men who talk like men talked in the seventies; more about Davy Jones; Life of Pi

I realize that part of why it was so nice to see Bob on Tuesday was actually hearing his voice, which is kind of soft and dreamy. The seventies was the time when I first started to have serious attractions and serious and non-serious boyfriends, and those young men and those liaisons were my first experiences beyond crushes. Some of my tastes were certainly formed in that era, as evidenced by my continuing attraction to old-hippie and post-hippie men, both their looks and the ways they sounded. I'm developed likings for other types of men as well, but those guys from the seventies were the first. It also made me thinking about Joe Ford, whom I loved dearly in 1988, before his way-too-young death. My friend Robert Satzger met Joe once and was entirely unimpressed, noting that Joe seemed to being "doing" George Carlin - that is, their speech patterns were very similar. I realize this was probably something that was part of my attraction to Joe. Carlin had that sort of 1950s hipster/Bronx accent way of speaking, although I first heard him in the seventies. Joe was from Brooklyn rather than the Bronx, but he would have been a teenager in the 50s too (he was 18 years older than I). I've heard it said that a lot of things people identify with the sixties actually happened in the seventies, and that's true. The sixties sensibility held on until the late seventies, when disco and singles bars took hold, and the icky part of the seventies began. Loved my seventies hippie stuff.

I have finally started reading The Life of Pi. I avoided it for the longest time because I kept hearing it was about a guy in a boat with a tiger, which made me think of some sort of saccharine parable or something. But I finally decided to give it a shot, and what do you know! it starts out in India, and the lead character is Indian! true, he does end up in a boat with a tiger (I'm at that part now), but so far, what really struck me was the early part of the book, where Pi was searching for a spiritual home and ended up being a Christian, a Hindu, and a Muslim all at once.

It's amazing how Davy Jones' unfortunate and young death has brought all of the closet Monkees fans out into the open. A lot of my Facebook friends are music people in some way, and everyone is talking about Davy and the Monkees and posting all kinds of clips. I used to feel a little embarrassed that I still listen to the Monkees sometimes. I didn't have time to listen to or post any clips yesterday (no audio at the office), but will get to it ASAP. However, I will say that my favorite Monkees' song is probably "Pleasant Valley Sunday" (sung by Micky, not Davy). And everyone is dredging up one of my favorite music industry trivia items: another singer named David Jones was forced to change his name, as not to be confused with the Monkees' Davy Jones. He changed it to David Bowie.

It's always a little depressing when close friends drift a bit due to a serious romance (or an obsessive one). It's happening to me lately with two or three people (one has addition concerns requiring a lot of attention). Of course, I've done exactly the same thing when I've fallen in love or obsession. But it doesn't make me miss the company of my friends any less when they do it...and I'm afraid that, at least in my head, I tend to be a little critical of their doing it. But still, I'm there when they return -- and just now, I'm holding a safety net for one who is pretty certain to crash badly.

I was just looking at the stats for this blog, and still can't figure out why that old post about "summer camp theater and school" is read more than twice as often as any other post. It's 2-1/2 years old already, and the keyword tags are pretty ordinary.  It's a mystery to me.

bye Davy

I think it caught everyone off-guard when Davy Jones died today.  I was exactly the right age to be crazy about the Monkees, although I was also a huge Beatles fan at the time. Back in the 60s, the Monkees were derided for being a Beatles rip-off and a "created" band. The four members were cast for a television show, which was inspired by the Beatles' movie A Hard Days' Night, rather than forming as a band on their own. Other people wrote their songs and played most of the instruments, although some of the Monkees were actually talented musicians, and they all sang on their records. As a disparaging riff on the Beatles' nickname "The Fab Four," the Monkees were often referred to as "The Pre-Fab Four" (meaning "pre-fabricated").

But over the years, people started to realize how really good their music was. This owed in part to the outstanding songwriters who created their songs, including Neil Diamond, and Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart. They were always hugely likeable and remained well-liked over the years.

Davy, Micky and Peter continued to perform, occasionally reuniting as The Monkees. Mike Nesmith performed as a solo artist, in a more country vein. He also produced movies (including one of my favorites, Tapeheads); he also started creating promotional videos for Warner Brothers songs which became a Nickelodeon show called Pop Clips which became (wait for it) MTV. Nesmith was already a millionaire many times over because his mother, a secretary, invented (wait for it) Liquid Paper.

I'll try to get some Monkees clips up here later. For now:

Davy ("the cute one") on the right.

I went out for coffee last night (although we didn't end up drinking any coffee) with an old friend from summer camp with whom I recently reconnected on Facebook. He was a cute, sweet, hippie-looking guy back then, and we kind of crushed on each other, fooled around a little, never anything too heavy or serious. At sixty, he's still very sweet, very gentle. I have to say I had no anxiety about meeting with him and we talked for a very lovely hour. Considering that my friends have been none too available to listen to me, it's nice to have Bob back in my life, and good to listen to him as well. I look forward to seeing him again; it was a truly nice time.

I bid on and won some metal bangles in an eBay auction yesterday; it was actually a link to eBay from eBay India. I had to pay 576 rupees! Fortunately, that translates to $10.76. This is going to give me a pretty good collection of metal bangles:

I'll have to buy some more glass ones when I get paid.

A couple more pix:

My impossibly adorable nephew Walter. (He's wearing a kippah/yarmulke for a bat mitzvah he was attending.)

It's Amitabh in The Wall Street Journal (literally).

just not a restful weekend, just not a good Monday

It's like that, sometimes.

Didn't have time to share Oscar picks with friends, didn't have time to go online all weekend, didn't have a minute to sit still and relaxed and enjoy all weekend. I came home tied up in Pennsylvania knots and now I'm tied up in New York knows. At least I sold some jewelry this weekend, so I'm tied in knows with a little change in my pocket.A rare crappy day at work, and of course, a long one. This past weekend was supposed to big a big highlight for me, so here I am now without much to look forward to -- except coffee with old friend Bob Steiner tomorrow after work.

I know it could be worse...some of my best friends are going through dreadful things now. I help as I can, but I need help, too.

I finished reading Janet Reitman's Inside Scientology which was excellent. She seemed to have gotten at a whole mess of their secrets,although I'm still not clear about how they approach homosexuality and homosexual members. I used to hear that "they marry their gays off to each other." I just wonder about some of their highest profile members about whom there have been gay rumors (Tom Cruise, John Travolta).

Also read Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin, which I had been dying to read. She's such a marvelous writer. She does tend to put herself into the book, but it never overshadows the subject. I follow her on Twitter and I hope I'm not too stalker-ish. I really admire her.

I was away from the computer all weekend. Maybe this is why people have smartphones. But truly, I didn't miss much. A couple people did want to see my Oscar picks. I picked The Artist and Meryl Streep and George Clooney, so I got 2/3. Haven't seen a new Indian movie since Nanban.

I just feel shitty, really. I want a do-over on that weekend, just watching a movie or two and making some jewelry an emailing with a friend or two and sleeping in my own bed with my cats. And right now I feel tired, and have almost two hours to go before I can leave. Monday nights truly suck.

most trayf thing ever

Gotta be shrimp wrapped in bacon. With a milkshake.

OK, students of Yiddish and Yiddishkeit (Jewishness), Let's talk about dietary laws and the words attached to them. (Of course, you can just skip this and read Wikipedia, but I bet this this is more fun.)

The big one is kosher. Kosher means in accordance with Jewish dietary laws. Informally, it can be used to mean "on the level," "honest," "proper," etc. "I'm not sure if this deal is exactly kosher." Trayf" means non-kosher, but colloquially can also mean "unclean," "no good," etc.


Actually, read the rest of it on Wikipedia. There aren't too many other good words, except "fleischig" for meat and meat foods and "milchik" for dairy foods, which may not be eaten together. Foods which are considered neither, and can be eaten with either, are "parve".

Anyway, I'm going to Jannah's this weekend, and will pretty much be maintaining internet silence. I don't have a smartphone - the one I have is actually called a "feature phone," although of course I just call it a "stupid phone." And it doesn't seem particularly polite to ask my hostess to use her desktop. So no email, no Facebook, no Twitter, no blog, and no EF comments. I suspect I will not be dreadfully missed, not over such a short time. I will be back on Sunday but mostly likely buried in the Oscars.

Had a little tweet back-and-forth with Mary Lynn Rajskub the other day and today with Josh Malina. Way cool in my book.

And of course the big news - well, maybe not for everyone, but for a few million people - is that Amitabh went home yesterday. He'll be recuperating for a few months, but he's safe and sound.

Speaking of which - I seem to have a bit of a readership here! The hits on my blog have increased some, and definitely more folks from India. Hi, folks from India! Welcome!

I'm taking two movies with me this weekend, to intro Jannah to Indian films, if she so chooses. Most of my movies are on my hard drive, but I have a dozen or so on DVD. I'm bringing Don (which version do you think? take a good, hard guess) and Ek Ajnabee. Haven't seen Ek Ajnabee yet, but I read the notes on the cover, and what do you know! it's Man on Fire! And by the way, anyone who wants to watch Man on Fire, the 1987 version with Scott Glenn is way better than the 2004 version with Denzel Washington. But almost any movie is better with Scott Glenn in it, except The Keep, which would suck with anyone in it.

Scott Glenn is one of my favorite actors, though he's not super well-known. Movies to see: Urban Cowboy, The Right Stuff, Silverado. Similarly, David Strathairn. I like him even better than Scott Glenn, and he can be seen in: Good Night and Good Luck, Silkwood, Limbo, Eight Men Out, A League of Their Own, and I personally adored him in The Return of the Secaucus Seven, kind of an uber-indie.

So, have a good weekend, watch movies, have fun.

I am such a smart-ass on Twitter! plus, what is a knish? bonus: the movie where Salman Khan speaks Yiddish

@northofconey if you want to see for yourself. I go smart-ass on some famous people sometimes and don't even care if they respond. I did get a retweet from Merrill Markoe, which made me happy for a whole day. I'm connected to almost a totally different set of people than on Facebook. Of course I mostly follow well-known people I don't know, I was found there by Tricia Vita, who writes the excellent Amusing the Zillion blog about Coney Island. Now I'm also linked to one or two other Coney Island groups. We post links to things about how fucked-up business interests are trying to ruin Coney Island and how much we hate Mayor Bloomberg. (a lot.) I'm loving Twitter, though I read a lot more than I write. I retweet and sometimes reply.  Fun.

I am glad Amitabh is going home soon. I am glad Shiva is feeling cheerier (and that he likes seeing his name here). I am glad that Barry had a job interview today. I am glad I am going to Jannah's this weekend. I am glad Bob Steiner is being a bit flirty on Facebook; I was fairly crazy about him when we were teenagers at summer camp. I am glad I went to that Indian store on Second Avenue last week and bought silk pants and glass bangles; there were photos of Indian movie stars taped up inside the dressing room. I am glad to be learning how to get the glass bangles on and off without busting them, and I am glad for the pretty sound they make clinking together on my wrist. I am glad that my jewelry is in a store, for the first time in many years. I am glad it was a warm day. I am glad I had a big discussion about knishes on Facebook today with someone I never got to know well at college but always admired.

I am anxious for a friend who won't read this because she's too busy doing the thing I'm anxious about.

Knish (pronounce all the letters) is a savory pastry usually stuffed with seasoned mashed potatoes but sometimes with kasha (buckwheat). It's about the size of your fist. There are other kinds, but potato and kasha are the only ones that matter. A knish is old-school Jewish food, meaning that it's extremely heavy, about the density of lead, and one of the most delicious things you've ever eaten.

I've explained Yiddish words on this blog on and off for some years now. I don't know nearly as much as I'd like to; American Jews of my generation have parents who felt it was not "modern" to speak Yiddish, that it made them like their old-fashioned parents, so my parents didn't pass it on the way their parents did. Barry's parents were about ten years older than mine, so they spoke more Yiddish, Barry knows more than I do, and I've learned a bunch from him. It's way cool. It's extra-cool when you hear it from people you wouldn't expect. There's an old James Cagney movie, The Fighting 69th, where he suddenly says a line in Yiddish and it's a shock. Cagney was very Irish, but he also grew up playing in the New York City streets with other children of immigrants.

One day I want to see Salman Khan turn to the camera and say, "Meshugganeh ayeh, meshugganah lockshen." The literal translation, "Crazy eggs, [so] crazy noodles," basically, "the kids turn out like the parents." I would write a whole screenplay around having him say that. Salman Khan is in love with Kareena Kapoor, but she's a little odd. He goes to her house, and meets her father, who is totally wacky (Johnny Lever?). Then he says the line, then they sing and dance next to a tree, alternately dressed in tacky disco clothes and rich traditional garments. Subplot: Salman's widowed mother (maybe Kirron Kher) meets Kareena's wacky widowed father, and it turns out that she's also kind of wacky, but has always felt she had to act in a very serious manner. Kirron: I've finally met a man I can be myself with! Then they sing and dance in a colorful marketplace, during which they grab different things from the various vendors (a scarf, a piece of fruit, a pot) and do funny things with them. I could so write this movie.

Next up: I write a movie around Amitabh singing "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

Last but not least:

Raghu Dixit is a crossover artist in the best sense of the word. His western sensibilities are from acoustic singer-songwriters, not glossy pop stars. And he sings without some elements of the Indian vocal style that are peculiar to a western ear not acquainted with Indian music. I said to Barry, "It's Indian David Hidalgo!"

Actually, if you put Cesar Rojas' beard on David Hidalgo, he would kind of look like Raghu Dixit.

amul, amat, utz

Let's see if I can explain this stupid thing properly. It's kind of stupid, but also kind of cute. Or maybe just a WHOLE lot of explanation for a very small chuckle.

Anyway, there's a brand of potato chip called Utz, which I think is a local east coast brand, from Pennsylvania. They have a trademark of a little girl who looks like this:

Barry always says that the Utz girl looks like me. There is of course no physical resemblance, but he thinks I'm as cute as she is. He says, "Look, Sweetie, there are those potato chips with your picture on the bag!"

We now travel to India, where the Amul Dairy girl bears a striking resemblance to the Utz potato chip girl:

Seriously, they could be mishpocheh (family, related).

OK, so if the Utz girl is me, and the Amul girl is the Utz girl...wait for it...stupid joke...

Yes, ladies and gents: a get-well picture of me and Amitabh.  Well, even if it isn't me, it's extremely adorable.

I've started watching Luck on HBO, and the excellence of the cast is carrying me through the learning curve of horse racing. There's a lot of jargon and racetrack details and so on that are going to take a while. But hey, there's also Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Farina. Michael Gambon, Richard Kind, Kevin Dunn, Ian Hart, Jason Gedrick...and then there's Gary Stevens.  I had seen him in Seabiscuit, a movie I really liked a lot, and thought he was absolutely perfect as George Woolf (since I'd read the non-fiction book on which the movie was based, I had some firm opinions about the casting. I knew that Stevens was a former jockey, but that was about all. I was impressed that his acting was pretty good, since most professional athletes are poor-to-middling actors.

I was glad to see him again in Luck, partly (I must admit) because he's a way handsome dude. And he's actually a very talented actor - he has quite a bit to do, playing a drunken, addicted jockey. Pulls it off like a boss. And then I looked him up. He's not just some former jockey, he is a fucking legendary jockey, with eight wins in Triple Crown races. He actually won the George Woolf Memorial Award around six years before he played George Woolf! I'm really impressed. Remind me if you can think of any great athlete-actors.

And speaking of athletes, I'm sad about Gary Carter. He played for a really great Mets team and always seemed like a very sweet guy. Baseball was pretty important to me at that time (it hasn't been for a while now), plus I was a pretty serious baseball card collector, so Gary Carter almost seemed like family. (All of the Mets were, really, and big local heroes. I used to go to an upper east side gym that had a fair smattering of celebrities, but what really excited me was seeing Rusty Staub and Keith Hernandez, multiple times.)

disappointment

Bad on so many levels, being disappointed. Something didn't happen, someone wasn't heard from, something good was given and received without comment. There should have been a surprise but there wasn't. Someone didn't accept, didn't answer, didn't thank you. Someone didn't do what they usually do, or what they might be expected to do. Something wasn't where you expected it to be. Something did not arrive on time. Something wasn't as enjoyable as it should have been. You didn't sleep well after a long, tiring day. A mystery went unexplained. A secret was not revealed. A film, a show, a song did not live up to expectations. A distraction did not distract. Good news did not arrive; bad news did not fade away.

It throws such a gloom over what could have been good times. And yes, I know that my disappointments are mostly my fault, the result of that pesky habit of expecting something. Mea culpa.

And apart from suffering over various disappointments, things move along. Wendy from The Village Scandal was not as unconditionally thrilled with my work as I'd hoped, though she did take 2/3 necklaces and both pair of earrings. Robin is in the middle of something...I can't even begin to talk about it, but it's distracting her from everything. When I saw that she spent a good time of our evening together texting someone else, there you go. But she did take a moment away from texting on her phone to take a picture of me:

Probably one of the better ones taken in a while.

We also went into an Indian store on Second Avenue, and I bought some pink print silk "harem" pants and eight glass bangles. And then ate on Sixth Street, as we have for so many years, this time at Taj: lamb madras, garlic kulcha, and two guys playing sarangi and tabla.

I did not feel right on Friday and I don't know why. I was somewhere in the neighborhood of dizzy and exhausted, for no good reason, and I called in sick. Barry went out and got me a handful of tulips, late valentine's. And then we wrapped up valentine's by going for dim sum yesterday. There are several excellent places not far away, and we ate like crazy.Sticky rice, pork siu mai, shrimp dumplings. beef rice rolls, lion's head meatballs, shrimp in bean curd skin, and so on. I drank a lot of jasmine tea. Felt a little food-drunk after, but that's dim sum.

Made a necklace and two pairs of earrings yesterday, which is  a big chunk of work for one day. I'll try to do more earrings today - I want a bunch to bring to Jannah on Friday.

Last piece: Ranban. This is the first Tamil movie I've seen, and I have to say, I like it better than I liked a lot of Hindi movies. It was not very glossy and very unpretentious. The characters and relationships were novel, and I was very taken in by the character of Pari; I felt he was someone I'd like to know. Sathyaraj was impressive as the school principal "Virus"; he was silly but also substantive. Vijay as Pari was a casual, charming star. It was pretty much a buddy movie, and the obligatory female character didn't jar the script off track. Apparently this is a remake of the Hindi film 3 Idiots, although my understanding is that those remakes mostly go the other way, Tamil or Telagu to Hindi.

Something else I have to mention: the movie was meticulously subtitled. I felt at if they were trying to make the English understandable, but also get across the various nuances of the Tamil. For instance, there was a sequence in which the protagonists substitute different words into a speech to be delivered by an annoying fellow student, and it was all made perfectly clear by the subtitles. I mentioned recently that I missed a lot in ZNMD because the subtitling was so poor, and had to stop watching Rockstar for the same reason. It's a little weird that some Hindi movies, the big commercial mainstream in India, are so poorly titled, and that a Tamil film (I assume it's a smaller industry) did it exactly right.

Anyway, the film was delightful, and I would consider forgoing 3 Idiots entirely if Aamir Khan weren't in it. I've gotten to be something of a fan.