Check out those fly goggles.

The third finger is for his homies.

I miss Charles Barkley.

I have an old friend who may or may not read this blog anymore.  His birthday was on Sunday and I just wanted to wish him a happy birthday and to let him know that I was thinking of him on his special day.  I hope he had a great one and , hey, the Giants won for you!

Recently I’ve watched some good people get bitch-slapped by life, and it got me thinking about under-appreciated and underrated stuff.  So here’s a list, roughly broken out into categories.

Most Underrated

Musical group:  The  Band

They were the group that electrified Dylan.  Then they struck out on their own and created gems like “Music From Big Pink” and their eponymous album, “The Band”.  Eric Clapton once said that theirs was the music he wanted to play.  They had 3 amazing lead singers, all of whom played their instruments incredibly well.  Martin Scorcese filmed their last show and made “The Last Waltz”.  (The concert included guests such as Clapton, Dylan, Muddy Waters, The Staples Singers, etc.)  So, what gives?  How come most people born after 1980 have no idea who they are?  Why are they never played on classic rock stations?  This one remains a real mystery to me.

Sport:  Hockey 

It’s got all sorts of things Americans love: violence, speed, some strategy.  My guess is that

a) it’s a sport that most kids don’t play because of climate and expensive equipment

b) it has rules that loosely resemble soccer (offsides, shoot-outs, etc)

c) it’s played indoors.  I realize that basketball is too, but pro and college basketball both trail football and baseball in popularity (even though Americans love it).  We like our sports played outdoors.

Actor (living): Gene Wilder

At first you may say, whoa, that’s a little out of left-field.  But think about it.  He could hold his own next to Richard Pryor, he could sing and dance and be creepy in “Willy Wonka” and was perfect in “Young Frankenstein”.  I feel that he didn’t get his fair shake.  I’ve always thought he could have been great in some serious dramas.

Actor (deceased): Ray Milland

If you’ve ever seen “The Lost Weekend”, you will know what I am talking about.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better portrayal of an alcoholic.

TV shows:

- Get A Life

Only on for one season, but Chris Elliot really put out a masterpiece.  Some people don’t see the genius, but I challenge anyone to think of a better premise for a plot than a 30 year old paperboy living with his parents.  Handsome Boy Modeling School, indeed.

- Martin

Does no one else recognize the impact of Martin?  Before that show came on the air, the only “black” TV shows that Americans knew were ones like “The Cosby Show” and “Benson”.  ”Martin” totally took everything to a whole new level.  It was ground-breaking.  And it was damn funny.

Comedian:  Bob Newhart

The man was an accountant before he turned to comedy.  His telephone routines are hilarious.  He had two extremely successful TV shows and continues to do shows on the road into his 80’s.  Certainly he has had plenty of success, but he doesn’t get the recognition he deserves.  Whenever I hear people talk about influences in comedy, they very rarely mention Newhart.  The guy perfected the role of straight man and actually managed to make it funny.  But then again, maybe the whole straight man routine died out.  If it has, then that is a shame.

Noir movie:  Double Indemnity

“The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep” get a lot of fanfare (and deservedly so) but for my money, I think “Double Indemnity” is the best.  There’s that scene where Barbara Stanwyck is sitting down and she and Fred MacMurray (a close runner-up for underrated dead actor) are discussing the crime, and the light filtering in through the blinds looks like prison bars across her face.  Excellent.

Teen movie:  Dazed and Confused

We all knew a Wooderson in school.  We all drank beer and cruised around and hung out at places like the Moon Tower.  What makes D&C a great teen movie are the interactions between the seniors and freshmen-to-be.  I think it shows the randomness of the events and interactions that shape your time in high school.

 

There’s more stuff, but I think I’ll stop here for now.  The list could really go on and on.  Maybe this will become a semi-regular series.  Just fighting injustice one post at a time, and all that jazz.

To shorebirds.  They are so awesome. 

 

Piping Plover Puff

 

Remember that scene at the end of Ghostbusters II where Egon, Venkman and the crew use ecto-goo to power the Statue of Liberty?  By that point they’ve figured out that the goo is moved either by negative or positive emotions and so they make a music choice that is sure to inspire the most positive of reactions from New Yorkers.  What do they choose?  Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher”.

All of this is to say that soul music, like that of Jackie Wilson, Bill Withers and Otis Redding, is incredibly moving.  It’s great BBQ and Sunday morning music.  I figured that even the most hardened of humans could be carried away by it.  Apparently not.  I have a friend who is a great person.  He’s smart, talented, funny, with pretty good taste in a lot of things.  He is also a huge heavy metal fan, as only someone who spent their adolescence in the 1980’s can be.  Fine.  Excellent.  So not too long ago we got on the subject of soul music and he flat out declared that he didn’t like it.  At all.  Now, I realize that metal and soul are quite different, but he went on to say that it didn’t have any sort of emotional effect on him.  At this point I suspect replicant and would like to subject him to the Voight-Kampff machine.

I have other friends who make similar sweeping statements about music genres.  ”I hate country.”  ”I just can’t get into hip hop.”  ”I don’t really like music before 1981.”  That last one is bullshit because they later admitted to liking Television (and Otis Redding).  But I don’t think that it would be impossible for these folks to find a single song to like in those genres.  Even my Dad, not the biggest hip hop fan in the world, likes RZA’s work on the Ghost Dog soundtrack.

I guess the point of this post is to say, always try to find the exception.  I’ve always said that no one should call San Francisco, “Frisco”.  This is something that San Franciscans really feel.

 

Don't Do It

The exception, of course, is that Otis Redding can forever call it “the Frisco bay”.

If you’ve ever lived in the outer boroughs of New York, especially in the not so nice areas, you may have been reminded of Dickensian London.  I’ve always been amazed by the resourcefulness of the people, the use of the land and the conditions that people (including myself) put up with as normal.

I was reading a short piece in The New Yorker this week about City Island (off of The Bronx) when I got to this description of Hart Island, to the south.  

“Hart Island [...] currently contains a vast city-owned cemetery, a potter’s field, which is used for the internment of still-born infants, unclaimed and indigent people of all ages, and amputated limbs.  [...]  The burials are conducted by prisoners from Rikers Island.”  

I am reminded of the strange tasks that befell the occupants of the London workhouses and the market for goods that now seem more than slightly bizarre (bones and feces come to mind).  Whereas now amputated limbs are buried in a potter’s field (people don’t find it odd that part of them is in a pit with other people’s parts?) there might have been a market for them in the past, maybe with medical students.

I had a friend in college who worked at the infirmary at Rikers Island alongside her mother, like the Chiverys of Little Dorrit.  I asked her once what it was like, working in a prison, and I remember she just shrugged and said that it was O.K.  And that was that.  A job like any other, integrated into the life of the city.

The islands of New York City seem to be a sort of dumping ground for unpleasant government functions.  Caught between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, there lies Randalls Island.  It houses a city-run mental institution on one side, next to a renovated sports stadium.  After passing by it for years on the M60, I finally made it there, taking a friend along for maximum discoverability.  The hospital is the sort of institution that somehow managed to defy the mass closings of the 1970’s.  Maybe 10 to 15 stories high, with bars across the windows, it has a Soviet era feel to it.  I imagined that we’d hear tortured cries as we got closer, but no, no signs of life other than the subdued, recently released who were milling around one  of the island’s few bus stops.

The city, for all of its modernity, still bears its history as a part of everyday life.    What New York shares with 19th century London is the ability to seamlessly incorporate progress and decay, side by side.  That’s what makes it so interesting, at least to me.

Addendum:  Should have run this post through spell check earlier.  Oofta.

Every time I come back to eating Oreos after an absence, I notice that the first cookie has a distinct taste.  It’s lost after that first cookie and not regained unless I take a lengthy break.  I’ve never measured the amount of time that’s needed but, ballpark, I would say a few weeks.  And each time I come back, it’s like taking that first bite all over again.

Not exactly an earth-shattering observation, but something I was reminded of recently.  I’m wondering if others have had similar experiences not only with Oreos, but also with other foods.  Talk amongst yourselves.

I’ve been very neglectful of this blog of late.  I’ve had more than a few ideas swimming through my mind, and hopefully I’ll get them down shortly.  Stay tuned.

Having recently watched several interviews with Peter Orszag, I’m struck at how well he communicates policy issues to the public.  Maybe it’s the boyish charm, or the endearing lisp (and did I spy a pocket protector?), whatever it is I find that he has a way of imparting confidence in his ideas without sounding forceful or too wonkish.

Given some of the reactions to the introduction of the budget, might it not be a good idea to send Orszag on the road?  A sort of travelling salesman, peddling a reformed health care system and touting the benefits of a cap and trade system.

Watch him in the News Hour interviews and see if you’re not won over.

I was caught in a situation today that I am sure is familiar to many.  Faced with some young person trying to change the world with a pen and a clipboard, I had to think of a way to avoid communication.  Naturally I pulled out my cell phone and commenced the fake phone call.  It worked like a charm.

The fake phone call is a consistent winner.  Developed off of the fake conversation (which is an art unto itself), the fake phone call succeeds on two fronts: making you look busy and making you look popular.  Not only are you busy, but you’re busy because you are talking to other important people.  Ha!

All this got me to thinking about the nature of avoidance and the objects and techniques we employ in this noble pursuit.  We here in 2009 are the beneficiaries of progress.  It wasn’t all that long ago that the fake phone call would’ve been an impossibility.  In the old days a strategic fake sneeze or coughing fit worked, but it required a lot more skill and timing to make it work smoothly.

The fake conversation has been around for millennia and is great when two or more are trying to avoid some foe.  When alone (and seated) a book is great for looking occupied.  And, hey, you might actually read it.  Digital cameras (again, progress) are great because you can pretend to be absorbed by all the great photos you’ve taken.

I’m looking forward to the holographic fake friend.  You could pull them out when you need some quick back-up.  You could make them ugly or a total goofball, a foil for every occasion.

If all this sounds anti-social, well it is.  But these situations are the exception to the rule.  Usually encountering new people is fun and interesting, unless of course, they aren’t fun or interesting.  And that’s when it is time to dig into your bag of tricks.

Ever since “Antonio” from Wings became “Monk”, I’ve had a hard time accepting character actors in other roles.  I’m perfectly at ease watching major movie stars transition from one character to another because there is a certain contract we enter into with them.  We agree to suspend our disbelief.  We think we know them, so it’s easy for us to pretend we don’t.

This doesn’t work with character actors because we identify them with the character.  Our memory knows them as so-and-so.  The ugly girl from Clueless will always be the ugly girl from Clueless.  Costanza will always be Costanza and Al Bundy will never be a rich man.  Which is why all the actors from The Wire will have a hell of a time finding new roles.  I’ve already spotted Bunny and Rawls on other shows.  I saw Cool Lester Smooth on some BBC drama.  I hear Michael is on the new 90210 (now that’s scary).

So what to do with them?  Well, most people won’t care or won’t remember (obviously the cast of the Wire is a bit different).  But what about people like me who are cursed with a mind like a steel trap – a trap that catches nothing but worthless trivia?  How do you fool them?  

The answer is a commune for retired character actors.  We could just ship them there at the end of their role(s).  Don’t think gulag.  Think more along the lines of a Florida or a Palm Springs, complete with shuffleboard and early bird specials.  They could put on productions of “Bye, Bye Birdie” and “Grease”.  They could live out a quiet life and become just another search on deadoralive.com.

Patrick McGoohan, star and man responsible for The Prisoner, as No. 6:

The Prisoner has always been high up on my list.  Not only was it a well written and provocative show, the set and costume design were unreal.  I don’t believe the show would have resonated as much as it has had the design been less conscientious.  Choosing Portmeirion as the location, using the penny-farthing bicycle as the logo for the Village and having no. 6 sport a black jacket with white piping trim, were all very interesting and ultimately defining design choices.  

I hear that AMC is redoing the series.  I’m more than a little worried about it.  They have done a terrific job with Mad Men, with the writing, set design and costumes.  But it seems to me that they are sort of doomed if they do one thing and doomed if they do another.  If they go the updated route and set The Prisoner in the modern day, I fear it may lose a lot of the “charm” that the original had.  These days we tend to make our fictitious authoritarian regimes so sterile.  If they try and keep the 60’s touch, it may feel forced and inauthentic.

There are some things that a prime for reinterpretation.  Others, like The Prisoner, are unique one-offs that belong to a place and time.

This is very immature of me, but does anyone else laugh a little when they hear the Supreme Court of the United States referred to as “SCOTUS”?

 

BTW, watching law school moot courts on C-SPAN (especially when a Supreme Court justice is participating) is incredibly entertaining.