The art of the tummler

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Partner and I were down on Cape Cod a few weeks ago, and we ate at our favorite restaurant, Captain Parker’s in West Yarmouth. The bar is always crowded with locals (always a good sign), and the dining room is always crowded with tourists like us (also a good sign), and the seafood is excellent.

I recognized our waiter on sight, as he’s waited on us before. He was a big cheerful guy, who worked the room like an expert; he chatted us up, wanted to know if we were golfers (which flattered us both, as we’re not golfers by a long shot); he got involved in a long conversation at a neighboring table about a recent Red Sox game; he jollied up the nearby birthday-party table by wanting to know where everyone was from, and pretended to know terrible stories about people from those towns.

He was, in short, a tummler.

From Dictionary.com:

tummler [toom-ler]: noun

1.     A male entertainer as formerly employed by resorts in the Catskill Mountains, who combined the duties of a comedian, activities director, and master of ceremonies, and whose responsibility was to keep the guests amused throughout their stay.

2.     Any lively, prankish, or mischievous man.

Origin: 1930-35 Yiddish tumler, one who makes a racket.

Many of the comedians of my childhood – Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye, Phil Silvers – worked as tummlers early in their careers. Most of the big Catskills resorts have closed down since those days, of course. But the personality type (see definition #2 above) will go on forever.

Our friend at Captain Parker’s is a good tummler: friendly, amiable, and with a excellent sense of when to stop.

Some tummlers, however, do not have this nice awareness of their role. They think of themselves as the lives of the party, and end up being – well – obnoxious.

I think we all know a few of these. They’re noisy, and they never let up.

We like an occasional dose of Jerry Lewis or Milton Berle. We don’t want to live with them.

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Networking

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Not long ago I received an email entitled “The ABC Insider,” with news and views about ABC's programming season. I glanced through their schedule, and their ads, and their promos, and I found myself thinking: Yeah, it looks like ABC.

 

 

And then I stopped and wondered: what did I mean by that?

 

 

When I was a kid in the 1960s and early 1970s, we pretty much subsisted on programming from the Big Three: ABC, CBS, and NBC.  Somehow, each network managed to have a personality (we call it “branding” nowadays). I never really thought about it at the time, but I think about it now, and it was real then, and it's real now.

 

 

I managed to put myself into a kind of memory trance to dredge up recollections of programs I watched in those days, and I tried also to remember what network they were on. It was surprisingly easy. (I went through later, using that new invention “The Internet,” to verify my recollections, and I was right in every instance.)  I then looked for a thread that ran through the programming in each network's case, and in each case I didn't have to look very hard.

 

 

NBC was in those days the sophisticated network: “Laugh-In.” “The Tonight Show.” Later, “Julia” (“brought to you with pride . . . by Jello”). NBC was urban in a kind of wink-wink Playboy Club way, or in a dignified dinner-party way. It was For Grownups, or For Those Who Wanted To Believe They Were Grownups. 

 

 

CBS churned out variety shows: Red Skelton, Gary Moore, Carol Burnett, Jackie Gleason. They were the home of all those hick comedies like “Beverly Hillbillies” and “Green Acres” and “Petticoat Junction.” And, of course, they were the home of Lucille Ball. CBS was almost vaudeville. I remember when I went to college in Spokane in 1974, the local CBS affiliate's office still had the old mid-60s network slogan on its facade, “The Stars' Address.” CBS was all about personalities: familiar names, proven talent. And not just Entertainment, but Family Entertainment. No grin-grin wink-wink here; everything was broad and obvious. This was the network that churned out “Hee Haw” a few years later.

 

 

ABC was all over the map. “Hollywood Palace.”  “Peyton Place.”  “Garrison's Gorillas.”  “Alias Smith and Jones.”  “Batman.”  “Bewitched.”  “That Girl.”  With very few exceptions, they were half-hour shows, brittle and jokey, or broad and soapy. ABC was almost the 1960s equivalent of the Fox Network. Most of all, ABC skewed young: bright new faces, chirpy comedies.

 

 

All these decades later, it continues. I look at a show like “The Ghost Whisperer,” earnest and cute and mock-dramatic, and I think: yeah, CBS. And I look at something kooky and snapping-fingers hip like “Lost,” and I think: yeah, probably ABC.

 

 

But now there's a channel for everything. (I have a fond memory of the episode of “Married with Children” when they first got cable: “What's this?” “The Japanese Channel.” Click. “What's this?” “The Stained Glass Network.”) But a network/channel like that isn't really the same thing. It's like a store that sells only Scotch Tape. The three big networks in the 1960s were like full-range department stores, each with a slightly different feel: upscale, midrange, family-friendly, bargain-basement.

 

 

(But the deepest mystery of all is this: what in the world is going on inside the brain of a fifty-five-year-old man who has to concentrate hard to remember today's date, but who can still remember what network “Garrison's Gorillas” was on, forty-five years later?)

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The Moulin Rouge

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Before we left for Paris, Partner got us tickets for the Moulin Rouge. The tickets were hard to get; the show sells out very quickly.

 

 

And now I know why.

 

 

First of all, the neighborhood is exactly what you want it to be: it’s a slightly less grubby version of the old Times Square in Manhattan, or Boston’s late lamented Combat Zone. We arrived early and had a drink in a sidewalk café, and watched a pretty young prostitute pick up a nice young man at the next table. Romance!

 

 

The show was old-fashioned burlesque: big costumes, big musical numbers, and a little dash of Cirque du Soleil. The theme was “Feerie”: Fairyland.  There were two jugglers, one serious, one very funny. There was a big “exotic” musical number that couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be Indian, or Chinese, or Japanese. There were little ballads. There was, of course, the Can-can. (We were seated at a table with two very serious Frenchwomen, who only applauded the Can-can.)

 

 

Then there were the breasts.

 

 

They were everywhere, and they gave me quite a turn. I think I must have seen seventy or eighty of them. They were (mostly) very pert. (There were lots of bare behinds too, but they made less of an impression on me, for some reason.)

 

 

There was very little beefcake. There was one very nice number with two handsome acrobatic male dancers, one shirtless and the other in a t-shirt, who did elaborate handstands and carries. I could have done with a little more of that.

 

 

Upon leaving the club, I realized I’d left my American cap behind. To hell with it! I thought. I went to a street vendor and bought a very rakish hipster hat for seven euro.

 

 

So now I take a piece of the Moulin Rouge wherever I go, and my little American cap is floating around Montmartre somewhere.

 

 

Who knows? Maybe that prostitute has it.

 

 

Vive l’amour!

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Theater review: "The Winter's Tale," Providence, October 2012

I saw last week that Brown/Trinity was going to stage Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” downtown, in the Pell/Chafee Center. I bought tickets immediately.

 

 

 

 

“The Winter’s Tale” isn’t staged very often. It is an odd play, which Shakespeare most likely wrote late in life. It’s about the king of Sicily, Leontes, who becomes irrationally jealous of his wife Hermione, who (he’s completely sure) is having an affair with his best friend King Polyxenes of Bavaria. He tries to kill his friend the king, unsuccessfully; he imprisons his (pregnant) queen; he has his little son sent away.

 

 

 

The Oracle of Delphi tells him that he’s wrong about everything. He erupts into a rage, and then his wife dies, and his son. Unrepentant, he sends his newborn daughter to be eaten by wild animals.

 

 

 

One of his courtiers takes the baby girl to “the seacoast of Bohemia” (there ain’t no such place). He abandons her there, and is then (in Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction) “pursued by a bear,” who kills him.

 

 

 

The play’s last two acts are about redemption. The wife, Hermione, lives, and so does the baby girl. The son of the King of Bohemia marries the daughter of the King of Sicily. And so on.

 

 

 

It is sweet, and bittersweet.

 

 

 

This production was lots of fun. The sets were minimal: some sheets, a toy ship. A few of the actors are worth mention: Elise LeBreton, a dignified Hermione; Catherine Dupont, a wonderful Emilia; Ben Grills, a funny / dignified Shepherd; Mark Larson, a very funny Clown; and Zdenko Martin, a convincingly roguish Autolycus.

 

 

 

At the end of part one – “exit, pursued by a bear” – there was a whole chorus line of bears, performing a very athletic dance number. Then they ran up into the audience, and one of them stuck her bear-masked face into my face and growled, and I laughed like hell.

 

 

 

Then, at the beginning of Part II, after the intermission, the minstrel / scoundrel Autolycus came onstage, wearing a hat that looked just like the one I bought two weeks ago on Montmartre.

 

 

He’d taken it from under my seat. He came up into the audience after his musical number and returned it to me, very sweetly, and told me to be more careful in future.

 

 

 

Imagine! My hat’s a Shakepearean actor!

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Madonna

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My goodness, how Madonna has evolved over the years!  “Material Girl.”  “Papa Don’t Preach.”  “Celebration.”  Warren Beatty.  "Sex." Sean Penn.  “Vogue.”  “Truth or Dare.”  Pointy bra. “Like a Virgin.”

 

 

A true original.

 

 

And a true pain in the ass.

 

 

Then she married Guy Ritchie and moved to England, and became, apparently, the Duchess of Absolutely Everything.  Even her accent changed.  (She’s from Michigan, for god’s sake!)

 

 

Now she’s a sophisticate.  She is a director, and a tastemaker.  She is unbearably pompous. She made a fuss last year because someone gave her hydrangeas.  Everyone! knows she hates! hydrangeas.  Then there were some of her comments at the Golden Globes this year: “Foreign films,” she intoned in a Dame Edith Evans voice, “are not foreign to me.”

 

 

Oh, honey, yes they are.

 

 

The Financial Times just reviewed her new directorial attempt, “W. / E.”, about Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII.  They praised the actress who plays Wallis, but described the movie as a “jewelled dustpan.”  (“What?!” my old friend LaRue shrieked at me the other night over drinks.  “You read the Financial Times for the movie reviews?”  Yes I do.  So sue me.)

 

 

Anyway: Madonna depicts Wallis Simpson as a brilliant wonderful intelligent woman, who takes a stupid easily-led man – the Prince of Wales, soon to become King – and enthralls him. 

 

 

Hm.  Is Madonna doing autobiography here?  Not sure.  Probably.

 

 

Haven’t seen the movie.   Prepared to hate it, though.

 

 

Funny: I used to like her so much.

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George M. Cohan

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Providence, in case you didn’t know, is the birthplace of vaudeville legend George M. Cohan.  He never really lived here; his parents were entertainers and happened to be here in Providence when he was born, on the third of July, 1878.  (Not the fourth of July, please note.  Please get that song out of your head.)

 

 

It’s amazing how prolific he was: he performed, composed, wrote shows.  We still know his songs: “Give My Regards To Broadway.”  “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”  “Mary Is A Grand Old Name.”  “You’re A Grand Old Flag.”  “Over There.”

 

 

There is a perfectly hideous statue of George down in Fox Point, a block away from George M. Cohan Boulevard.  It’s just the top half of him, from the waist up; he’s got his hat in his hand, and is (I think) supposed to be singing.  Why did the sculptor lop him off at the waist?  And why does he have that horrible grin on his face?

 

 

Much better is the living monument that James Cagney created for him.  In 1942’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and later when he reprised the role in 1955’s “The Seven Little Foys,” Cagney is a delight.  He is tough and funny and energetic, and he dances like a demon.

 

 

Funny what we know about people.  George M. Cohan was enormously famous in his time; then he became – what? – just a name.  Then he was revived by someone great like Cagney, who transformed the image brilliantly.  (I hope the real George M. was only half as entertaining as Cagney’s portrayal of him.  The story goes that Cohan, dying of cancer, saw Cagney’s performance in the 1942 movie, and said, “What an act to follow!)

 

 

Few now living probably remember Cohan as a performer.  Many of us know his songs.  Many of us have also seen Cagney as Cohan.

 

 

So what do we really know of him?

 

 

I ask myself this question a lot lately.  I think about what remains of us after we’re gone, and how we remember people who have died, and how those people are remembered after we’ve died.

 

 

It fades, children.  You end up with grotesque statues and strangely twisted stories.

 

 

But sometimes it flickers to life: you hear a good song, and see a good performance, and think: this guy must have been terrific.

 

 

Something inside me rejoiced when, recently, I watched “The Seven Little Foys,” with Cagney dancing down the table in his wonderful eccentric way.

 

 

Maybe good things, and important things, survive after all.

 

 

Let’s hope so.

 

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Cast members

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There is a huge building in Orlando with the word CASTING on the roof.  It is the nerve center of Disney staffing: the place where all of the Donalds and Goofys and Cruellas and princesses and cowboys and restaurant staff and happy greeters get hired and trained.

 

 

Because they are not staff, you see.  They are “cast members.”

 

 

They are always in character, or almost always.  Now and then you see a tiny flicker of weariness: the waitress in the Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Café seemed tired and overworked, and some of the people working on the rides were almost (but not quite) testy.  But most are amiable and perky to the point of being unnatural.

 

 

(Universal has tried to copy this idea.  Their “cast members,” or whatever their equivalent term is, are just the tiniest bit less perky than the Disney cadre, but they do their best.  The Universal people are not, I think, given quite as much Manchurian Candidate Juice as their Disney counterparts, and are forced to improvise.  At Doctor Doom’s Fearfall in Universal, for example, the cast members are all dressed in odd Space Age / Ruritanian outfits, and one kid leapt and did a dramatic pirouette and said “Velcome to de Latverian Embassy!”)

 

 

The Disney people are (I’m sure) briefed on their roles.  In places like the Haunted Mansion and the Tower of Terror, for example, they are very grim and morose, reinforcing the idea that horrible things are about to happen to you.

 

 

But I will most remember the kid who greeted us at Spaceship Earth in Epcot, our last night there.  He made conversation with us while the little cars were being emptied and lined up; I didn’t notice it right away, but he was walking backwards on a big rotating disk, at a very methodical pace.  Partner asked him how long his shift was, and he said it was eight hours.  “Walking backward the whole time?” I said.

 

 

His expression changed very slightly.  “I even dream about it,” he said.

 

 

I believe him.

 

 

May the ghost of Walt Disney bless him and grant him a pay increase.

 

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Happy birthday, blog!

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I have been chunking out this blog for exactly one year now. My original challenge to myself was to see if I could generate a page a day for an indefinite period of time, and keep it fresh and (preferably) interesting, and maybe even funny once in a while.

 

 

It has given me a chance to set down some personal memories. It has allowed me to think aloud. It has helped me to think about my writing style, which has evolved (for better or worse) over the past year. I'm at least a more fluent writer than I was then. The words just come erupting out of me.

 

 

It has been instructive. The blog entries which have attracted the most notice have been about entertainment, in one form or another: one about Ray Davies of the Kinks, another about this year's Transformers sequel, another about “Jersey Shore.” Lesson: while I may write tremblingly beautiful little essays about my Aunt Petunia, no one really cares about my Aunt Petunia. People care about topics of common interest, like television and movies.

 

 

And politics! I have not gone there very often. I have not been shy of it, exactly; I'm out there, on the Internet, espousing my own (diluted and frightened) version of radical socialism, as well as my loathing for the poisonous conservative factions that are crippling our country and its recovery from recession these days. But I do not think people are reading me for my opinions on these things.

 

 

Sometimes I write about “gay issues.” I'm not exactly a leader in the LGBTQ community, but I have been a card-carrying member since the mid-1970s, so I have a few opinions. I am amazed at how far we've come. I am in agony when I think of how far we have to go.

 

 

And then there's the future. I named this blog “FutureWorld," knowing exactly what I meant, and I've explained it over and over again: here we are! In 2011! The Future! Lasers, and computers, and nuclear reactors, and cars that know how to park themselves! And we're still not happy! We still haven't achieved perfection! Everything is the same as it was a thousand years ago, and if we're not careful, we'll be cutting one another's ears off in a little while, fighting over bread and fish and dirty drinking water!

 

 

Ah me.

 

 

Here's to another dreadful year.

 

 

I hope, somehow, it brings all of us happiness.

 

 

Happy birthday, little blog.

 

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Royal Wedding blog: Alternate-universe edition

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I got your Royal Wedding right here.

 

And by the way: where do you go to find people who look like the Archbishop of Canterbury and Princess Anne?

 

 

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Foxwoods

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Partner and I went to Foxwoods, the gigantic Connecticut casino, a few days ago. When you approach it from the east, it's impossible to believe that they didn't plan the view: you're driving through a pretty-but-dull New England landscape, and then you come around a corner, and there, framed perfectly straight ahead of you, is a Disney castle of cream-colored brick, with a roof of angelically beautiful blue.

 

 

Welcome to the Mashantucket Pequot Nation.

 

 

I hated it the first time I went there. There's the continual din of slot machines chiming in C major, and the smell of stale cigarette smoke, and the grim spectacle of people with oxygen tanks riding from slot machine to slot machine in their scooter chairs. And you don't see a lot of smiling faces, oh no children you don't.

 

 

But it's fascinating nonetheless. And you might win a million dollars.

 

 

We go a couple of times a year. The food ain't bad, and once in a while you leave with more money than you arrived with. (Not this time, unfortunately.) I love watching the table games, especially things with names like Pai Gow and Dragon Poker and Caribbean 21. Also, I am amazed at the security staff, which is mostly made up of overweight men over seventy years of age with ambulatory disabilities. I think I could have kicked their asses, for the most part, if I'd wanted to.

 

 

Partner tells me that business is off at the casinos, and I think it's true. It felt – empty. Foxwoods is an enormous place, and normally it's swarming with people, but the other day there were big lonely spaces. And the machines weren't paying. You could tell that all the machines were set to some slightly-lower payoff point; you won a little, once in a while, but never enough to inspire or encourage you. The grim faces were a little grimmer than usual.

 

 

It's beginning to feel like a fancy upscale mall on the verge of going into decline.

 

 

Next time we're going to Mohegan Sun.

 

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Sunday blog: Senor Wences and Cecilia Chicken

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Senor Wences was a huge part of my childhood. Even the bits and pieces of his routines that can still be found on YouTube make me laugh until I cry.

 

 

And he accomplished it all, mind you, with his hand, and some lipstick, and a big red wig, and some google eyes. Oh, and a head in a box, and sometimes (as in this clip) a nice lady chicken with glasses named Cecilia.

 

 

Is good?

 

 

Is good.

 

 

You like?

 

 

I like.

 

 

 

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