12 THINGS I LEARNED FROM RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER

From the day he was born, Rudolph was shunned by his own father and the local industry boss for, as the talking snowman put it, “his nonconformity.”  In spite of his mother’s protests, his father forces his son to “pass” among his peers.

Lesson 1:  Looking different = bad. 

Meanwhile up in Santa’s Castle, poor Hermie is forced to make toys when he’d rather be a dentist.

Lesson 2:  Individuality = bad.

Lesson 3:  Misfits find solace in song.

In spite of his innate talent, Rudolph is ridiculed by his peers, his coach and his father.  He is ousted from the reindeer games.

Hermie attempts to find a way to use his skill set within the confines of his workplace, by giving dolls teeth.  He is punished by his boss and laughed at by his fellow elves.

Lesson 4:  Peer pressure’s a bitch, and authority figures are narrow minded - no matter what your species.

Lesson 5:  The talking snowman is a pussy.

They see no choice but to leave.  Eventually they cross paths with a prospector who offers them passage on his dog sled.

Lesson 6: Road trips are much more interesting when traveling in the company of a crazy man carrying a gun and pick axe.

After getting lost in a fog as thick as peanut butter, our heroes stumble into a world as strange as they are and meet a jack in the box in drag.

Lesson 7:  Island of Misfit Toys = Provincetown.

Not wanting to endanger his friends, Rudolph leaves the Island, goes through puberty and decides to come home, only to find his parents gone.  Santa, instead of offering help, ostensibly tells Rudolph that his folks, and girlfriend, are probably dead, there may not be Christmas, and it’s all his fault.

Lesson 8:  Santa is a Narcissist.

Rudolph finds his mother and Clarisse trapped in the cave of the Abominable.  He valiantly tries to free them but gets bashed.  Hermie and Yukon arrive right on time and devise a plan to trick the beast.  It works, and all are saved.

Lesson 9:  See Lesson 6.

Everybody witnesses Yukon’s horrible death.  Traumatized, they return to Christmastown.  Santa, Donner, Head Elf guy act contrite.  Yukon, it turns out, miraculously survived falling off a cliff, and shows up at Santa’s Castle during a terrible storm.

Lesson 10:  It takes an Epic journey to teach a town about tolerance.

Lesson 11:  Bumbles bounce.

Finally, Rudolph saves Christmas with his Red Nose serving as Santa’s headlight.

Lesson 12:  Nobody likes you until you have something they need.  Then you’re a freakin’ hero. 

A MOVING EXPERIENCE

Why do we move?  For most of us over 40, it’s because we have to.  The landlord’s jacked the rent, or our small house can’t contain our growing family.  A new job, or a new relationship.  And sometimes, in the case of a few too many friends, marriages ending. 

Mention moving to just about anybody, and the response is often a shudder.  “Moving sucks.” 

I have been in my apartment – the first floor of a two-family house – in bucolic Belmont, MA, for more than six years.  I moved here from Los Angeles.  I found the place on line, had a friend check it out, and lo and behold I was home.  When I arrived, I thought I’d be here for a year or two, then I’d meet the right person and we’d buy ourselves a little bungalow somewhere. 

Instead, I’m divorcing myself.  And it feels really, really good. 

I had been thinking about leaving this place, but couldn’t find a better set up than the one I had.  Inertia had convinced me that I wasn’t going anywhere.  Then a friend showed up at my door with a proposal.  That we combine resources and get a place bigger than either one of us could have on our own.  We started looking, and hit the jackpot on our second spin.

So, as I sit among boxes filled with belongings, debating about when to wrap up the dishes and cookware and convert to take out and paper plates, I am filled with joy.

Moving has been a regular part of my life.  By the time I had completed high school in Chicago, I had attended 5 grammar schools, 2 junior high schools and lived at 7 different addresses in two major cities (Chicago and Miami).  I moved to Boston to attend college, and like the rest of my friends, moved around steadily through my mid 20s – on campus, off campus, Allston, Brighton, Brookline, a brief domestic partnership in Belmont, an artist’s life in Somerville…and eventually out west, where, after a tumultuous first year, I landed in a West Hollywood apartment for about 5 years.

I chalked it up to gypsy blood. 

But this move is different.  This move finds me letting go of my past in a way other moves have not.  While I’ve never been a pack rat, I’ve held onto stuff.  Stuff I don’t need, stuff I don’t even necessarily like.  Stuff that makes me think of other things.  Of people, of times, of places that they represent.  An odd collection of souvenirs from all my previous addresses. 

When I was in high school (I only attended one high school, but moved during my senior year), my very sweet and very tall boyfriend fancied himself an audiophile.  He had purchased a new stereo and was explaining its components to me.  I was jealous.  I was drooling.  I had a job and I wanted a stereo, just like Michael’s. 

He took me to United Audio in Chicago’s Lincoln Village, where a large, gregarious salesman extolled the virtues of a 22 watt per channel Sony analog receiver – the same one Michael had.  There were two inputs – one for phono; one for tape.  I’ll take it, along with turntable and speakers, please.  (The tapedeck would come later, after a few more paychecks).

Then somebody invented CDs. 

I had to upgrade, but I couldn’t bring myself to part with that Sony.  I loved its silver case, its horizontal AM/FM dial.  The little red preset lights.  Its simple elegance.  I told myself that one day I would use it again.  As a radio, or I’d put in the basement and teach the kids about records and needles and flipsides.

I sealed it in a box.  I took it to LA.  I brought it back. 

Finally, I concluded that whether or not I ever get that rec room, it’s time for the Sony receiver to go.  I made the guy on freecycle who wanted it promise me that he would take care of it.  He did.  Whether he does or not, isn’t my concern.  We’re divorced.  And it feels good. 

Moving is a beautiful opportunity to take inventory, to think about what we have and what we need.  What we like, and what we hang onto out of habit.  It’s a chance to redefine, to restate, to prune, to rid ourselves of ballast and take control of our environment.

It’s so easy to accumulate, and so difficult to set free.  Perhaps because we live in such lean times that excess feels excessive or perhaps as I get older, I’m less trapped by the trappings, and have changed my mind about what’s really important, and what is simply folly.

I kept Michael’s love letters.

Nobody says it better than this man.  George Carlin – a place for your stuff

 

5 YEARS, STILL NO MAILBOXES

It took me until the last night in New Orleans to finally get that post card written.  Properly stained with hot sauce and Abita beer, the image of a crayfish boil and Mardi Gras beads was stamped and ready.  Heading towards the hotel from Café du Monde, I was confounded by the lack of mailboxes in the French Quarter.  One would expect that the area with the highest concentration of tourists would have a few around for exactly this purpose.  The front desk clerk informed me, “No mailboxes since Katrina.”

What a simple thing.  What a simple gigantic thing.  My mind wandered back to those devastating days at the end of the summer of 2005.  To streams of bodies, people on rooftops, the Superdome.  The chaos, the corruption, the catastrophe.  The failure of everything from the levees, to the local authorities, to the feds.  FEMA trailers.  And here we were, in a post jazz fest haze with powdered sugar on our shorts, just like every other damned tourist. 

But were we damned?  Musicians, club owners, proprietors of all stripes thanked us for our help.  Thanked us for our money, for returning, for rebuilding, and for not letting their city die.

The Gentilly Stage

When you go to New Orleans for the Jazz & Heritage Festival, you can’t hide who are.  Shorts reveal alabaster legs.  Portable chairs and jaunty hats reveal your destination.  Open your mouth to a taxi driver or bartender and “ain’t from here” falls right out.  T-shirts from previous festivals reveal dedication.  Dedication to music, dedication to food, dedication to a place unlike any other.  Even in the hurricane (the kind you drink) soaked French Quarter, you can feel the pulse of a city with its own unique quantum signature.

Routes to and from the festival varied with the taxi drivers, some stuck to the main thoroughfares, while others took shortcuts through less redeveloped neighborhoods.  There were still plenty of houses boarded up, marked with high water rings and spray painted with X codes.  Remnants of the storm weren’t always readily visible, but they were there, even as the drunk girl  from Kansas, sitting on her mother’s lap, endlessly rambling about how this was her first time in New Orleans, tried to distract. 

But in May, the real distraction was in the Gulf of Mexico.  A city still on its knees, kicked once again by a disaster made worse by man’s inability to contain it.  During the course of a single conversation, I heard how a man weathered the storm, rebuilt his house (17 feet of water), and whose livelihood now hangs in the balance.

With my Midwest roots and New England address, I can’t for a moment pretend to know what means to be from New Orleans.  Chances are I’ll never march in an authentic second line, or take up residence in Bywater, but I could feel the pull that seduces so many into seeking its rarefied air, to imagine oneself immersed in a place so mythic, it almost doesn’t seem real.  New Orleans stays with you long after the coffee trudged home from Café du Monde has been consumed.

And as the world once again watches it recover from a disaster of biblical proportions, my faith is bolstered by a non-scientific, statistically insignificant random sampling of taxi drivers, bar patrons, and local artists who, underneath their differences, all had the same message, “this is home.” 

Allen Toussaint sings "The City of New Orleans" at JazzFest 2010. 

THE LOST INNOCENCE OF LOST INNOCENCE

Fogey alert!  I may have just crossed the line of “darn you kids and your culture,” BUT…

I happened by a classic the other day.  1980’s “Little Darlings” starring Tatum O’Neal, Kristy McNichol and Matt Dillon (also, a young, adorable and naturally blonde Cynthia Nixon as hippie girl “Sunshine”).  For those of you who may have forgotten the details, McNichol plays “streetwise” Angel.  You can tell she’s streetwise by the fact that she is smoking in nearly every scene.  Streetwise kids always smoke.  It’s one of the things that make them streetwise.  Tatum O’Neal smoked in “Paper Moon,” and she was like 7.   She also smoked in “The Bad News Bears.”  However she did not smoke in “Little Darlings” because she represented the rich girl – over educated and snotty.  The movie is rated R, and I’m betting it’s not because of the smoking, but rather the content, which, by today’s standards, is downright prudish.  Which is what got me thinking in the first place.

Anyway, Ferris (O’Neal) and Angel (McNichol) are summer camp rivals, you know being from opposite sides of the tracks and all, who enter into a contest to see who can lose their virginity first.  Ferris immediately sets her sights on the unobtainable adult counselor, Gary, portrayed by a disturbingly hairy Armand Assanti, while Angel rows across the pond to the boys’ camp and finds Randy (Dillon) whose feathered locks are enough to make any girl quake in her tube socks.  Of course, the whole camp is in on it, betting their allowances.  In the end - SPOILER ALERT! – Angel and Randy do it, but Angel lies and said they didn’t, while Ferris and Gary don’t do it, but Ferris lies and says they did. 

I was 14 when this movie came out.  I don’t actually remember seeing it in the theatre, yet it has always been part of my consciousness.  Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol (and for that matter, Jodie Foster, the girls from “The Facts of Life,” and “Square Pegs’” own Sarah Jessica Parker) were about my age.  They were my peers.  When I looked to find myself in the movies and TV, I saw them.  So when it was time for Buddy from “Family” to give it up to the badass from “My Bodyguard,” it’s going to make an impression.  Er, so to speak.

And that’s my point!  The double entendre.  The wordplay, the dirty overtones to every sentence spoken.  Those did not exist in this movie.  As Randy and Angel started to have real feelings for each other they got emotional and weird.  They cried, they didn’t communicate, they acted like 15 year olds who are in over their heads.  I found myself thinking about the movie “Juno,” and how everything that came out of Ellen Page’s mouth was precious.  Here was this pregnant girl endlessly quipping, while Angel used smoking a cigarette to stall the eventuality of having to take off her clothes.  “Juno,” for the record, is rated PG-13.

Meanwhile Ferris played at sophistication while chasing an older man.  She pretends to drown; she shows up at his cabin in a nightgown.  Not a negligee but a nightgown, like a proper 15 year old wore in 1980.  His treatment of her was respectful and sweet.  Her lie to the campers was romantic and exactly what they wanted to hear.  The contrast between the fantasy and reality of sex when you’re not ready for it are played out starkly and emotionally.  Ferris has no idea that she’s implicated Gary in statutory rape and it’s not until he spells it out for her that she even gets an inkling of where her misguided crush could have led.

As they age, movies become not only cultural reflections of the time were made, but reflections of how the movies themselves were made at the time.  There was nothing fancy about this film.  The pace was slow, and the camerawork unobtrusive and simple.  The soundtrack wasn’t chock full of late ‘70s hits (it consisted of 6 songs, two of which have subsequently been cut, probably for rights issues.  However, “Let Your Love Flow” played over the end credits).  It was just a little movie about two little girls and one big issue, and all of the awkwardness and discomfort that surrounds it.  The fact that Angel and Randy even had sex is only implied by the post coital jeans buttoning and the bewildered look on their faces.  Angel’s disappointment that it wasn’t what she thought it would be only reiterates how little we knew back then, when the only authority we could trust for all things sexual was Judy Blume. 

Today's parents are much more open and honest with their kids about sex than ours were with us.  As standards and taboos have changed, 15 year olds have been exposed to way more sexualized content than we ever were.  It takes a lot more work to surprise them.  At the same time, there’s something to be said for seriousness of sexual contact.  Because for as glib as we all like to be about it now, we sure as hell weren’t then.    

IMDB currently lists a Little Darlings 2011 in preproduction with JJ Abrams as the producer.  I don’t know why Hollywood feels compelled to remake so many films when there are so many original works being ignored.  Well, of course I do, they have a built in audience of GenXers taking their kids to see the films that defined our own teenage years.  Double dip admission.  If it does get made, I sincerely hope he can capture the true confusion and consequences of losing your virginity before you're emotionally ready to handle it.  Since it’s listed as a comedy, I doubt it.

I imagine they’ll cut the smoking, though.  You know, to keep it PG-13.

SEX & THE CITY 2

**Contains Spoilers** as if there was actually a plot.

As the lights dimmed and the opening credits started for the first Sex & The City movie, my silenced cell phone lit up.  I saw my sister’s name and knew the news wasn’t good.  In her no BS way, she simply reported, in true Fischer fashion, “Our mother is dead.”  My 76-year-old mother had a stroke earlier that day, and I was a thousand miles away.  I already had a ticket to fly to Chicago in a few days, and after some debate, we decided she would get through this one as she had the other scares, and I should come in as scheduled.  She didn’t.  At 8:30pm on Saturday, June 7^th, 2008, I was faced with a choice.  A silly choice, but a choice.  Do I sit through Carrie & Company or do I leave?  Leave and do what, exactly?  It was date night.  My girlfriend at the time had gotten a sitter for her 8-year-old.  Our relationship was in trouble and the strain of my mother’s declining health was pushing us to our emotional limits.  I had made my way into the lobby of the Harvard Square theatre to finish the call and sat there, alone, staring into space.  I could hear that the movie had started.  I thought about my mother.  How she worked for years in designer sportswear at Bonwit Teller and then in couture handbags at Marshall Fields.  I thought, who better to spend time with than four ladies who love beautiful clothes as much as she did?  I went back into the theatre and slumped into my chair.  I really wanted to get lost in the fantasy of Carrie’s wedding to Big, but the distraction of the day’s events made for a more compelling movie in my head.  I sat there in a daze, thankful to not have to interact with anybody.  I remember thinking, “this movie isn’t very good,” but chalked it up to circumstance.  Girlfriend was little comfort, and less than two days later, on the night before I was to leave for Chicago for my mother’s funeral, we broke up.

A few months later, when the movie showed up on HBO, I tuned in and realized that even through my crazy grief filter, I was right.  It wasn’t very good.  It wasn’t terrible, but it was too long, and Carrie and Big didn’t seem like a plausible couple to me.  Their whole wedding debacle made me question the viability of a love that could turn so quickly.  Still smarting from my own love gone wrong, I was far more interested in Miranda and Steve.  Could they overcome true betrayal?  But as a fan of the show (I own all 6 seasons), I know that in Carrie’s heightened world, the emotional hard work comes in third behind Girl Power and Fashion Week.  Carrie seemed shrill and shallow in contrast to her friends who had moved from party-girl-ville to hot-mom-land.  Even Samantha’s story – that she couldn’t commit to Smith – seemed to be coming from a place of truth.  A sweet city hall ceremony and brunch with the gang was a fitting end to these ladies and their stories. 

Bringing Carrie to the big screen proved once again that there are women who will spend money to see movies.  It’s no secret that the over 40 (30?) female demographic is considered non existent by Hollywood standards, but there are a lot of us out there the same age as Carrie, who want more than just a chick flick.  And while the S&TC franchise doesn’t ask a lot from its fans, it seems to appreciate how invested we are in the characters.

And so, upon the success of the first movie, a second was commissioned. 

It’s been said that the women of S&TC behave like gay men.  If this is true, then the characters who showed up for the sequel were four tired old queens.  What a bunch of miserable, shallow, shrill, unlikeable group they’ve become.  Miranda and Charlotte being the least offensive, I think because they were allowed to mature a wee bit.  Their relationships with their husbands and children are complicated and messy in spite of being portrayed as one dimensional.  As fans who’ve “known” them for so many years, we can accept the conceit of Charlotte baking cupcakes in vintage Valentino, and Miranda suddenly in a position where she’s being treated misogynistically , because of the knowledge we bring with us when we enter their world.  Women in their 40s can relate to them on some level, even those without nannies.

But Carrie and Samantha remained stuck, selfish and immature.  Their disrespect to the culture they were visiting was probably intended as high camp, but instead came across as lowbrow.  I am not easily offended, but really, Samantha?  Flipping off an entire crowd of Arab men?  Using menopause as an excuse for such loutish behavior?  And Carrie, a few nights at home on the couch and suddenly your life is over?  You run into Aiden 6,000 miles from home and can’t manage to behave like an adult?  I never liked Carrie and Aiden together.  They never had any energy as a couple.  They had nothing in common, they shared no mutual interests, and they had conflicting lifestyles.  I could accept that ridiculous kiss if there was an iota of chemistry between them.

And yet, the most egregious offense of Sex & The City 2, was not Stanford and Anthony’s big gay wedding, the lack of a real plot, or the bloated running time, it was the fact that the City wasn’t New York.  I’ve seen interviews where the setting is rationalized as a backdrop for an escapist fantasy.  Er, the entire series was an escapist fantasy.  But what made it real, was four modern archetypes finding themselves in a city where it’s easy to get lost.  By taking away the character of New York City, and replacing it with Abu Dhabi, we are left with a sophomoric at best, and at worst, an insulting “fish out of water” story.  The ladies deserve better than that.  And so does the audience.

Somewhere between Samantha giving a blow job to a hookah pipe, and Carrie’s “race” to find her passport (exactly where she left it…big wow), I found myself hoping my phone would ring.

PHANTOM BIRTHDAYS

Sunday, the 16^th of May would have been my friend Kate Billings’ 53^rd birthday.  For years, I was convinced it was on the 19^th.  I told her once, that as she got older, she’d appreciate having a few extra days at her previous age.  We never considered that her nagging cough in October 2008 would be diagnosed as Stage 3 non small cell lung cancer.  She would be gone 11 months later. 

Kate and I were friends for more than 20 years, and what I don’t want to do is focus on the last, and most painful one of her life.  As she was so full of it (life, that is…).  She was a successful television producer, who at 40 decided to chuck it all and pursue acupuncture.  Upon graduating from the New England School of Acupuncture and getting her license, she moved to Falmouth on Cape Cod.  In short order, she had a thriving practice and a fantastic guy who shared her deep love of sailing.

I had never been on a sailboat before, when on a rather cold, windy, rainy, nasty day, I joined Kate and some of her friends on her first boat, The Dolce Bella.  I spent a good part of that sail below deck trying my damnedest not to get sick.  While I managed to keep it together on the inside, on the outside I had turned as green as the bay.  This was not lost on my captain, who from that day forward – and in spite of my eventually earning my sea legs – trotted out that story at every opportunity.  Several years later, we were on the water with some other friends and she started to tell the tale.  About two sentences in, she looked at me, smiled, and said, “This story is a lot funnier when you’re not here.”  At her memorial service, I was reunited with the original folks from that first sail.  Nearly 20 years had passed, and it took some time for us to place each other.  Then, a bolt of recognition, “Weren’t you the one who turned green…?”  I could hear Kate laughing.

And so as we muddle through this black mark of firsts on the calendar…first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, first Easter, without her, I find myself thinking about those who’ve passed, and how their birthdays hang in limbo.  How do we mark them? 

Someone once told me that on the anniversary of a loved one’s death, they find someone who didn’t know the deceased, and tell them a story about that person, so that they live anew.

Perhaps that’s what I’m doing here, but on the day she came into the world, rather than the one on which she left us.  As the months pass and the inevitability of life washes over us, these phantom birthdays serve as personal holidays.  A chance to remember, to celebrate, or at the very least, an occasion to look up, feel the breeze and whisper into it, “I love you, Katie B.”

JUST LIKE RIDING A BICYCLE

Billy Powers learned how to ride a two wheeler before I did.  So one day, I hopped on his bike and started pedaling.  It came naturally.  The next thing I knew, I was at the other end of the block.  I didn’t know how to stop, so I just quit pedaling and fell down.  Seemed inefficient, but it was the best I could do.  I picked it up, jumped on, and headed back to his house.  It was a glorious moment.  The neighbors were impressed.  Except for Mrs. Powers, but nothing impressed her.

This was the beginning of an on-again off-again love affair with the bicycle that has lasted my entire life.

In elementary school, an undue influence of pop culture inspired me to crave a Pink Huffy faux-moto cross bike.  My parents bought me one, but the biking gods had other plans for it.  One night I left it unlocked in the driveway.  Instead of it simply getting stolen, it was replaced.  Replaced!  Was I part of some kind of karmic bike exchange?  Left in its place was a little white ten speed.  It had no brand markings.  Only 5 of the gears worked.  I don’t know where it came from.  I don’t know what kind it was.  I don’t know if its original owner wanted my pink Huffy.  When I came out the next morning and found it there, a strange mix of feelings came over me.  Regret that I had not locked up my bike, like my mother insisted, but a much larger sense of relief.  That bike was too pink for someone like me.  This ten speed had character.  The way an old MG is sexier than a new Corvette.  Like a beat up leather jacket you find in a thrift store, like something that’s always belonged to you even though it showed up in your life midway through its own.  I rode the hell out of that bike and eventually started to outgrow it.  So, when we moved to Chicago, it stayed in Miami.  To retire.

A high school job at a t-shirt store, and the desire to be mobile led me to the Cycle Scene on Devon Avenue in Chicago.  The friendly guys there fitted me to a shiny gold Motobecane Mirage, and over the course of the long winter, I paid for it.  $25 here, $10 there, and by spring I was ready to hit the road.  I spent countless weekends pedaling through my adolescent angst up Sheridan Road into the north shore - no helmet, listening to my walkman.  Thank you, guardians of the rider, for watching over me.  The Mirage moved to Boston with me when I came for college, and served as my transport all over the city. 

Delusions of bike commuting led me to Wheel Works where I bought a Bianchi Ocelot.  18 speeds, hybrid style.  The Mirage was feeling at once too clunky and too narrow for the streets of Boston.  I held the maybe 50 bucks I got for it, and felt I had just betrayed an old friend.  I never quite came through on my commitment to ride to work, and the Bianchi spent more time in the basement than on the road.  I bought a car.

When I moved to LA, I sold it to a friend.  She never rode it either.  Upon my returning to Boston, she gave it back to me.  I rode it now and then until last summer when another friend was training for a long distance ride and wanted some company.  I decided that it was time hop back on.  We covered a lot of ground, but it felt too heavy.  Not the kind of bike you cruise 40 miles on.  I set my sites on a road bike.  A real road bike.  A clicky pedal 24 speed (at least), light as air road bike.

Then I started pricing them.  Discouraged, I continued on the Bianchi, cursing it with every hill, angry that I wasn’t pedaling efficiently. 

Then, a chance encounter at EMS, led me to a discounted “last year’s model” sale.  Finally, an affordable bike, a knowledgeable bike tech, and no more excuses.  While Scott bicycles are not a well known brand (hell, neither is Motobecane), they are a pretty cool company based in Idaho, whose bikes are well made, and their “Speedster” fit me perfectly.

On our maiden voyage, I recalled that moment on Billy’s bike, at the corner, in front of the Caspers’ house wanting to stop, not knowing how, and feeling myself fall.  Here I was, nearly 40 years later, on the Minute Man Bikeway, somewhere between Lexington and Bedford, nervously anticipating the cross street.  I got my right foot out of the pedal, but shifted my weight wrong.  I fell to my left.  Hard.  I picked myself up, and assured the people stopped at the red light, talking on their cell phones, who didn’t notice, that I was okay.  Part of me longed for the safety of my hybrid.  I know how to ride that bike.  I know how to finagle around the middle gear shifting problems, I can take my feet off the pedals without thinking about it – whenever I damn well please.  But where’s the pleasure?  That bike was about pragmatism, not joy.  Our relationship was stale, it felt more like a business arrangement.  “I’ll take you where you want to go,” as opposed to, “Let’s go and see where we end up.”  I don’t know how long this love affair is going to last, but it’s bound to be one hell of a ride.


*huffy image courtesy Mt. Ranier Bicycle Co-op, Motobecane off a Vintage bike website, and the Scott comes from the EMS website.  Please don't sue me.

THE SEIJI SCALE

In 1989, I was earning $6.50 an hour at a local suburban Cable Access station.  In addition to driving the van to city hall to cover live school committee and city council meetings, my job was to help produce TV by and for the good people of Newton, MA.  I had finished college six months earlier, and landed this position right after graduation.  It was my first “real” job in the field in which I majored, and yet job satisfaction was low.  My roommate Molly was in her last year and was working at a bookstore.  Her job satisfaction wasn’t much higher, and could be measured by the dozens of books that lined her bedroom floor.  We often sat on the floor in the hallway, just outside of my bedroom.  Our apartment didn’t  fit us.  We were on the 2^nd floor of an 1890s three decker in the heart of Brookline Village, across from Town Hall and the Police Station.  We had a working fireplace, and all the wood trim was either cherry or mahogany.  To this day, it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived.  Yet, for two kids barely old enough to buy beer, our apartment was too grown up.  Plus, there was the third roommate.  She was in her 40s, and it was more her place than ours.  She rarely came out of her room.  When she did, it was to refill her plate of food and sigh.  So we’d sit there.  Leaning up against the wall, butts numb from the hardwood floor, giggling.  Like children.

As we tried to picture adulthood, we wondered who is completely satisfied in their work.  Could there really be people who got up every day excited to face it?  We concluded that Seiji Ozawa (the then Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) had the world’s coolest job.  He travels the world,  and spends his days with artists at the top of their craft.  He has creative freedom, respect, wealth and fame.  Music was his life, and now his life was music.  It seemed like a pretty good deal.  And so, from this casual observation, we developed “Seiji Ozawa Scale of Job Satisfaction.”

I don’t think either Molly or I truly understood the magnitude of genius to which we dared to compare ourselves.  For the rest of us who aren’t Seiji Ozawa, things usually fall somewhere in the middle.  We have our Seiji moments, rather than our Seiji jobs.  Perhaps the hubris of youth led us to believe we could find a way to make a living loving what we do every day.  The cynicism of mid-career taunts us by holding up Seiji Ozawa’s impossible standard, and inventories the number of times we’ve fallen short.  Still, every time I take on a new project, I do a little mental Seiji check.  The wisdom of experience reminds me that turning my back on Seiji would mean losing faith in myself.  

SUMMER CLOTHES

Having faith we are done with snow and below freezing temperatures, I decided to spend Easter Sunday swapping out the winter clothes for the summer ones.  This twice yearly ritual is always more work, and takes longer than I expect it to, but there is a certain satisfaction in fully accepting the change of seasons.

When I was a kid in Miami, Woolworth’s used to sell cans of “Florida Sunshine.”  I always wanted to get one and open it.  I wondered if they painted the inside yellow.  I thought of those souvenirs when I opened a box filled with linen pants, flip flops and t-shirts.  Without fail, there is an article of clothing that I had forgotten.  Coming across it makes it seem like Christmas.  This year it was a groovy pair of canvas shoes I bought towards the end of last summer.  I barely had a chance to wear them before stowing them away.  Uncovering them, I immediately saw myself  al fresco, laughing over margaritas, and looking dangerously hip in my canvas shoes.  The summer wardrobe is full of potential.  Romance, beaches, road trips in my beloved Miata (which is still in stasis in the garage – I reconstitute her in May).  The movie trailer plays in my head as I unfold and rehang  that adorable cotton top.  Warm nights, cold beer, burgers on the grill.  The air of possibility enters my apartment as I take down the last of the cellophane window covers. 

The dark winter colors, the heavy woolens are packed up next to flannel shirts and corduroy pants and stuffed into the back of the closet with mittens and scarves and thermal underwear.  With the cold short days behind us, people are actually friendly again.  For a little while.  Until they start complaining about the heat.  A nice day in New England is almost never taken for granted.  It sort of fits with the whole notion of the Yankee sensibility.  “Can’t have too many nice days, ah-nope.  It’ll make you soft.  E-yup, gotta ration out that sunshine, so’s people knows what’s good for ‘em.”

When I decided to leave Los Angeles, many questioned my judgement with the statement, “But what about the winters?”  My stock reply to this question was, “There’s more to life than weather.”  I freely admit that as I get older, winters are harder to take, but my choice to leave LA had very little to do with climate.  As I fully engage in the seasons, I find a sense of forward motion, of movement through time.  A feeling you don’t get when the leaves don’t change.  I’m sure that by the time Columbus Day rolls around, I’ll be daydreaming about crisp autumn nights, hot apple cider and warm cozy sweaters. 

But for now, my favorite cargo shorts, white tank top and Red Sox hat will do me just fine.

WHAT'S LEFT TO SAY ABOUT ELLA?

Nothing.  And yet, everything.  NPR is running an occasional series called “50 Great Voices,” and today Ms. Fitzgerald was highlighted.  (link to story below)

Just yesterday I was having lunch with two dear friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen in more than 15 years (John).  The other?  Well, the other’s been a pal for over 20.  He’s my culture guy, my music bud, my movie partner (Ron).  Many years ago, the three of us worked together at what many call the country’s flagship PBS station.  We converged at a perfect time in our lives.  I was just out of school and Ron and John had a couple of years on me, but not so many that we couldn’t relate.  Ron is a music savant.  John is a musician.  I was into typical late ‘80s alt pop, but wanted to expand my horizons.  Along come these two.  John, at the time, was also the choral conductor at nearby Church, and his knowledge of classical, jazz and show tunes far exceeded anybody in my small post college world.  And Ron, Ron never stopped listening to new music.  He was a shark.  Never wanting to become a fogey who only listened to what he listened to as a teenager, he made it his mission to stay current.  These were my teachers.

Prior to graduation, my only experience of jazz and swing came from the summer I worked at Banana Republic.  Before they became the Gap for grownups, BR billed itself as “travel & safari clothing.”  Their in-store soundtracks were a lesson in WWII and post war music history.

Yesterday’s conversation inevitably turned to music, and I, still, all these years later, felt like the rookie at the table.  We started to reminisce, and it was John who pointed out that together, we saw some of the greats - Sarah Vaughn, Betty Carter and Carmen McRae - culminating in a trip to Tanglewood to see Ella.  We thought we were lucky then.  But yesterday, over dim sum, able to unearth and share these moments all these years later, we knew it.

Listen to Susan Stamberg’s excellent profile on Ella here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125170386

DECONSTRUCTING EUNICE

Recently I was chastised on Facebook by a friend of mine.  She posted the famous “Sorry” sketch from The Carol Burnett Show, and I piped in with the thought that Eunice (of Eunice, Ed & Mama) was a tragic character, and the underlying sadness of those sketches is part of what made them so compelling.  She told me I was taking away the funny.

I’ve been mulling this exchange ever since.  As a comedian and writer, I find nothing more annoying than intellectual posers taking the fun out of a pie in the face by insisting that it is an attempt to make violence palatable.  A pie in the face is funny.  We all know that.  Eunice ringing that little bell and yelling in that marvelous cracker screech, “Sorrrryyyy!” is hilarious.  Her delivery, that dress, those shoes, Harvey Korman and Vicki Lawrence (that wig!  that ass!) determined to get each other to bust up laughing is pure joy.  It’s the comedy that has informed an entire generation of comedians, improvisers and sketch writers. 

But to deny Eunice’s personal hell is to do a disservice to a monumental piece of writing and acting. Eunice was dealt a lousy hand.  She spends every moment of those sketches trying to win a game she is destined to lose – her mother’s approval, a supportive husband.

Perhaps I have over personalized it because I had a mother who was undercut by her own mother her entire life.  I have seen first hand the reality of a woman who felt trapped between her husband, in laws, mother and children.  My mother and I watched The Carol Burnett Show together every Saturday night.  She laughed out loud at those sketches too.  She laughed not only at the way Ed said, “slide,” but at the larger truth behind Mama re-cleaning the kitchen table.  Eunice suffered all the indignities her husband and mother (and in other episodes, her "better" sister Ellen, played by Betty White) threw at her.  When she would lash out and express her rage, nobody would listen.  Her feelings never validated, her only recourse was to sit down, shut up, and play another hand, hoping maybe that this time, she’ll win. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmdfSXWVW1M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJLVgPPF40M&feature=related