip pages, I'm not interested. I used to dream of owning a farm and living the rural life,
but I didn't like the hours. Maybe I could live vicariously through
Modern Farmer or Classic Tractor. If I ever get weird,
there's probably a Women and Herefords out there
somewhere. I wonder if they'd deliver it in a plain brown wrapper.
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