Posted 11:15 PM by sport

As a boy in Dublin, working for a chemist, he delivered medicine to the aged WB Yeats. He sang in a choir that backed Paul Robeson in concert. New to New York and America, he performed on local radio as an "Irish Tenor." Later, in the army, his buddy was future film director Sam Fuller, who tried to talk him into heading to Hollywood with him and take their chance. Some of their wartime experiences were dramatized in Fuller's "The Big Red One." He worked with a young Al Sharpton, trying to contend with the drug epidemic in New York in the 70s (later, a bit bemused to say the least, by Al's race-bait shenanigans, he still held respect for the man's better intentions). All colorful name-drop associations that say nothing of the greatness of THIS man.



He was a great father. A great friend. A great man. I don't want to get maudlin and I don't want to sit here weeping... I have done plenty of that.

I'll remember laughter and wisdom. Christmas, both of us drunk on Jameson's, listening to "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues over and over again, laughing and singing our asses off.

Hanging out in the yard mending the white picket fence in front of the house, a miserable chore that suddenly became a pleasure when the sunlight filled our souls, we looked at each other and silently acknowledged the preciousness of that moment with a long, shared smile. Christ, you can't tell it, can you?

I was deeply moved recently while listening to a track on a new album (Beyond the Sky) by my friend Rob Schwimmer, a magnificent pianist. The piece, "I Would Talk With My Dad", is instrumental and low-key, nothing grandly sentimental, but deep as longing can go. Too bad I can't "quote" it here for emphasis, but I can quote (again) an ooooolllllld song by Thomas Moore, the last song Dad and I discovered together. An excerpt, then, and a kiss to my dear friend, whose loss will pain me for the rest of my life but whose example guides my own fatherhood in countless new ways every new day. Slán leat.

Posted 11:36 PM by sport

"Now I'm homesick for my silence..."

Here you will find a poem by Hart Crane entitled "Chaplinesque." The poem goes like so:

We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!


And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

There is a linked page for comments. Here's one (of two):

from this poem it is evident that charlie chaplin and hart crane were butt buddies!!! ~Wang

Don't you love the internet? What makes a chowderhead seek out an obscure poem online, just to offer this? Mercy, mercy me.

When I was very young, two tv shows -- "Silents Please" and "Fractured Flickers" -- instilled in me a love for silent films. Chaplin especially won my heart. When they finally let him back into the country and gave him his special Oscar ( © ® TM) in 1972, I wept. Not only a great filmmaker, this guy made The Great Dictator -- which Hitler is known to have seen at least twice -- thereby humiliating that asshole grandly, which is Mel Brooks' avowed career goal. Chaplin played two roles, the Hitler character and a heroic barber who turns out to be a Jew. Not only did Chaplin have the balls to spit at the dictator well before our entry into the war, but he called attention to the vicious Anti-Jewish hatred at the root of it all. This raises the work from mere political parody to humanist Art of the highest degree.

Dunno if any of you ever saw a 3-part series from Thames in England, rebroadcast on A&E, entitled "The Unknown Chaplin." I just got it on dvd, and it's mandatory viewing for anyone interested in Chaplin, filmmaking or the workings of genius. The man didn't use scripts! He began with a set and his stock players, began improvising gags AS THE CAMERAS ROLLED and built his films from there, painstakingly reworking gags and plotlines, shuffling cast members and often rebuilding sets to suit his developing ideas. Much of the unused footage (I'm guessing it was a ratio of 100 outtakes to 1 keeper per scene...) was preserved in spite of Chaplin's wish to have it all destroyed. These shows present it all with excellent commentary, read by James Mason, to keep track of where we are in the formation of each project.

It is better than examining the notebooks of a great writer or the sketches of a master; it's more like watching Beethoven sit at the piano trying out ideas. ("Dun-Dun-dadeeDAaaa... nope... Dun Dun dee Dun DA-Deeeee... nah... Dun-Dun-Dun Daaaah! Could be... hmmm..." But it's even better, because you can see it all before you! It's more like watching Ludwig work out ideas with the FULL ORCHESTRA! Only the various bootlegs of SMILE approach the excitement of this stuff. Words don't do it justice. I see that it's available on eBay for peanuts. Get a copy, I implore you.

Especially interesting to see are the entire sequences Chaplin perfected, then discarded. The discipline required is mind-boggling to someone like me, delighted with whatever feeble ideas I can squeeze out of my imagination: "Say! that doesn't suck too much! I'll keep it!" Cassavetes had that, too. On the Criterion set there's a deleted 15-minute opening sequence from "Faces" that any director would be justly proud of crafting. Not John; he was after bigger game. And Chaplin... He just lived in Geniusland. Here's the closest, clearest glimpse of that place most of us will ever get.

Posted 12:59 AM by sport

"Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on" (Journey - Don't Stop Believing)

Me, I'm in the "perfect ending" camp with regard to The Sopranos. And yes, it was probably the best continuing drama series ever on television, and I do like ambiguity, and I'm really glad the show is over. If it went on any longer, I'd hate the whole series as much as I hated "Hey Jude" after the billionth "na na na naaaaa." Good riddance, ya fucking scumbags, and thank you, thank you thank you for all the amazing moments.

But I'd rather consider the Journey song right now. Steve Perry is a fantastic singer, and piss on you if you deny it. I mean, I wouldn't want him singing "Take This Waltz," but then I wouldn't want Cohen singing "Send Her My Love" either. Anyway...

I was at a party a few years back and somebody played "With or Without You" by U2. I started singing the Journey song to it -- what tiny chunks of lyric I knew -- and decided I prefer Journey on every level. Which ain't saying much.

Ever notice that Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" is chordally/structurally identical to Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach?" Is this just grounds for a mash-up or some sort of CLUE? Were they singing about the same baby? And if so, is that "baby" the very destruction of American Radio Pop?

I do blame it all on them and Prince, just as I blame the destruction of American mainstream cinema on Spielberg and Lucas and those other fucks. Not that they all didn't produce some good/great singles, Prince especially. But...
ah, who cares.

My family enjoyed a GREAT day today. Just a really nice day. Good things happened. Hope it bodes well for summer. Yes. A GREAT summer sounds perfect about now.

Posted 11:33 PM by sport

Today, in betwen bouts of "No, Miles! You can't EAT that!" and "Lily! No! Get DOWN from there!" I found 20 or so minutes to begin watching my DVD of Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan. Like the Beatles / Sullivan set issued a ways back, the set offers complete broadcasts, commercials and all, rather than the usual excerpted clips. Like the Beatles set, it is an education. Now, you know I love Steve and Eydie, Soupy Sales and all the other luminaries of that lost era, but seeing these eventual rock n roll icons in their original broadcast context truly confirms how astounding their arrivals were.

On the Elvis set, Ed is not present for the singer's first appearance; Charles Laughton hosts. Laughton is hardly more effervescent than the sepulchral Sullivan, but Ed never directed "Night of the Hunter" (a great film received so poorly upon release that it discouraged Laughton from any further directorial efforts, as I understand it. I'd rather have more Laughton films than Welles films, personally), so rave on Charles. The old guy reads some "Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes" type verse and introduces a compelling pair of acrobats, a Broadway singer of the faux-operatic school, and a tedious lounge comedy musical combo. Laughton's jokes provoke little more than polite titters, and as much as I crave old-school tv, it gets dull, breddren and cistern.

As Charles introduces Elvis, the audience barely responds. I expected shrill cheering from the slish gallery, but no dice. Turns out Elvis was being piped in from the West Coast, so the only folks in the house were Ed's usual crowd. Methinks they were as stoked to see the kid as I might be to see, maybe, Josh Grobin or that fuckin' Michael Buble (whose popularity completely baffles me). But when they cut to the theater where Elvis awaits, some audible girl reaction can be detected. Nothing insane, but it was early in the game. Boy, was it ever.

Elvis is apparently shitting bricks, despite having logged some serious tv time already. Ed's show was the big one, you see. The Copa. The Center Ring. Carnegie Hall. Presley looks, of course, superb as he stammers through an odd, endearingly awkward pre-song spiel, but jeez, he really is a kid. He delivers a fairly subdued Don't Be Cruel and a very mellow Love Me Tender along with the Jordanaires, his tamped-down delivery a perfect complement to his tamed-down outfit. It seems like part nerves and part straining at the leash when he goofs around with facial takes and random bits of physical schtick unlike the mad gyrations we've all seen elsewhere.

But Jesus, he's great.
Gave me fucking chills. No, the "hairs on the back of my neck" didn't "stand up" (what's with that weird boner metaphor anyway? Does this happen to any of you? HAIRS? On the back of your NECK? Standing UP? REALLY? Beats me; never had that experience), he just floored me. After all the previous tedium, nostalgic as it is, Elvis is new again. Again.

I never really "got" Presley before seeing the film This Is Elvis. Not that that was a great film, but the concentration of performances finally made me take notice. By the time I watched the 68 Comeback Special and its inedits, I was sold and how.

(On Americal Idol recently, they pulled off a real landmark of überkitsch by cryotronically pairing the irksome yet nonexistent Celine Dion with Elvis on his masterful performance of If I Can Dream from the 68 special. It sucked untold cock on every level, but succeeded brilliantly as the most incomprehensibly WRONG thing to happen to art and technology since Steven Spielberg first darkened our culture's door. I am so glad I had the vcr rolling; I want to force Celine Dion to view it incessantly, Clockwork Orange-style, until she explodes, leaving nothing but a viscous blob of Cointreau and knick-knack dust.)

Anyway, I cannot imagine a better vocal performance than Elvis on that original clip of If I Can Dream. His passion on the middle eight is breath-fucking-taking. If you don't "get" Presley, I suggest you view the comeback special, the collection of "black leather" performances taped for it and later issued in complete form, and this Sullivan set. I can't wait to watch him go through the remainder of this episode's performances and the other shows in the set, pending Miles' and Lily's kind permission. Thankyouverymuch.

Postscript - back when Miles was only just beginning to speak, and barely able to focus on anything on tv except Boobah, a clip of Elvis and his original band happened to appear on the tube. Miles locked his gaze on guitarist Scotty Moore through the solo and exclaimed: "That guy can play the musikguitar!"

Posted 1:27 AM by sport

Posted 11:28 PM by sport

My friend Larry has a good tribute to Charles Nelson Reilly on his blog, and I can't add much to what's been said there and elsewhere. I would like to note that, not long ago (maybe a year or 2), I read an article about CNR that quoted him complaining about his abandonment by the medium to which he owed his greatest fame. He was ubiquitous to people of my generation, even overlooking his fabled Match Game tenure. Starring in sitcoms like Ghost and Mrs Muir, kiddy fare like Lidsville, constantly guesting on variety and talk shows, shilling on ads for the Bic Banana pen, the guy was all over the tube.

Carson kept him on deck as a "replacement guest" whenever someone pulled a no-show, since he always made himself available and proved a reliable and ever-popular guest. Come the Leno era, the phone stopped ringing (along with the Tonight Show's laughs and any residual trace of sophistication it had retained). Maybe it was a little unusual for a performer to complain publicly about this kind of cold-shoulder, but his predicament was anything but unusual. I give him credit for telling them what ingrate fucks they were. Then and now, Reilly's complaint struck a chord in me, signifying the fairly sudden end of a showbiz continuity maintained through the 50s, 60s, 70s and at least the better part of the 80s.

When I tell younger people nowadays about watching, say Sly Stone co-hosting the Mike Douglas show for entire weeks, they laugh "how did THAT happen?" But it was pretty common , onceuponna, to see these kind of kulture kollisions (or kollusions, really, 'cause Douglas visibly loved Sly and supported him even when Sly was unmistakably blasted on drugs; this was not the "clueless square vs. ironic hipster" shit you'd expect now ). No More: CNR's banishment to the entertainment remainder table typified the arrival of today's popular anticulture.

The songwriter Paul Williams once told me about his experiences guesting on Match Game, which he described as "the Algonquin Round Table of game shows." He was very fond of Charles and Brett, and though it seemed a little fulsome to hear him compare this goofball game to that legendary corroboree of caustic wits, he was right. Surely the booze flowed no less generously to hear Paul tell it, and if someone were to cherry pick the finer quips from Rayburn's celebrity panel over the 4 or 5 years Match Game really cooked, I think Charles would compare favorably to Parker and Benchley. And the Algonquin cynics never had to deliver EVERY FUCKING DAY, on coast to coast tv, as did Brett, Chuck, Dawson et al. I'll bet you a round of Tom Collinses that most Algonquin chatter consisted of low gossip, pretentious blather, silly arguments and fuck jokes, just like yours and mine.

So... thanks and a tip of the toupee to you, Chuck; you still make me laugh my blank off.

Posted 2:00 PM by sport

Dr. Kendall said that only Western Eurocentric dragons are said to breathe fire, because for us (with our fear of the Other) they are representations of wickedness, or “fallen angels.” The true Chinese dragon isn’t a fire-breather, she said, but a damp, benevolent presence who makes the crops grow and keeps order in the universe.