For Sunday: Toto's "Africa," sung by Perpetuum Jazzile

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I love this song. This is a jazz group in Slovenia (Perpetuum Jazzie!) doing it a cappella.

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

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Movie review: "Dodsworth"

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“Dodsworth” is a gem from 1936, directed by William Wyler, based on a subtle little Sinclair Lewis novel. Walter Huston is Sam Dodsworth, head of an automobile-manufacturing firm in Ohio, who’s retiring so that he can enjoy the Good Life in Europe. Ruth Chatterton is his silly shallow younger wife, who’s fairly drooling to get to Europe so that she can misbehave (and she does).

 

 

And Mary Astor is the nice divorced lady that Sam meets on the boat going over to Europe, who lives in Italy “because it’s cheap.”

 

 

Sam adores his silly young wife, even while she cheats on him with a variety of men: English, French, Austrian.

 

 

Finally Sam and his wife part ways.

 

 

Do you think Sam will find the nice lady in Italy whom he met on the boat?

 

 

Hmm. I wonder.

 

 

Mary Astor wrote about it in her wonderful autobiography, “A Life on Film.” She especially remembered creating the scene in which she sees Sam Dodsworth coming to her from the steamship in the Naples harbor. She recreates it for us: the chalk marks on the scenery, and the silly stuff (an ashcan labeled PUT YOUR BUTTS IN HERE that was in her eyeline). And she imagined herself the heroine, and waved to an imaginary man in a boat in the harbor, and made herself believe that it was real.

 

 

And it was real. “At every theater, at every performance,” she wrote, “the audience clapped their hands. It sounded like applause, but it was sheer joy.”

 

 

See “Dodsworth," kids. It is sheer joy.

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Radio scripts, 1939-1942

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While browsing through the (unpeopled and lonely) stacks of the Providence Public Library recently, I found a couple of gems: “The Best Broadcasts.” They are collections of the best radio scripts aired between 1939 and 1942.

 

 

Oh my god what nostalgia! George Burns and Gracie Allen (Gracie was running for President in 1940, as the nominee of the Surprise Party). Fred Allen, doing a spoof of Clifton Fadiman’s “Information Please” show. Dame May Whitty doing a grim little dramatic monologue written by W. H. Auden. Bette Davis as Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s sponsor / imaginary girlfriend. Clark Gable in a very funny romp about an adventurer marring a wealthy woman.

 

 

And Jack Benny!

 

 

(Now listen, Jack Benny was before my time, but he was still around in my childhood; he died when I was seventeen years old, and I remember feeling very solemn when I heard the news. I think I realized then, for the first time, that there was an older generation and a younger generation, and that one of these days I’d be promoted into the older generation. And then – uh-oh!)

 

 

The Jack Benny show had everything. He had his regulars – Don Wilson the announcer (who also read the commercials for Jell-O, which were part of the show, and are included in the script), and the young goofy singer Dennis Day, and Jack’s wife Mary Livingston, and Jack’s black butler Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and the singer / bandleader Phil Harris, who was too cool for words (in the 1960s he was Baloo the bear in Disney’s “Jungle Book” movie).  Also Jack’s polar bear Carmichael who guarded his safe in the basement, and his ostrich Trudy in the back yard, who ate all of the bills Jack received. (Rochester: “Trudy ate so many bills yesterday that she’s laying eggs in her sister’s name.” I don’t even know what that means exactly, but it’s pretty funny.)

 

 

Hysterical, right?

 

 

Then there was a radio script about childbirth, from 1939 or so. I was a little startled that it actually mentioned having a Wassermann test (for syphilis). And there was this tender dialogue after the birth of the child:

 

 

Mary: Hank, do you care that it’s a girl?

Hank: No, Mary, that’s swell, I don’t care a bit.

 

 

Also there’s some talk in the preface to the 1939-1940 book about “the German race” and “the British race” and (get ready) “the American race.” Is there such a thing as the "American race"? If so, I don’t know of it. But, you know, I dimly remember in my 1960s childhood hearing and reading that same expression.

 

 

The most sobering volume is the 1939-1940 book, which covers a period in which Europe was at war, but America hadn’t entered the war yet. It includes an FDR speech in which he talks about the need for neutrality and pacifism, but also the need to be prepared for – hm – eventualities. (There’s a note in the book about Senator Borah of Idaho, who said that FDR was too convincing when you listened to him live; Borah insisted on reading FDR’s speeches in the paper the next day, to get them unemotionally. I know what Senator Borah meant. I don't like to listen to political discourse; I prefer to read it. It's less inflammatory.)

 

 

Also in the 1939-1940 book was this note about why so many comedy shows were included in the text: “It is a hard year, and it is going to get worse.”

 

 

And it did.

 

 

But there were still comedies on the air.

 

 

Coming up next: “Fibber Magee and Molly”!

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Robert Heinlein

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Do you remember Scholastic Books? Jake, one of my student employees, informs me that they still exist. They sell cheap paperback books to public-school students. (In my day, it was maybe twenty-five cents. Jake tells me that, in his day – maybe ten years ago – it was more like $1.99. Still very cheap.)

 

 

Around the sixth grade or so – when I was ten years old – I acquired a Scholastic Books copy of Robert Heinlein’s “The Green Hills of Earth.”

 

 

It was my first science-fiction book, and it blew my ever-lovin’ ten-year-old mind.

 

 

It is a book of short stories, set mostly in the 21^st century. Earth has colonized the Moon and Mars and Venus. It’s full of –

 

 

Well, but was I remembering the stories correctly? I didn’t have my old copy to refer to, so I went on eBay and bought a cheap copy.

 

 

It turns out that I remember it very well.

 

 

It is extremely sexist. (A woman’s competence is summed up this way in one of the stories: “She can count to ten.”)

 

 

It manages to be xenobiologically racist. It describes the Venusian (alien) natives as silly amphibians who will do anything for tobacco, which they call “thigarek.” (“Cigarette.” Get it?)

 

 

Men are the heroes in these stories. They are burly, and they brawl. They have names like Sam Houston Jones and Humphrey Wingate and Johnny Dahlquist.

 

 

But there are glimmers of hope in these stories. The first story in the collection, “Delilah and the Space-Rigger,” is about how a woman can do as well as a man in space. Another, the title story, “The Green Hills of Earth,” is a subtle story of how the image of a rough Whitmanesque space poet was romanticized for the sake of the media. 

 

 

But the best story is the last one: “Logic of Empire.”

 

It’s the story of a Earthman who gets shanghaied and shipped to the Venus colony against his will, after claiming that the Earth government can’t possibly do such evil imperialistic things. 

 

 

Most chillingly of all, it predicts that American culture will be taken over by a Christian religious dictator, the “Prophet,” Nehemiah Scudder.

 

 

When I read this in the 1960s, the story seemed outrageously unlikely on all counts.

 

 

How does it sound to you now, kids?

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Rainbows

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People are often unhappy, but they don’t think it’s socially acceptable to let it show. So they pretend to be happy.

 

 

I don’t pretend to be happy very often; if I’m unhappy, I let it all hang out.  Once in a while in the office, when absolutely necessary, I fake being happy. But not very often.

 

 

My coworkers (mostly younger than me) know this, and come to my office and close the door and bemoan the fact that they have to play along with the majority.

 

 

I commiserate with them.

 

 

And sometimes I share this story with them:

 

 

For a while, Judy Garland and her daughter Liza Minnelli did a two-person show in Vegas together. One evening, after a show, they went to the restroom together. They were followed by a drunk fan. Judy went into a toilet stall and locked the door, but it didn’t slow the drunk fan down. “Remember the rainbow, Judy!” the fan kept yelling, hammering on the outside of the stall. “Remember the rainbow!”

 

 

“Okay, honey,” Judy said weakly from inside the stall. “I will.”

 

 

This went on for some time. Finally the drunk fan left. All became silent. “Ma?” Liza said at last. “Are you okay in there?”

 

 

Long pause. Finally, Judy Garland’s voice from inside the toilet stall: “Honey, I got rainbows comin’ out of my ass.”

 

 

As do I, every second.

 

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Shelley Winters

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Let’s all take a moment to remember Shelley Winters.

 

 

Shelley was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri. She became a big star, who won not one but two Oscars.

 

 

And she was a hot tomato and a sharp cookie to boot.

 

 

Shelley Winters Story #1:

 

 

Back in the 1980s, a director wanted her for a movie, but insisted that she read for the part. Fine, she said. She arrived at the reading with a backpack. She sat down and removed from the backpack: 1) a copy of the script; 2) an Oscar, which she put on the floor to the left of her; 3) an Oscar, which she put on the floor to the right of her.

 

 

She got the part.

 

 

Shelley Winters Story #2:

 

 

Elizabeth Ashley, the memorable actress who revived Maggie the Cat on Broadway, was wondering whether or not she should marry James Farentino. She asked Shelley’s advice. “Honey,” Shelley said, “if you ever have the opportunity, you should marry an Italian. I’ve done it twice, and I’ve never regretted it.”

 

 

(In case you’re wondering: Shelley married both Vittorio Gassman and Tony Franciosa. Neither marriage more than a few years, but I’m sure a good time was had by all.)

 

 

Shelley Winters Story #3:

 

 

Shelley went to Italy to film a movie, and asked a writer friend to housesit for her. After being in Italy for a week or so, she realized with horror that she hadn’t given her friend instructions on what to do with the garbage (the local rules were very strict). She called her house, and a strange man (with a strangely familiar voice) answered. “Is George there?” Shelley asked.

 

 

“George went out for a few minutes,” the strange man said. “We’re working on a book together.”

 

 

“Okay,” Shelley said. “I don’t care. As long as you’re there, can you do me a favor? Go out and drag the garbage cans to the curb. The neighborhood is very strict about this.”

 

 

The man on the phone paused and then said: “Okay.” He came back after a few minutes. “All done.”

 

 

“Would you do me a favor?” Shelley said in her most kittenish voice. “Would you go out and hose off the sidewalk? They’re kind of fanatical about that in the neighborhood too.”

 

 

Another pause. “Okay,” the strange man said. And he came back in a few minutes and said, “All done.”

 

 

And Shelley thanked him, and hung up the phone.

 

 

Guess who the strange man was?

 

 

Richard Nixon.

 

 

Shelley Winters made Richard Nixon take out her trash, and then made him hose off the sidewalk.

 

 

My kind of woman!

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Movie review: "Admission"

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Partner and I saw “Admission,” with Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, yesterday. Tina is a Princeton admissions officer; Paul is the hipster principal of a funky New Hampshire school that teaches cow-birthing and water purification alongside other subjects. Paul has a student he thinks ought to go to Princeton, and he contacts Tina, and –

 

 

Well, if I tell you that the movie is at least sixty percent romantic comedy, you can write the rest yourself.

 

 

It’s pleasant enough. There are some funny moments, and some well-acted moments. Tina is always funny and really very pretty, and Paul is an all-purpose romantic leading man: cute without being overwhelming, cheerful, smart. There’s a nice supporting cast, including Michael Sheen (who was one of Tina’s boyfriends on “30 Rock,” and who has wonderful anti-chemistry with her), Wallace Shawn (doing his funny squinting schtick, but always welcome), and Lily Tomlin (more on her later).

 

 

But the movie goes in too many directions. Sometimes it wants to be a commentary on college admissions; there’s a running gag that, when Tina or one of her colleagues reads an application, the applicant appears in physical form before them. All of them are good kids, one way or another. How do you choose between them?

 

 

But it muddles the issue. American college and universities can’t admit every applicant, so they try to balance everything: test results, transcripts, extracurriculars, essays, recommendations. They want the kids who are most likely to succeed. The movie tries to make this point, but then lets sentimentality fudge the issue. A minor character makes an icy comment early in the movie: “In England we rely on test results. Why can’t you do that here?” (She’s supposed to be a unpleasant person, so it’s assumed that she’s heartless, and we’re supposed to disagree with her. But: why not indeed?)

 

 

Also there’s a lot of foofaraw about parentage. Tina has an ambivalent attitude toward being a parent, and maybe has a kid, and maybe not. Paul has an adopted African son and a crazy alcoholic mother who thinks lawn jockeys are cute. Tina’s mother is an unrepentant 1960s feminist, of whom Tina is not very fond.

 

 

This is supposed to be interesting and meaningful. But: meh.

 

 

Overall, this movie is a minor effort.

 

 

Now let’s talk about Lily Tomlin.

 

 

Manohla Dargis in the New York Times pointed out that Tina Fey has a knack for being clear-eyed about what it means to be a feminist, both the positives and the pitfalls. On “30 Rock,” Tina created a comedy writer (played by Carrie Fisher) who was way ahead of her time, but who was now living nearly-penniless in a filthy apartment and was still writing 1970s-style comedy.

 

 

Lily Tomlin, playing Tina’s mother in “Admission,” is the ultimate 1960s feminist. When Tina walks into her mother’s house, the first thing you see is a poster of a fish riding a bicycle. (If this doesn’t immediately suggest anything to you, just Google “fish bicycle woman.”) Lily’s dogs are named Gloria and Betty. She has a tattoo with the word “Bella” on it. Just to show that some things never change, she has an “Occupy Wall Street” poster framed on the wall. Lily has a double mastectomy without thinking about it too much, and without telling her daughter Tina. “They said it was aggressive,” Lily says. “I’m aggressive too. So I got rid of it.”

 

 

I was paying attention to every moment Lily was onscreen. She made the movie worthwhile to me.

 

 

It’s not a great movie. But if you like Tina Fey, or Lily Tomlin, you should see this movie.

 

 

Because sisterhood is powerful.

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For Sunday: Barbra Streisand sings "Come to the Supermarket in Old Peking"

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This Cole Porter song was on Barbra Streisand’s first album.  The lyrics are hysterical, and her performance is perfect.

 

 

If you want to buy a saw

Or a fish delicious when it’s raw

Or a pill to kill your mother-in-law

Or a bee without a sting –

Come to the supermarket in old Peking!

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

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The aging brain

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I used to love my brain. It was very dependable. It had tremendous capacity, and a very quick response time.

 

 

But all that has changed.

 

 

I began to notice it about two years ago, at the advanced age of fifty-three. Proper names were suddenly less easy to remember. Simple facts – Who starred in which movie? What do you call that thing you use to eat ice cream with? – were eluding me.

 

 

The pace of the decline has quickened. I was introducing two people to one another not long ago – people I knew very well – and I suddenly couldn’t remember one of their names. I tried to cover for myself, fumblingly. I admitted it to one friend later, and he just grinned. “I noticed,” he said. “You forgot my name!”

 

 

Thank god he thought it was funny.

 

 

I told my doctor about it, sure that he would say it was more-or-less-early-onset Alzheimer’s. He shrugged. “It’s the aging brain,” he said.

 

 

The aging brain.

 

 

Lovely.

 

 

It progresses. The other day, I looked at a regular analog clock with hour hand on two and minute hand on six. One voice in my head said: “Two-thirty.” And another voice, achier and feebler, said: “What in the hell is that thing?”

 

 

Time ticks by, and I get dimmer and dimmer, and more and more feeble.

 

 

It’s only a matter of time.

 

 

What were we talking about?

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Lynda Barry, in person

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I wrote a while back about Lynda Barry, the illustrator / writer. Well, she came to the Rhode Island School of Design on January 14 – my friend Sylvia, who works there, was good enough to let me know – and I went to her presentation.

 

 

Kids, Lynda Barry is amazing.

 

 

She talked about “images.” What’s an image? It’s the thing that children create when they play. It’s an imaginary friend. It’s a binkie. It’s a stuffed animal that you can’t live without. It’s your first crush (come on, you can remember his / her name without even thinking, can’t you?). It’s your first telephone number, which you can still probably remember, and which gives you a little thrill of warmth when you remember it.

 

 

Why?

 

 

Lynda has been partnering with scientists at the University of Wisconsin about these questions. They have found that adults in a state of “creative concentration” and children in a state of “deep play” have similar fMRIs.

 

 

She is very funny, and much of her presentation was in anecdote form. Here’s one of the core anecdotes:

 

 

She and her husband live in rural Wisconsin. Most of their friends are serious and humorless. But, if one brings a small child into the group, they begin to play with the child. They draw, and sing, and dance for the child. (“I wish,” Lynda said, “I could remove the child. I just want to see the adults dancing and singing, sometimes.”) If you ask them why they’re so carefree with children, sometimes they say: “Children aren’t judgmental.” To which Lynda says: “Nope. Children are incredibly judgmental.”

 

 

This is Lynda Barry’s assessment of the situation (I paraphrase, because I can’t quite remember her actual words): “The adults are speaking to the children in the language of play. It’s the basic language. It’s the language that comes before language.”

 

 

Amen.

 

 

And then she recited a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, and then she told us a joke about balls.

 

 

This is what higher education is really all about.

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Mama is a valetudinarian

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I finally had my follow-up visit with my urologist, to discuss my kidney stones, and how best to dig and/or drill them out of me.

 

 

And guess what? There’s no good way to do it.

 

 

It turns out that my kidney stones appear and disappear on a dime. In December 2011 I had one the size of a marble; it was gone six months later. The doctor informed me that there’s really no treatment for the kind of stones I have. I could undergo lithotripsy – the ultrasound treatment that shatters stones – but it appears that my body is already doing that: the stones form and then dissolve again, and I pass them with little or no pain. The only discomfort I have is a dull ache, like a toothache in my back. It goes away for days, or weeks, or months, and then comes back.

 

 

So it is a chronic condition.

 

 

Which means I will be moaning and complaining about it for a very long time.

 

 

Which makes me a valetudinarian.

 

 

From dictionary.com:

 

 

val·e·tu·di·nar·i·an [val-i-tood-n-air-ee-uh n, -tyood-] Noun 

 

1.   an invalid. 

 

2. a person who is excessively concerned about his or her poor health or ailments. 

 

Adjective:

 

3.   in poor health; sickly; invalid.

 

4. excessively concerned about one's poor health or ailments.

 

5.  of, pertaining to, or characterized by invalidism.

 

 

I am all of the above.

 

 

Mazel tov to all of you.

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Danny Lockin

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I was watching “Hello, Dolly!” on TCM the other night (yes, I know, I’m gayer than Christmas at Bloomingdale's) and thinking about the cast. A number of the co-stars never really broke through. I vaguely remember that E. J. Peaker, who plays Minnie Fay in the movie, had a short-lived TV show with Bobby Morse in the 1960s. Michael Crawford did okay for himself too, mostly on stage.

 

 

But what about the cute little blond fellow who played Barnaby Tucker? I couldn’t place him. So I looked him up in IMDB. Aha. Danny Lockin. Professional dancer –

 

 

Who was horribly murdered in 1977, only about ten years after making the movie.

 

 

I recently wrote about how we like to dwell of stories of cruelty and violence and horror, and especially when they happen to celebrities.

 

 

But why?

 

 

I have a personal theory that celebrities – music, movies, TV – are our modern pantheon, our gods and demigods. We are fascinated by them, and we attribute all kinds of qualities to them. They have mana. A celebrity on the Graham Norton Show recently talked about people passing out when they met him; they simply couldn’t handle being close to someone they knew from television or the movies. Another guest agreed. Apparently it happens all the time.

 

 

And, just as with mythology and folklore, we like to hear and retell stories about celebrities.

 

 

When I was a kid, the two biggest Hollywood stories were the Eddie Fisher / Debbie Reynolds / Elizabeth Taylor triangle (Eddie and Debbie were married, and then that tramp Elizabeth broke them up!), and Elizabeth’s on-again / off-again relationship with Richard Burton. You see? Just like Greek mythology: the gods and demigods philander and cheat and scheme, and there’s always a moral at the end of the story.

 

 

And we do love it when they die spectacularly: Carole Lombard in a plane crash, George Sanders by his own hand, Sal Mineo stabbed to death.

 

 

And poor cute little Danny Lockin too.

 

 

But I don’t love it.

 

 

I am terribly terribly sorry about it.

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Dowsing

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Dowsing is looking for underground water – springs, wells, etc. – by magical means.

 

 

Many dowsers use a split twig, which looks like a slingshot. They hold the two split ends like handles, and walk. When there’s water below their feet, the twig will tell them so. It will tug at their hands, and draw the twig to earth.

 

 

When I was growing up in southwest Washington state in the 1960s, dowsing was a fact of life. A family friend named Ruth was a water witch; she made good money dowsing wells for people.

 

 

My father did it himself, but he had his own method: he filled a ketchup bottle with water, and suspended it from a thick piece of twine, and carried it around the field, looking for water.

 

 

(Here’s the thing: in those days, in southwest Washington, the water table was nearly level with the ground. There was water everywhere. After a heavy rainfall, you could put a stick in the ground, and water would gush out.)

 

 

(So how hard was it to be a water witch? Not very.  And how often did they succeed? A lot.)

 

 

This doesn’t mean that I disbelieve in it. A lot of animals can smell water; why shouldn’t people be able to do that?

 

 

But finding water below ground, in southwest Washington, in those days, was just too easy.

 

 

I believe in all kinds of crazy crap, but in this case, I’d like to see a bit more proof.

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Customer service done right, and done wrong

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My Australian career idol, Attila Ovari, has posted several blogs recently about customer service. You can read one here, and the other here.

 

 

You’ve maybe read my various rants on the subject. The local grocery store is – not to exaggerate – about as service-oriented as a federal prison. My old bank (whose name rhymes with “Bitizens”) was even worse. They were generally indifferent, and occasionally genuinely rude.

 

 

So I quit them, and took my two dollars and seventeen cents, and opened an account at TD Bank, which only recently came to Rhode Island.

 

 

It was like the transition from black-and-white to color in “The Wizard of Oz.” The staff at TD Bank are friendly! They hold the door for me, and greet me! They give me free pens, and even dog biscuits! (Well, not for me. They’re dog-friendly, in any case.) The tellers and managers at the downtown Providence location, where I go maybe twice a week, are friendly and chatty without being oppressive or stupid.

 

 

Also, I should add, their fee structure is much more client-friendly than that at Bitizens. Before our trip to France, Partner did some checking and found that the dollar-to-Euro exchange rate (including fee) was much better at my bank than at his (he still banks at Bitizens!), so he had me change some money for him there. Then my friend Tab found out the same thing, and had me change some dollars to Canadian currency for him.

 

 

Okay. Good customer service, and better rates, and lower fees.

 

 

So Partner comes out of Bitizens chuckling the other day. “The teller kept chatting me up,” he said. “He called me by my first name, which he got from my deposit slip. And then he said: ‘You might be getting a call later. They may want to ask you about my customer service.’”

 

 

We had a good laugh about that. So now Bitizens is worried about its customer service, and is trying to emulate my bank!

 

 

Except that, once again, they’ve got the formula wrong.

 

 

This is Partner speaking:

 

 

“I can hardly wait. I hope they call me. I’ll give the teller high marks for being very friendly and sociable. I will also tell them that, when we were in Connecticut last week, I was using an out-of-system ATM and accidentally hit the “Check My Balance” button. It gave me my balance, all right. It also charged me three dollars for the privilege.”

 

 

How much do you think that electronic transaction actually cost the banks in question? Some fraction of a penny?

 

 

Partner has vowed that, as soon as TD Bank opens up a bank in our neighborhood, he’s transferring his account.

 

 

Hear that, Bitizens?

 

 

(No, you probably don’t.)

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For Sunday: Olive Oyl does the Broadway Samba

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This is a very nice Popeye cartoon from 1944. It’s more of a Road picture a la Bing Crosby and Bob Hope than the usual slugfest; Bluto (who’s in wonderful voice) and Popeye do a beautiful duet, and then they meet the ravishing Carioca incarnation of Olive Oyl, who sings (in Portuguese and English) the “Broadway Samba.”

 

 

Ole!

 

 

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Humphrey Bogart double feature

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When I first came to Providence in 1978, there was a little repertory theater on Thayer Street called the Avon Cinema. It showed a double feature every evening, and changed shows three times a week: foreign films, classics, cult films. You could buy a discount card which gave you five shows (ten movies!) for ten dollars.

 

 

Ah, children, those were the days.

 

 

The Avon still stands, and Partner and I still go there once in a while. It’s eight dollars per show now, and no more double features. But it’s the same cute little theater, with a tiny lobby and an old-fashioned stage inside, and still owned by Kenny Dulgarian (who, in the 1970s and 1980s, used to greet people in person).

 

 

I was also reminded of this because, the other night, on Turner Classic Movies, I saw “The Maltese Falcon” and “Casablanca” together, one right after the other.

 

 

That was one of the classic Avon double features: at least once every month or two, Kenny would show those two movies together. And, for a couple of bucks, wouldn’t you go see them? (Remember, these were the days before VHS or DVD or cable or Netflix or streaming video. If you wanted to see a movie, you had to go see it in a theater.)

 

 

Both are beautiful black-and-white masterpieces. Humphrey Bogart is at his best in both (he really did twitch his lips that way). And the supporting casts! Mary Astor as the scheming / seductive Bridget O’Shaughnessy in “Falcon,” and Ingrid Bergman as the luminous Ilse Lund in “Casablanca.” Sydney Greenstreet, evil and somehow sympathetic and funny in both. Peter Lorre, slimy and odd in both. Noah Beery, young and nasty, in “Falcon.” Claude Rains, elegant and funny, in “Casablanca.”

 

 

I think that these two movies themselves are an education in film studies. If you learn them – learn them well – you’ll figure out what movies are all about.

 

 

They are the stuff that dreams are made of.

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Harissa

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Harissa is a Tunisian condiment, made from red peppers and garlic and olive oil. It burns like fire. In Tunisia, when you go to a restaurant, they begin by giving you a little plate of bread and olive oil and harissa; you learn, after burning your mouth a few times, the right way to combine them.

 

 

Harissa is delicious, once you get used to it. I, frankly, can’t live without it. But it’s not easy to find in the United States. I bought a tube of it – yes, a tube, like a toothpaste tube – in the Morocco section of Epcot in Disney World, over a year ago. I use it up very slowly, in eggs and vegetable dishes. And it always reminds me of my time in Tunisia.

 

 

My Tunisian friends always got a kick out of how Americans reacted to harissa. They’d trick them into eating it straight, and hoot with laughter when the Americans choked and spat it out. What fun!

 

 

Then an American friend spent a few weeks back in the USA, and came back with assorted oddball American delicacies you couldn’t find in Tunisia: nori, and graham crackers, and pickled jalapeno peppers. She and I were eating jalapenos straight out of the jar in ecstasy. “What’s the big deal?” a Tunisian friend said. “Are they hot?”

 

 

“Very hot,” we both said. “But delicious.”

 

 

“They can’t be that bad,” he said. And he fished one out of the jar, and ate one.

 

 

And my American friend and I hooted with laughter as he shrieked and ran around the house in pain, because the jalapeno was too hot for him.

 

 

Evidently, “hot” in one culture is not the same as “hot” in another culture.

 

 

Now: how about some nice wasabi?

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Why did Pope Benedict retire?

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Popes do not resign very often. Official Church history doesn’t even give an exact number, because several very early popes may or may not have resigned. The two most famous are these: Celestine V in 1294, who hated his job, and Gregory XII in 1415, because there were three popes at once, and – well, it’s a complicated story.

 

 

The outgoing Pope, Benedict XVI, said he retired because he’s “infirm.” Aha. Well, popes generally stay put until they crumble into dust. The previous Pope, John Paul II, was very ill for at least the last ten years of his life, but continued to do his job, and was respected for it. Here’s the reasoning: the Holy Roman Catholic Church is guided by the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity gives spiritual guidance to the College of Cardinals when they elect the new Pope. Presumably, the Holy Trinity will not guide the College of Cardinals to elect someone who needs to step down after a few years.

 

 

So: we are forced to conclude that His Holiness Benedict XVI stepped down for more earthly and/or carnal reasons.

 

 

Here are a few earthly and/or carnal suggestions:

 

 

-         Benedict (formerly Josef Ratzinger) was a member of the Hitler Youth, and fought in World War II. His family, and the Church, has maintained that young Josef was defiantly anti-Nazi, and went so far as to avoid Hitler Youth meetings! (Well, really, if he’d wanted to be anti-Nazi, he could have gone underground.) Is it possible that someone has positive proof that young Josef was an active member of the German National Socialist Party, and is blackmailing him with the information?

-         One rumor goes like this: Benedict commissioned an investigation into the “gay Mafia” that runs the Vatican. The report was so overwhelmingly damning that Benedict decided he couldn’t run things anymore.

-         Same rumor, different twist: the “gay Vatican mafia” got so mad at Benedict that they forced him out.

-         Benedict is a famously bad personnel / money manager, and so are his lieutenants. Could this be about something as simple as financial mismanagement?

-         How about this? There are lots of sex scandals, both within the Vatican and outside. Let’s say Benedict discovered an embarrassing one – some cardinal or monsignor – and was silly enough to think he could pay off a blackmailer. Now it’s all about sex and money.

 

 

And here’s the thing: there was a time when we would never have known the truth. But things are changing. People are speaking up. People aren’t so much afraid of the Church hierarchy anymore.

 

 

Stay tuned, kids. Who knows what we might learn?

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William the Conqueror

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I’ve done genealogy for a long time now, and I know (or sort of know) that I am descended from one of the English noble families.

 

 

And since everybody intermarried so much in those days, one way or another, I know that I am descended from William the Conqueror.

 

 

Is there any doubt?

 

 

We found William  - or rather Guillaume le Conquerant – everywhere we went in Normandy in October. William’s Ducal Palace was two blocks from our hotel in Caen, and his tomb was ten blocks away in the Abbaye aux Hommes. (His wife Matilda was buried not far away in the other direction, but we didn’t get to her tomb. Next time for sure.)  The big cathedral in Caen, Saint-Pierre, was founded by William’s grandfather. When we went to Bayeux, we saw another grandiose cathedral commissioned by William, as well as the miraculous tapestry which may or may not have been executed by Queen Matilda. (At any rate, the tapestry was commissioned by William’s half-brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux.)

 

 

We didn’t visit Falaise, where William was born. There’s a lovely castle there:

 

 

William’s father was the rascally Duke Robert of Normandy, known as Robert the Devil. His mother was Arlette, daughter of a local embalmer. Robert and Arlette weren’t married, so William was a bastard. (This would explain all the things called “Le Batard” in Caen and Bayeux.)

 

 

I was strangely moved by the epitaph on William’s tomb:

 

 

I know just enough Latin to translate it without help:

 

HERE IS BURIED

THE MOST UNCONQUERED

WILLIAM

THE CONQUEROR

DUKE OF NORMANDY

AND KING OF ENGLAND

AND THE BUILDER OF THIS HOUSE

WHO DIED IN THE YEAR 1087

 

 

I felt uncommonly solemn in that place.

 

 

Rest in peace, Grandpa William.

 

 

(We’ll get around to visiting Grandma Matilda on our next trip.)

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Papal election update

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A surprising number of my friends and acquaintances are paying attention to the Papal election. One of them wants me to be the new Pope (I’m a baptized Catholic, so I’m eligible). Another wants the Roman church to go the Anglican route: an African church, a South American church, etc.

 

 

Maybe I’m wrong, but this will not be a brief conclave. I see a couple of opposing forces here, as follow:

 

 

-         A retiring Pope, who thinks it’s within his power to name a successor;

-         A College of Cardinals whose members know very well that the outgoing Pope has no such power;

-         A largely Third World congregation, which would love to see a black or Hispanic Pope;

-         A strongly European Church hierarchy, which thinks that the Catholic Church is still a European entity.

 

 

Yikes!

 

 

The funniest part of this is that Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley (from Ohio), is being touted (by the local Boston / Providence media) as a frontrunner. Well, nothing’s impossible. But, really: an American Pope? I doubt it.

 

 

Same for an African Pope, or a white South African Pope. Not much of a chance.

 

 

Shortly after Benedict’s resignation announcement, the Vatican leaked the implication that this would be a quick conclave; there’d be a Benedict-approved candidate (probably the Italian Cardinal Scola), and the cardinals would vote for a day or two, and it’d be over.

 

 

But I just don’t think so.

 

 

But then again, it’s all in God’s hands, isn’t it, kids?

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Salt, and MSG, and lead: Joe Jackson sings "Everything Gives You Cancer"

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I read lots of different publications. I read Reader’s Digest, which is very cheerful, but is also very conservative. I also read Mother Jones, which is unashamedly liberal. I read the Atlantic, and New York Magazine, and the Financial Times . . .

 

 

Well, I tell you, it’s exhausting.

 

 

It’s especially exhausting to figure out their takes on various issues.

 

 

Salt, for example. Reader’s Digest recently excerpted an article from the New York Times (!) which showed that maybe salt isn’t as bad as we’ve been bad as we’ve been led to believe.

 

 

To be sure: any nutrient, in excess, is bad for you. But how much is too much much? We’ve been told over the last few decades that we eat too much salt, and it’s killing us: hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease.

 

 

Except maybe the research studies aren’t supportive of this.

 

 

O dear!

 

 

Monosodium glutamate? Also not necessarily a killer, according to a British book I read recently. (Of course, they said that salt was the real villain.)

 

 

And a recent article in Mother Jones found widespread lead poisoning in urban areas, which seemed to correlate to areas of elevated crime, etc.

 

 

Sing it, Joe Jackson!

 

 

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For Sunday: Elvis Costello sings "New Amsterdam"

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I’ve loved Elvis Costello since the 1970s. This song, from his “Get Happy!” album in the 1980s, is one of my favorites. The melody is wonderful, and the lyrics are amazing.

 

 

Note: this song might or might not be about Elvis’s love/hate relationship with New York City (try thinking of NYC as the woman he’s singing about; it kind of makes sense).

 

 

But who knows?

 

Enjoy.

 

 

 

New Amsterdam has become much too much

When I have the possession of everything she touches

Can I step on the brake to get out of her clutches

Can I speak double Dutch to a real double duchess

 

 

 

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Glaucoma

Glaucoma and medical marijuana

 

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I’ve told you recently that I have been getting loads of genetic information from 23andme.com. Among other things, I have learned that I have a significantly enhanced chance of developing something called “exfoliation glaucoma.”

 

 

I have read several descriptions of this interesting condition. As I understand it, little particles of dead tissues (often described as “dandruff-like”) begin to accumulate within the eyeball. (Actually they accumulate within the “trabecular network,” but let’s not get too technical.) At any rate, your eyeballs turn into miniature snowflake paperweights, full of inert whitish material. This increases the fluid pressure within your eyeballs, and – presto! – glaucoma.

 

 

The average chance for developing this charming disease is 0.7 percent. Mine is 2.2 percent. Not huge, but more than triple the average.

 

 

This is interesting. There’s no glaucoma in my family that I know of, but we seem to be capable of generating nasty little mutations of our own, so I’m sure the folks at 23andMe.com are not making this stuff up.

 

 

So what’s to be done?

 

 

Glaucoma is treatable. There are eyedrops, and laser surgery, and other things.

 

 

Also there is always medical marijuana.

 

 

One of the first uses of medical marijuana was to reduce the fluid pressure in the eyeballs of glaucoma patients. It’s not the most highly-recommended treatment – damn medical research! – but it’s still used in many cases.

 

 

And medical marijuana gives you the nicest giggly feeling, and the most tremendous appetite.

 

 

Ah well. There are much worse things than glaucoma.

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Baba Marta

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It’s March!

 

 

Are you wearing red and white? I certainly hope so.

 

 

Otherwise, you’ll make Baba Marta angry.

 

 

Baba Marta is the Bulgarian spirit of the month of March. She is a mean old lady who’ll rain on you, and freeze you, if she doesn’t like you. February is her brother; he’s a drunkard, and lazy. He depends on Baba Marta so much that she made him give her some of her days (which is why he has twenty-eight, and she has thirty-one).

 

 

Here’s more information:

 

 

In folklore Baba Marta is presented as the wife or sister of Big Sechko (January) and Little Sechko (February). She is constantly unhappy with them; in different tales they drink her wine or do different mischiefs. She gets really angry and as a result the weather breaks.

 

One of the most popular tales tells us about an old lady, who took her goats out in the mountain. It was the end of March, the very last days of the month.  The old lady was counting on Baba Marta for blessing her with good weather – she is as ancient as I am, the old lady thought to herself, she will have mercy. Baba Marta did anything but. She got so mad, asked her brother April to land her a few days and got them. These days are what we call “borrowed days”.  Baba Marta set free all the blizzards and snowstorms and the old lady and her goats were frozen. They then became a pile of stones, from which healing water started running.

 

 

This version neglects to tell you that the old lady was frozen sitting down, and that the “healing water” was flowing from her crotch.

 

 

Happy March, everybody! And don’t forget to wear red and white. You do not want to piss off Baba Marta.

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Edward Gorey

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A while back, Google changed its logo to commemorate Edward Gorey’s 88^th birthday.

 

 

Gorey was an illustrator. I still have some paperback books from the 1960s and 1970s with covers drawn by Gorey. (His style is unmistakeable: scratchy, mock-Victorian, mock-Gothic.)

 

 

But all the while, quietly, he was publishing his own little books: children’s alphabets, morality stories, horror stories, and limericks.

 

 

If you ever watched “Mystery!” on PBS, you’ve seen Gorey’s work; that wonderful animation at the beginning, with sighing women and huge urns crashing on people’s head. Here it is:

 

 

 

 

Gorey passed away in 2000. He lived on the north shore of Cape Cod, in Yarmouthport, Massachusetts. Partner and I have visited his house; it’s a big rambling structure, with a huge bay laurel tree in the yard.

 

 

Gorey collected things. There are buckets full of doorknobs on display! (Older American readers will remember Aunt Clara, on the TV show “Bewitched,” who always had doorknobs in her purse. It’s a sweet affectation to collect doorknobs. To be sure, they can be very pretty.)

 

 

I snatched a laurel leaf from the yard before we left, and pressed it in my ancient copy of “Amphigorey.”

 

 

Happy 88^th, Edward. We miss you.

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Snow, glaciers, and the Elizabeth Islands

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We here in Rhode Island had a mini-blizzard in the middle of February, which dumped two feet of snow. A lot of it melted right away. But some of it remained, in big chunks and drifts on the roadside.

 

 

It melts, bit by bit, and the streets and sidewalks get wider and wider, thank God.

 

 

Have you ever noticed what happens when mounded snow melts? It almost always leaves debris behind, like this:

 

 

 

 

Flashback to the last Ice Age: the glaciers pushed all kinds of debris (rocks, etc.) out to their limits, and then they receded.

 

 

What did they leave behind?

 

 

Why, Cape Cod and the Elizabeth Islands!

 

 

 

 

 

Cape Cod and the Elizabeths are the fringe of debris  - the “terminal moraine” – left behind by the last glaciers.

 

 

The last Ice Age left behind all kinds of debris in southern New England: the teardrop-shaped islands in Boston Harbor, the big chunks of stone dropped at random throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut and Rhode Island (“glacial erratics”, and (most especially) the line of debris that created the ridges of Cape Cod and the Elizabeth Islands.

 

 

Debris. What a terrible word. Let’s just call it “landscaping.”

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