In the spirit of spring and Mother’s Day–which is just around the corner–the wife is having a sale (15% off ) on her photography note cards now through 5/9/10.

She’s added a number of new sets including orchids and cherry blossoms.

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Because I just can’t get me enough of Jeff Bridges, here’s some more on the favorite to win the Best Actor Oscar next weekend…from Manohla Dargis in the Sunday Times:

In the early and mid 1970s he played a wide-eyed boxer, a sly con artist, a moonshiner turned car racer, a squealer turned suicide, a thief and a cattle rustler, working with veterans like John Huston (“Fat City” in 1972) and newcomers like Michael Cimino, who, for his 1974 debut, directed Mr. Bridges alongside Clint Eastwood in the crime story “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.” The critics had started to pay attention. “Sometimes, just on his own,” Pauline Kael wrote of his performance as a stock-car racer in “The Last American Hero” (1973), “Jeff Bridges is enough to make a picture worth seeing.” Notably, she also compared him to Robert De Niro, who was about to set fire to screens in Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets.”

“He probably can’t do the outrageous explosive scenes that Robert De Niro brings off in ‘Mean Streets,’ ” she wrote. “But De Niro — a real winner — is best when he’s coming on and showing off. Jeff Bridges just moves into a role and lives in it — so deep in it that the little things seem to come straight from the character’s soul.”

I worked as an assistant film editor on The Big Lebowski which was cut on film and not a computer. During the shoot, our main responsibility in the cutting room was to mark-up the sound track and the picture and synch the footage that was shot the day before–these are called “rushes” or “dailies”, which would be screened for the directors later that day. We’d check the synch by screening the footage on a Steenbeck.

Watching Bridges work was a revelation–he simply was the Dude. Some actors need a bunch of takes before they really hit their stride but Bridges was that character, and in each take he gave a subtle variation on a line reading or a physical gesture. You could tell that he had a background in TV and film and not the theater. His approach and rhythm was different from most everyone else in the movie. He was so natural and extremely intelligent, providing the directors with all the material they’d need to piece together a winning performance.

Back to Dargis now, writing about Lebowski:

Whether shuffling around in a bathrobe or dropping a lighted joint in his lap, Mr. Bridges’s timing is brilliant. But it’s his ability to convey a profound, seemingly limitless sense of empathy that elevate the Dude beyond the usual Coen caricature. By facing every assault — repeated beatings, a friend’s death, the theft of a rug — with little more than an exclamation (“Man!”) and a toke, he and the Dude affirmed that an American hero doesn’t need a punch, just a punch line, something that Judd Apatow’s merry band of potheads know well.

In some respects “The Big Lebowski” was Mr. Bridges’s “Raging Bull,” a defining movie. He never established a long working relationship with a director as Mr. De Niro did with Martin Scorsese. Mr. Bridges has worked with significant filmmakers, just not necessarily in their finest hour. He has made questionable choices, but he has had a breadth of roles that should be the envy of most, and a depth few achieve. And he has staying power. It takes nothing away from his work in “Crazy Heart” to note that the film’s success and profile probably owe something to “Iron Man,” the 2008 blockbuster in which he pulled a Lex Luthor to play the villain and which gave him his highest-profile role in years. He was hilarious, absurd, necessary, and to watch him in that movie as well as in “Crazy Heart” is to be reminded yet again of how he abides.

Dargis singles-out Cutter’s Way (pictured above) and that’s a movie worth watching if you’ve never seen it. Terrific-look. The only drag is watching John Heard chew-up the scenery, but otherwise, it’s a good movie.

Finally, my boy Joey La P, sent me a link to this interview with Bridges on KCRW.

A few weeks before I began my junior year of high school I was in Belgium visiting my grandparents. I stayed in the attic room where I daydreamed about the girl who lived across the street and all the other Belgian women who customarily sunbathed without a bikini top. 

I listened to BBC serials on the radio and read French comic books and sometimes opened the door to the storage room that occupied the other half of the attic and went inside and poked around the dusty old furniture and suitcases hunting for treasure. I once found an old copy of Oui magazine (For the Man of the World), an offshoot of Playboy, I think, which led me to believe there was more pornography waiting to be discovered. I was wrong.

I spent mornings there, sleeping late, and afternoons too, after lunch, when my grandparents took their naps. This is where I first read The Catcher in the Rye and I remember the warm sun coming through the skylight onto my bed as I tore through J.D. Salinger’s most famous book. I liked the idea of reading it, though I became impatient at times and skimmed over passages. But it was the right time and place. I got it. When I returned home, I read his three other books and liked Nine Stories best. Franny and Zooey made me feel grown-up (plus, the Glass family lived on the Upper West Side); the last one lost me.

I have not revisited Salinger’s work since, during which time I’ve met as many people who were turned off by him as those who love him. But I got to thinking about him this morning when I read his obit in the Times:

In the fall of 1953 he befriended some local teenagers and allowed one of them to interview him for what he assumed would be an article on the high school page of a local paper, The Claremont Daily Eagle. The article appeared instead as a feature on the editorial page, and Mr. Salinger felt so betrayed that he broke off with the teenagers and built a six-and-a-half-foot fence around his property.

He seldom spoke to the press again, except in 1974 when, trying to fend off the unauthorized publication of his uncollected stories, he told a reporter from The Times: “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It’s peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”

And yet the more he sought privacy, the more famous he became, especially after his appearance on the cover of Time in 1961. For years it was a sort of journalistic sport for newspapers and magazines to send reporters to New Hampshire in hopes of a sighting. As a young man Mr. Salinger had a long, melancholy face and deep soulful eyes, but now, in the few photographs that surfaced, he looked gaunt and gray, like someone in an El Greco painting. He spent more time and energy avoiding the world, it was sometimes said, than most people do in embracing it, and his elusiveness only added to the mythology growing up around him.

Depending on one’s point of view, he was either a crackpot or the American Tolstoy, who had turned silence itself into his most eloquent work of art. Some believed he was publishing under an assumed name, and for a while in the late 1970s, William Wharton, author of “Birdy,” was rumored to be Mr. Salinger, writing under another name, until it turned out that William Wharton was instead a pen name for the writer Albert du Aime.

He was an odd bird, no doubt. Gifted writer though.

The Times also has a piece about why The Catcher in the Rye was never made into a movie.

Last night my wife and I sat on the couch, facing each other and she told me about her day. We didn’t turn on the TV all night, a rarity. At one point, she showed me the cartoons from last weekend’s Week in Review section. I told her how those were the only cartoons we ever saw in my house growing up. She said they always got the Sunday Funnies and I told her the Times never had comics. I said maybe her parents got one of the tabloids.

“Can you see my parents reading a tabloid?”

“I’ll bet your mother grew up reading the Post.”

“What!?”

“Sure, it was a liberal paper back then. I’m sure they got the Post along with the Times. Maybe the Herald Trib too. Or the Journal-Amer–”

She burst out laughing.

“The Herald Trib?”

Laughing at me. In my face.

“Well, that’s what they called it,” I said, raising my voice in mock fury.

“Yeah, right. You are such a dork!”

“That’s what they called it!”

She curled into a ball as if to protect herself from attack and I picked up the phone and called her mother.

Her mom answered and Em and I took turns talking to her, laughing. She called it the Herald Tribune. But they read the Post in their house.

“See, I told you,” I said.

Emily spoke to her mom and her voice dropped, “Oh-no.”

Emily’s folks had to put down their dog in the morning, a fourteen-year old Dalmation. We stopped giggling and Emily’s voice became soothing and concerned. As childless parents, our two cats are like our kids. The thought of life without them is dreadful. I often day-dream about what will happen when Emily’s parents die, how I’ll feel when my mother dies. In two days it will be the third anniversary of my father’s death. And I think about when our cats will die until I force myself to think about something else.

This morning, I sent Emily’s parents an e-mail, letting them know that I was thinking about them. Em’s mom sat on a rug in the Vet’s office a few hours later and held her dog as it was put to sleep. 

Em and I talked about that tonight. The pain of losing loved ones. We talked about the shrine we’d make for our cats when they go. She was back on the couch. A re-run of The Office played in the background. I got up to get some some cereal. I found an unopened box and brought it into the living room and handed it to her.

“Why can’t you open it?” she said.

“Because…things…happen.”

“Oh, I don’t think opening it is the problem. I think it’s when you leave it on the counter all night, wide open so that you make sure that it gets completely stale. That’s the problem.”

She laughed at me again.

“Hey, listen,” I said, “I’m trying to be pro-active here, and what’s with the editorializing?”

“I figured it might work well in the Herald Trib.”

A pause. She scrunched into a fetal position and then filled the room with laughter.

Roger Angell was the first baseball writer I can remember. Actually, it was the two Rogers–Angell and Kahn–whose books were in my father’s collection, and sometimes–I’m sure I’m not alone here–I confused them. But when it came time to actually reading them and not just noticing the jacket cover of their books, Angell was my guy. Years later, when I started this blog, Angell served as a role model. Not because I wanted to copy his style or his sensibility, but because he was an example of fan who wrote well and loved the game.

So long as I was authentic and wrote with dedication and sincerity, I knew I’d be okay. Angell came to mind recently when I read a blog post by the veteran sports writer, David Kindred:

Bill Simmons is America’s hottest sportswriter. Fortunately, at the same time I came up with an explanation that enabled me to continue calling myself a sportswriter. Bill Simmons has succeeded because he is not, has never been, and will never be a sportswriter. He’s a fan.

Lord knows, there’s nothing wrong with being a fan. I love sports fans. Without the painted-face people, I’d be writing ad copy for weedeaters. But I have I ever been a sports fan. A fan of reporting, yes. Of journalism. Of newspapers. A fan of reading and writing, you bet. I am a fan of sports, which is different from being a sports fan of the Simmons stripe.
The art and craft of competition fascinates me. Sports gives us, on a daily basis, ordinary people doing extraordinary things and extraordinary people doing unimagined things. I love it.

But I have never cared who wins. I am a disciple of the Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Dave Anderson, whose gospel is: “I root for the column.” We don’t care what happens as long as there’s a story.

My readings of Simmons now suggest he is past caring only about the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots winning (though if they all won championships in the same year, the book would be an Everest of Will Durant proportions). He now engages, however timidly, in actual reporting of actual events; he even has allowed that interviewing people might give him insights otherwise unavailable on his flat-screen TV. Clearly, though, he is most comfortable in his persona as just a guy talking sports with other guys between commercials – which is fine if, unlike me, you go for that guys-being-guys/beer-and-wings nonsense and have infinite patience for The Sports Guy’s bloviation, blather, and balderdash.

Even though Bill James has written almost exclusively about baseball, for traditional newspaper and magazine guys, I doubt that he’d qualify as a sports writer. Not without reporting, or going into the locker rooms. Then where does that leave guys like Joe Sheehan, Tim Marchman, Jonah Keri and Rob Neyer (to name, just a few)? They aren’t fans like Simmons, but they write soley about sports.

The definition of what it is to be a sports writer is changing.

I have done some freelance writing for SI.com, gone into the locker rooms and filed stories. I’ve also worked on longer bonus pieces too. I enjoyed both experiences because it gave me an appreciation for the rigors of journalism. I also came to realize that being a beat writer, for instance, is not a job for me–I’m too old and I don’t have that kind of hustle and I don’t care enough about where being a good beat writer would take me.

Nobody grows up dreaming of beinga  columnist anymore do they? I suspect they dream of growing up and writing, or blogging, so that they can be on TV.

Here at the Banter, I’m more like Simmons or Angell. I’m not a reporter or a columnist or an analyst, and I’m certainly no expert (I’m lucky to have a sharp mind like Cliff writing analytical pieces in this space). I think of myself as an observer. More than a strict seamhead, I write about what it is like to live in New York City and root for the Yankees. Often, I’m just as interested in writing about my subway ride home or the latest Jeff Bridges movie as I am about who the Yankees left fielder will be next year. Which makes the Banter more of a lifestyle blog than just a Yankee site, for better or worse.

So I’m no sports writer and that’s cool but I’m not sure what a sports writer is anymore.

…Oh, and along with Kindred, the inimitable Charlie Pierce has started a blog at Boston.com. Pierce is a welcome addition to the landscape. Be sure to check him out.

The wife and I were on our way home Saturday night, riding the IRT back uptown to the Bronx. Two young, heavy-set women sat across from us with a stroller in front of them. One of the women drank a can of orange soda and played with her infant son; the boy gripped her fat fingers and laughed. The other woman tapped her cell phone and complained about how long it was going to take for them to get ready–showered and dressed–to go out.

“It’s nine o’clock, you gunna take forever to get your ass in gear. I don’t even know what I’m going to wear.”

The women chattered along–giggling and talking loudly like teenagers–and the child became restless.

“What are you bothering me for?” the mother said to him. “Why do you keep saying, ‘Papi’? Your father isn’t here.  Papi, Papi, Papi. I’m here. He’s not here. You want me to call him so you can talk to him? I brought you into this world, why you need to always bother me? I’m the boss. You do as I say.”

The Mrs and I were tucked into the two seats at the end of the car. We were distracted by the mother, our conversation halted. Finally, Emily turned to me and said, “Can we move?” I had been thinking about changing our seats for several stops. At 168th street, we moved to the next car.

It’s not about being judgemental it’s about comfort. If you can do something about it, why expose yourself to something that makes you uncomfortable, anxious or upset? Yeah, when I’m aware of it–and both Emily and I are exceedingly sensitive to this kind of thing–I don’t think, I just move.

Watch the closing doors.

When I was a kid, I looked through my dad’s extensive library of books and through his record collection. Most of the books didn’t appeal to me because they didn’t have pictures. There was a history of burlesque that was titillating, a book about the history of the Academy Awards, and two of the Illustrated Beatles books; otherwise, his books didn’t interest me until much later. The record collection was mostly made-up of Original Cast Recordings from Broadway shows, and folk music joints, from Burl Ives to the Weavers. My mom had some Simon and Garfunkel and Judy Collins lps in the mix, and there was a copy of A Hard Day’s Night, but that was as rockin’ as it got.

What was left? A handful of comedy records–Why Is There Air? and I Started Out as a Child by Bill Cosby, Vaughn Meader’s First Family record, the 2000 Year Old Man, and the 2013 Year Old Man, by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. My twin sister, Sam, younger brother, Ben, and I listened to the Cosby and Brooks-Reiner records until they were practically worn-out. We can quote them without thinking. Every time I get off the phone with my sister we say, “Goodbye…I hope I’m an actor,” a throw-away line from Brooks in the Coffee House sketch on the first 2000 Year Old Man album.

Sometimes, before my parents got divorced, the old man would listen with us and we would wait with bated breath for the parts that made him laugh. I practically memorized what jokes got him going. He had a big, almost violent laugh that shook the room. It was exciting and scary but a relief: the old man was happy, and that was enough for us.

It’s hard for me not to think of my dad and Mel Brooks together–it is as if Mel is part of the family, just like George Carlin was. Although the old man wasn’t a great fan of Mel’s movies, he never tired of the 2000 year old man routine. Brooks has made a couple of memorable movies but his true genius is captured on these recordings, or on some of his talk show appearances. (Have you ever read the 1975 Playboy interview with Brooks? It is nothing short of hysterical.)

So I smiled this morning when I read the following interview with Brooks and Reiner in the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times (they are promoting a new boxed-set of the 2000 recordings):

Q: How did you first come up with “The 2000 Year Old Man”?

MEL BROOKS: At the beginning it was pure made-up craziness and joy, and there was no thought of anybody else hearing it except maybe a couple of dear friends at a party.

CARL REINER: It was to pep up a room. We started on “Your Show of Shows,” and sometimes there would be a lull [in the writers’ room]. I always knew if I threw a question to Mel he could come up with something.

BROOKS: We had fun.

REINER: I remember the first question I asked him. It was because I had seen a program called “We the People Speak,” early television. [He puts on an announcer voice] “ ‘We the People Speak.’ Here’s a man who was in Stalin’s toilet, heard Stalin say, ‘I’m going to blow up the world.’ ” I came in, I said this is good for a sketch. No one else thought so, but I turned to Mel and I said, “Here’s a man who was actually seen at the crucifixion 2,000 years ago,” and his first words were “Oh, boy.” [He sighs.] We all fell over laughing. I said, “You knew Jesus?” “Yeah,” he said “Thin lad, wore sandals, long hair, walked around with 11 other guys. Always came into the store, never bought anything. Always asked for water.” Those were the first words, and then for the next hour or two I kept asking him questions, and he never stopped killing us.

BROOKS: It was all ad-libbed, and nothing was ever talked about before we did it. We didn’t write anything, we didn’t think about anything. Whatever was kinetic, whatever was chemical, we did it.

Here goes a sample…

From the first record:

There is an old Yiddish routine between a man and woman that my dad and his sister used to do. That’s where my twin sister Sam and I learned to do it.

It goes like this:

“You Dancin?”

“You askin’?”

“I’m askin’ if you’re dancin’.”

“I’m dancin’ if you’re askin.'”

“So I’m askin.'”

“So I’m dancin.'”

I had dancing* on the brain tonight after watching Robinson Cano turn an elegant double play in the seventh inning. With a man on first and one out, Cano fielded a ground ball to his right, took a few steps to the bag and falling away, flipped the ball to first. Cano is one of the few players in the league that can “flip” a ball across the field with such ease and still put a good amount of mustered on the throw. It was a remarkably quick and agile play, over in an eye-blink, but smooth like butter.

And that wasn’t the only thing that was smooth on another smooth night for the Yankees. CC Sabathia was a load. Again. The Big Fella went seven innings and allowed one run on seven hits and a walk. He struck out nine. And Alex Rodriguez was more money than money, breaking up a 1-1 game in the seventh with a two run single, and then adding to a 3-2 lead with another two-run base hit in the ninth, giving him 75 RBI on the year. His first hit a few innings earlier was the 2,500 of his career. 

Rodriguez’s RBI in the ninth was just the start. The Yanks scored seven runs in all, good enough for a 10-2  win, and another series sweep. The Yanks have won ten straight against the Orioles. They are a big inning waiting to happen. Tonight, the Bombers had 17 hits in all, 4 by Johnny Damon, 2 each by Nick Swisher, Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera.

So what’s not to like?

*One of the all-time jips of my childhood came when my mother and grandmother took my sister  to see Bob Fosse’s “Dancin'” on Broadway in a theater while my father and grandfather rolled my brother and me a few blocks away  to Loew’s 83rd Street to see Elliott Gould and Bill Cosby in The Devil and Max Devlin.

I had my handful of disappointing movie theater experiences as a kid–Chariots of Fire, Swing Shift, Author! Author!, Carbon Copy–but that one took the cake. Like losing Fred McGriff in the Davey Collins dump for Dale Murray.

I didn’t even like musicals but that “Dancin'” poster was everywhere in Manhattan for a few years. As a kid, I thought it was so adult and provocative. I think of it side-by-side in my mind’s eye with the Oh! Calcutta! poster.

Last night I was standing on a subway platform when a train whooshed into the station. I noticed that my car was almost empty before stepping inside. An empty car in the middle of the summer can mean one of two things: the AC is broken or someone smelly is inside (worse case scenerio brings both). Turns out the AC was busted. But I got in anyhow and enjoyed the space. The Russian Baths on the IRT, why not?

I’ve run into several mentally ill people on the trains lately. Last Friday night, on the Brooklyn-bound B train, a man walked through the car and said, “My man, my man, m-m-m-m-my man.” He held a cup in his hand and kept repeating these words in an insistent, almost pleading voice. I thought about the stuttering character in “Do The Right Thing.” The doors opened and closed but the dude didn’t get off the car. He just kept chanting. It was upsetting. A man sitting next to me looked up from his newspaper and muttered something derogatory about the guy. He’s a sick man, I thought.

Then on Saturday I saw a black woman standing on Broadway and 231st street. She was wearing powder blue shorts and a purple shirt. She had white facial hair under her nose and on her chin. She spoke with an English accent. “Would you kindly spare some change?”

I crossed the street and walked north. Sitting at the bottom of a flight of stairs was a wino I recognized from around the neighborhood. He looked like he could be fishing buddies with Thurman Munson and Dirt Tidrow.

“Hey, can you spare like $1,500?” he asked me.

I smiled and kept walking.

Joba on the hill tonight, weather permitting. Time to start another winning streak, don’t ya think?

Boxing metaphors are easy to come by when the Yanks play the Sox and I had boxing on the brain today for a couple of reasons: the writer Budd Schulberg died, and Muhammad Ali was honored before the game at Yankee Stadium.

My grandfather the head of public relations at the Anti-Defamantion League from 1946-71 (the year I was born), and helped prepare Schulberg’s statement before HUAC during the communist witch hunt after World War II–he also helped the actor John Garfield with his statement.

I remember seeing a worn copy of Schulberg’s The Disenchanted on my grandfather’s bookshelf; I think my aunt has his signed copy of Waterfront, the book that was the basis of On The Waterfront. Schulberg’s most enduring work is What Makes Sammy Run? a cynical novel about show biz.

Over at  The Sweet Science, George Kimball remembers Schulberg:

He straddled the worlds of literature and pugilism throughout his life, but unlike some of his more boastful contemporaries he was not a dilettante when it came to either. He sparred regularly with Mushy Callahan well beyond middle age. The night of the Frazier-Ali fight of the century Budd started to the arena in Muhammad Ali’s limousine, and then when the traffic got heavy, got out and walked to Madison Square Garden with Ali. A year before Jose Torres died, Budd and Betsy flew to Puerto Rico and spent several days with Jose and Ramona at their home in Ponce. Art Aragon was the best man at his wedding. And when push came to shove, he put on the gloves with both Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer and kicked both of their asses, though not, as some would now claim, on the same night.

And from an interview with Schulberg earlier this year in The Independent:

No writer has ever been closer to Muhammad Ali. Schulberg travelled in Ali’s car on the way to fights, sat in his dressing-room even after defeats, and was at the epicentre of some of the bizarre social situations the Louisville fighter liked to engineer. He was at the Hotel Concord in upstate New York when Ali was training for his third fight against Ken Norton. Schulberg was with his third wife, the actress Geraldine Brooks. “Ali,” Schulberg recalls, “asked Geraldine for an acting lesson. She improvised a scene in which he’d be provoked into anger.” After two unconvincing attempts, “She whispered in his ear, with utter conviction: ‘I hate to tell you this, but everybody here except you appears to know that your wife is having an affair with one of your sparring partners.’ I watched Ali’s eyes. Rage.”

Then, he recalls, Ali had another idea. “‘Let’s go to the middle of the hotel lobby. You turn on me and, in a loud voice, call me ‘nigger’.” Once in the foyer, crowded with Ali’s entourage, “Gerry dropped it on him. ‘You know what you are? You’re just a goddamn lying nigger.’ Schulberg recalls how Ali waited, restraining his advancing minders at the very last minute; a characteristic sense of timing that allowed his white guests, if only for a moment, to experience the emotions generated by the prospect of imminent lynching, yet live to tell the story.

The stars were out at the Stadium to see Ali and the Yanks: Bruce Willis, Paul Simon, Kate Hudson, and Hall of Famer, Eddie Murray. Ali was wearing a powder blue shirt and dark sunglasses; he slumped forward, a hulking man, surrounded by young, fit athletes and middle-aged executives. The moon was yellow and almost full. The stands were packed (49,005, the biggest crowd all year) as this was the most talked-about game to date in the new park.

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I’m getting more sensitive. Oh, I’m not as touchy as I used to be. I don’t take offense so easily, I don’t take things as personally as I once did. On the other hand, I can’t stomach violence. I don’t play Grand Theft Auto, or watch boxing, forget about UFC. I recoil when I see parents berate their kids in public.

Last month I was between 8th and 9th avenue when I looked up and saw a father walking down the block, his son, maybe 7 or 8, walking closley next to him. As I looked at them I heard the father say, “You are so f***-ing stupid, how can you be so goddman dumb?” It felt like a punch in the gut.

Last night, I read an article in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books about the Congo by the historian Adam Hochschild. I should have known that it would be a tough read but there was a story on the first page (fourth paragraph) of such unspeakable horror that I couldn’t finish the article. I skimmed the rest of it, not wanting to read anything so terrible again.

I was on the subway coming home. And I was rattled. I put the article down and tried to distract myself. I couldn’t. So I put on my headphones and scanned the i-pod for something soothing. Couldn’t find a thing. Then I happened on Some Girls, one of my favorite albums by the Rolling Stones. Listening to “Beast of Burden,” I was able to forget the savage imagery of the article for a few minutes.

I grew up on Some Girls–still one of my favorite Stones records–Emotional Rescue and Tattoo You. They may not be the Stones’ best work–Let it Bleed, Beggar’s Banquet, and Sticky Fingers are the Stones at their peak, though there have always been hardcore Stones fans who swear by Exile on Main Street (with Black and Blue as the sleeper pick of cherce)–but in some ways they are the ones that I hold most dear. The Stones were my first favorite band. As a kid, I thought Mick Jagger was a bad ass and a clown.

I remember a British friend of my mother’s laughing in those years when she heard “Emotional Rescue.”

“The Stones are making disco records now.”

Maybe the Stones were already a parody of themselves by the late Seventies, but they lived in New York City, and their records sounded good. Even if they were corny at times. “She’s so Cold,” that was my joint. I never especially loved “Beast of Burden,” but listening to it last night–and thinking about “Waiting on a Friend” at the same time–I felt reassured and calm.

Nice to know we’ve got distractions–a way to escape–from the incredible terrors, large and small, that exist in the world.

Saturday in the Park.

Inwood, that is.

Farmer’s Market.

Cherries, n everything.

And baseball.

There’s always baseball in Inwood.

And everybody loves baseball, right?

Sitting close to the action on Saturday night at Citifield (“I’m Still Calling it Shea,” read a t-shit), Emily and I were surrounded by Mets fans. We didn’t wear any colors. “We’re undercover,” my wife said to me. And so we were. I kept score (a scorecard costs five bucks; they go for twice as much in the Bronx) but had a mitt on my left hand in case a line drive came our way. No such luck.

The Yanks held a 1-0 lead into the sixth. The wife excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. (She was in the bathroom when Aaron Boone hit that dinger in ’03 and ever since I send her in when absolutely necessary.) Mark Teixeira doubled on Tim Redding’s 99th pitch of the night, and his next three pitches were hit as well: single (Alex Rodriguez), double (Robinson Cano), and home run (Jorge Posada).

AJ Burnett, meanwhile, allowed just one hit and three walks while striking out ten in seven innings of work. He mowed ’em down, as you’d expected against the Mets’ depleted line-up.

There was no blood orange sky but it was cool, pleasant night. Most of the Mets fans in our section had cleared out by the eighth inning. Em and I could have danced all night as the song goes. So we soaked it all in and went home heppy kets.

Final Score: Yanks 5, Mets 0.

A few months ago I eagerly read Adam Hochschild’s celebrated book about the early days of the Belgian Congo, King Leopold’s Ghost. It is an evocative and engaging read. I was stopped on the subway twice, exactly one week apart, by women saw me reading the book and who were compelled to tell me how much they loved it. I have my own reasons for appreciating it–my mother spent most of her childhood in the Congo–but I think I admire Hochschild’s first effort, a memoir, Half the Way Home, even more.

Hochschild’s father was an industrialist. The family fortune was copper. They were plenty rich. Hochschild’s memoir is beautiful–empathetic, not vicious. It is written in the kind of clean, direct prose that I cherish. Everything is carefully considered and focused; I was often struck by what seemed to be left out, how many choices must have been made. There is no fat, no rambling digressions. The imagery is vivid and precise.

Here is a small sample. Hochschild describes being a boy at Eagle’s Nest, the family estate in the Adirondack mountains.

Dig this:

Bed. The time seemed endless, suspended between waking and sleep, between water and sky. Sometimes a guest played the piano, and from my bed I could hear the music echoing out across the smooth surface of the lake. Occasionally, if I woke later in the evening, I could hear the splashing and laughter and voices from the dock which meant that some of the younger guests were taking a furtive late-night swim–something out of the question during the day. Those sounds, too, merged in my mind with that of the music on the water; they seemed an image of promise, of something yearned for but undefined, of the existence of some fulfillment in life that was denied me. It was as if all year I had waited to come here for the summer; all day I had held my breath waiting for some magic moment, and now I saw only its sign; the secret remained locked away.

As I drifted to sleep there came the sound of a solitary outboard motor going slowly through the lake, a boat taking a lone fisherman home at the end of the day. Perhaps he looked up as he passed, and wondered what went on in the dark-browed houses among the trees. Then the hollow cry of a loon, the loneliest of all birds. And the calls of half a dozen other birds, whose names I did not know but whose sounds I will remember until the day I die. And just as the day ended, so did the week, with Father going, and the summer, with all of us leaving Eagle Nest, and finally those summers themselves were no more; their character gradually changed, and the exact moment that happened cannot be pinpointed, any more than you can mark the exact moment you fall asleep.

I haven’t written as much about my mother as I have about my father over the years but that isn’t because I love her any less. She’s been as vital a part of my life as he ever was. When my father was lost in booze, unable to take care of his family, my mother walked the walk, and made sure we were provided for. She’s tough, man. A lady, but no pushover. She’s got her flaws like anybody else but make no doubt about it, she was very much a heroine when I was growing up.

She recently celebrated a milestone birthday and it reminded me how lucky I am to be her son.

Mom was raised in Bukavu, a small city in the eastern part of the Congo.  Her father was a mechanic and ran a garage for the local Renault dealership.  She lived there from the time she was four until she was sixteen (1948-1960).  When the Congolese Independence arrived in ’60, mom returned to Belgium where she finished high school and then went to the university, majoring in public relations.  Like many colonists, she  yearned to return to Africa, to the wide open expanses and the big sky.  Belgium was too grey, too rainy, and too small to contain her.

In the summer of 1966, a year out of college, she made that trip back.  It was a great time and her life was changed forever by time it ended seven months later in February of ’67.  My aunt Anne, a year-and-a-half younger than my mom, and their friend Michelle went too, along with three boys, Jean-Pierre, Jean-Paul, and Freddie.  The group of them were all in their early twenties.  The idea was to make it all the way to Kenya, where an old friend of my mom’s family lived.  They arranged funding for their “mass media expedition,” got sponsorship from Total, a popular gas station chain, jeans from Levis, and took off in two old army jeeps, one that was formerly used to haul cannons in the second world war.  The jeep broke down constantly and much of the trip was spent in small villages waiting for weeks for spare parts to arrive. 

Mom and her pals drove east and south, across Europe, through Turkey and Greece.  They spent a night in jail in Saudi Arabia, suspected of being Israeli spies.  After months of roughing it, they made it to Ethopia.  My father was working as a unit production manager on an ABC, National Geographic documentary.  He and his crew met my mother, Anne and Michelle in the green room of a TV station in Addis Abiba.  The old man was so taken with my mother that he courted her for months, through letters and visits and the sheer will of his personality.  

The man had good taste, that’s for sure.  He was relentless and in time, he won her over.  They were married in October of ’67. 

Here are some shots from that trip.  Check it out.

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At the Sunday market in Waterloo:

Groggy but still standing–okay, sitting–I am happy to back in the States, home with my wife and our two kittens.  I returned from a week-long visit to Belgium yesterday and with flight delays and traffic jams, it was a long day of travel.  But I had a truly wonderful trip re-connecting with my mother’s family, French-speaking Belgians, who live just outside of Brussels.  I ate frites and yes, a waffle, cheeses and chocolates, salamis and hams and wonderful bread (if only I drank beer; dag, that place is like heaven for beer drinkers). 

I learned a ton about the family history, both in Belgium and in the Congo.  I also learned to better appreciate what I have inherited from them as far as personality, taste and even talent is concerned.  My grandmother had a gift for drawing.  My aunt is a photographer and painter.  My uncle is a graphic designer.  My interested in paiting, in movies, in cooking, that all comes from them. 

My grandfather in the Congo:

Here I am in an African shop in Brussels:

I also recalled the summer vacations I spent there as a kid and noticed how much about the world has changed since.  I used to pine for my grandfather to take me to get the Herald Trib so that I could read three-day old box scores; I eagerly awaited letters from my family back home, which took more than a week to arrive.   Now, everything has changed thanks to technology.  I checked in on e-mail and the blog while I was gone, and saw my wife every day via skype, which is really a fantastic thing–and free, to boot. 

Here’s a shot of my mother and my aunt, Anne–kids in the Congo.

Still, while there is plenty of Americanization there, some cultural differences exist of course. For instance, nobody has ever heard of Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez (if they were ever to hear about Rodriguez it would be as a footnote, as Madonna’s lover).  It is a place where baseball does not matter at all, and I found that to be refreshing.  It reminded me that while I love the game, really what draws me to it more than anything else, are the stories, the characters, the language, and the way it brings people together.

I’ve been reaching out to some of my father’s old friends recently and talking to them about the old man.  Family members too.  It’s been an engaging if sometimes painful experience.   It’s not that I’ve discovered things about Pop that I didn’t necessarily know–although I do have more details than I ever did before–it’s just that so much of my childhood was filled with sadness that it isn’t an easy time to revisit.  I also realize how much of that sadness I’ve chosen to leave behind.

In the course of learning more about my dad I’ve spoken to my mom and also reviewed her story and her family’s history.  Mom was born in Belgium but moved to Zaire in 1948 when she was four years old.  She lived in the Congo until 1960 when she and her mother and her sister fled back to Europe as the revolution broke out.  She was picked up at school one day and brought directly to the airport.  Didn’t get to say goodbye to her friends or her pets, didn’t get to take any of her things.  Poof, they were gone.

My grandfather, a mechanic who co-operated a Renault dealership in the Congo, remained for a few years trying to salvage his business.  He also helped preists and missionaries escape.  He loved living in Africa and later returned in the Seventies for another ten years.  The Congo was really my mother’s childhood home.  And it no longer exists as she knew it.   She never returned.

Mom finished high school and went to college in Belgium, then met my father and came to the States by the time she was 23.  So Belgium was never as much a home.  Still, her brother and sister live there, along with lots of cousins and aunts and uncles.

I haven’t been to Brussels since my grandfather died, fifteen years ago next month.  I remember four priests who he had helped escape from the Congo were present to pay their respects.   This is the longest stretch I’ve ever had not visiting.  My siblings and I took turns during the summers when we were growing up.  Turns out my grandfather’s younger brother is still alive.  At 87, he’s still lucid and alert.  I said to my mother recently, “Well, someone has to interview him and get the stories.”

One thing led to another, I saw that flights are cheap, so hell, I’m off to Belgium on Thursday night for a week to visit my family, and learn more about their lives and their history.  My mother has complicated feelings about her childhood and has never been comfortable talking about the political nature of being a Colonist (and Belgium, like so many European countries, had an undeniable history of brutality in Africa). Ever hear of Heart of Darkness?

So, I’m curious. To see how things have changed since I was there last. To hear what my aunt and uncles’ experiences were, to see old photo albums and 8 mm movies from my mother’s childhood.

I won’t be gone long, and who knows, maybe I’ll even blog from overseas. In the meantime, Cliff and Diane, Will and Bruce will hold the fort down over here.  Oh, and I’ll have some frites and think about y’all.

For most of us, death will not announce itself with a blare of trumpets or a roar of cannons.  It will come silently, on the soft paws of a cat.  It will insinuate itself, rubbing against our ankle in the midst of an ordinary moment.  An uneventful dinner.  A drive home from work.  A sofa pushed across a floor.  A slight bend to retrieve a morning newspaper tossed into a bush.  And then, a faint cry, an exhale of breath, a muffled slump.

Pat Jordan, “A Ridiculous Will”

My father died on this day two years ago.  He was at home with his wife.  They were getting ready to watch their favorite TV show.  He had just eaten his favorite pasta dish.  He slumped over in his chair and that was it.  He officially lasted until the next day but really that was when he left us.

I always imagined that he would have a dramatic death.  He was a big-hearted and volatile man.  He was unafraid to get into it with, well, virtually anyone.  I saw him kick the hub cap off a moving vehicle that had cut us off on West End Avenue and 79ths street, and was with him when he pulled a vandal out of a parked car.  I thought he’d die in a pool of blood.  I worried about it constantly.  But he left quietly.

I think about him less now.  Of course, I still think about him but I am not consumed with it as I was for the first year after he died, when his absence was acute.  Almost every block in the city, certainly on the Upper West Side where he lived, holds a memory, some happy, others not so much, of the old man.  I miss his stories, I miss asking him questions about the theater and the Dodgers and Damon Runyon.

But I don’t miss how tough he was on me, or the fact that even as an adult, I felt anxious around him.  I don’t miss how competitive he was with me, and I don’t miss worrying about his financial state.  When he was alive, I don’t think there was a time when I wasn’t afraid of him, even if it was on a subtle or subconscious level. 

I feel relief now that he’s not around. I loved him very much and the feeling was mutual.   He was proud of me, he was proud all of his kids, as well as his neices and nephews.   He and I buried the hachet long before he died and I tried my best to accept and love him for who he was not what I wanted or needed him to be when I was a kid.  Like most parents, he did the best that he could.

But I don’t compare myself to him these days.  I am my own man. I remember his warmth and compassion, his laugh and his righteous indignation, and that for all his flaws he was a good man.  I’m proud to be his son.

My wife Emily and I painted our apartment a few months back.  When we got to the bedroom, we chose a pale green.  “Green is a tricky color,” my mother said, and sure enough when we stared slapping it on the walls, we realized we had made a mistake. 

Lesson: Never buy a color called “Impetuous.”  So we tried another shade of green, which we liked…until the sun went down and our room turned into something out of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. 

Wait til we put the pictures back, then it will look better.  Emily gave in.  The thought of re-painting was worse than living in a Fun House.  And eventually, with the pictures back on the wall, it did start to feel like home. 

The new site here doesn’t feel like home yet.  It has that new car vibe.  The technology is new, there are two new contributors, and a bunch of issues to address–the archives, the comment section, the links.  It has been overwhelming.  Exciting, but strange and new. 

I’m amped about where we are headed.  I just wanted to let you know, that I empathize with some of your reactions to the change and appreciate all of the feedback you’ve provided.  It’s going to take a minute, and things will continue to be tweaked over the next couple of months, but we’re working on it, and you aren’t alone in getting used to the new digs. 

Thanks for coming back.

For most of us, death will not announce itself with a blare of trumpets or a roar of cannons. It will come silently, on the soft paws of a cat. It will insinuate itself, rubbing against our ankle in the midst of an ordinary moment. An uneventful dinner. A drive hom from work. A sofa pushed across a floor. A slight bend to retrieve a morning newspaper tossed into a bush. And then, a faint cry, an exhale of breath, a muffled slump." *
A Ridiculous Will —Pat Jordan

The summer is almost over: The last days of Yankee Stadium are upon us. Over the weekend, my neighborhood was crowded with kids returning to Manhattan College. A few days ago I went to Brooklyn to get my haircut. I hadn’t been in a few months and was starting to look downright shaggy. When I walked into the shop, early in the morning, the owner Ray was sitting in his chair. I noticed the place looked bigger and asked where my barber, Efrain was.

"He’s gone," said Ray.

As in retired, not dead. Up and left three weeks ago. Moved to Florida with his wife. Didn’t tell any of his few remaining clients. He only gave Ray a few days notice. 

"His legs have been hurting him," said Ray.

I felt stunned although not surprised. I had been waiting for the day that I walked into the shop to discover that Efrain was gone–retired or dead–for some time now. I sat in Ray’s chair and listened to him as he cut my hair. But I didn’t really hear him. I could only think back on Efrain.

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