A New Day for City Ballet

A new leadership team was announced today for the New York City Ballet. This might not seem like big news but, in a way, it is.

Since its founding almost 70 years ago, this important NYC cultural institution has only had two leaders --  George Balanchine and Peter Martins. Balanchine was not only the founder but also a brilliant, historic choreographer, the man who popularized ballet in NYC and America. It's not wrong to call him, in many ways, the godfather of American ballet. Martins, his successor, ran the company with an iron-fist for almost 35 years. He kept the company going but was, apparently, a bit of a tyrant, and he retired in late 2017 after he got all #MeToo'd. 

I've blogged about my experiences with NYCB as a kid so, obviously, I took some interest in this story. It'll be interesting to see what the future for this company will be like.

The Virus of NYC

Yesterday former Trump lawyer turned government witness Michael Cohen gave riveting testimony to Congress about his "dirty deeds" for Donald Turmp, the NYC real estate developer turned reality TV star turned POTUS. There was lots of shouting, grandstanding, bloviating, about Russian collusion, hush money payments, racism, etc. -- it was political theater par excellence, and mostly just rehashing of what's in the news.

Perhaps the most interesting, and most overlooked part, of Cohen's testimony was about something that hasn't been raised before -- specifically, insurance fraud as it relates to one of Trump's golf courses in the Bronx. This line of questioning came from AOC who lives in and represents the part of the Bronx where this golf course resides.

These revelations show how deep into the weeds of sleaze and corruption Trump and his cronies are and, more importantly, how Trump is like a virus, not only on America, but how he has always been one in NYC.

By the way, did you know that Michael Cohen once ran for the City Council back in 2003? Imagine how different the history of this country would be if he had won!

Why Jumaane Won

Here's a quick rundown, some lessons learned, from the special election for Public Advocate:

1. Strong candidates like Jumaane can win votes across neighborhoods and boroughs. Voters are not necessarily loyal to candidates from their districts or boroughs -- they vote for whoever they think is the best candidate, even in a field of 17. Candidates matter. 

2. Oddly timed special elections = extremely low voter turnout. Not surprising. 

3. For the all the heat and controversy, the failed Amazon deal played no part in the outcome. Voters did not revolt, did not rise up en masse in favor of corporate tax breaks/backroom deals/union-busting -- and thus Ulrich, the only candidate who supported the deal without reserve, lost big. Media hysteria doesn't necessarily translate into votes. People vote their core, unwavering values. 

4. The New York Times endorsement is still hella powerful.

5. This is a 4-1 Democratic town.

Jumaane Williams Elected Public Advocate

Special Election Today for Public Advocate

In case you didn't read the headline, today is the special election for NYC Public Advocate -- the first such special election since 1950.

What does the PA do? Basically, he or she is the city's ombus-person, the watchdog, the person who keeps the machinery of city government honest and running as it should. It doesn't have a lot of formal power but a smart PA can make a difference.

If you need more info about where to vote, go to the BOE website.

The failed Amazon deal might play some part in who wins -- or doesn't -- this election. Some think it will, some think it won't. Whoever wins will probably win with a plurality of the vote, not a majority, since there are 17 candidates -- and, whoever wins, will have to run again in the fall and might wind up not being PA for long. 

My vote is for Jumaane Williams, the Brooklyn City Councilman. He has appeared to amass the most support and could prevent a Republican from winning. So please vote for him!

Farewell to WPLJ

As a kid in NYC in the 1980s, when I was discovering music, I only listened to one station: WPLJ. It was, for me, the best music station in town, playing pop and rock -- all the hits! -- plus it was the home of "American Top 40" which I loved listening to every Saturday morning. 

Songs like Madonna's "Cherish" or the Back to the Future hit "Power of Love" are, for me, the quintessential '80s songs that I associate with WPLJ. Then, in the summer of 1994, I actually interned at PLJ, spending weekends handing out stickers and shwag at promotion events, answering phones in the promotions department, and even logging the occasional "Rocky Allen Showgram." It was a fun experience.

Honestly, by the mid-1990s, by the time I interned at PLJ, my tastes had evolved to classic rock and I was more of a K-Rock listener, but I maintained a soft spot for the station of my youth and that let me intern.

By the time I went to college -- and certainly after I returned -- I basically stopped listening to music radio, especially when the IPod came into existence. I had no idea what was going on with WPLJ nor did I care. But the station felt like an institution -- it had been, and would always be, around forever. 

However, apparently, WPLJ was just sold to a Christian rock company and is, apparently, going to lose its call numbers. Now I'm sad. Really sad. Yet another part of my youth is gone. And yet another great NYC stations is vanishing, along with the likes of WNEW and WNBC and K-ROCK and others. And it's going to become Christian rock? Yewwww ...

So farewell WPLJ. And, to quote a song that was played constantly on that station, "I-ye-eye will always love youuuuuu ..." And, most of all, remember you.

P.S. I think one of PLJ's problems is that, let's be honest, it had a lousy name and lousy call letters. WPLJ means nothing. It's not like K-ROCK to Z-100 -- those had "zing", they had "edge." WPLJ has ... WPLJ. Boring. 

Easily the best call letters I ever heard about was for a rock station in California -- KOME (west of the Mississippi river, all the station call letters start with "K"). KOME, as you might guess, were awesome call letters and the station had a lot of fun with them. The station called itself the "KOME spot for great music", "You've got KOME oozing out of your radio", "Wake up with KOME in your ear", and "Don't touch that dial! It's got KOME on it." Brilliant.

Hooray for Gritty NYC in Hollywood

The Oscars were last night and two prominent NYC natives won big awards -- Manhattan's own Lady Gaga for her song from A Star is Born and Brooklynite Spike Lee for his screenplay for BlackkKlansman.

Always nice to see Gotham make its gritty presence known at the ultimate West Coast confab.

New Yorkers, in fact, have a long history of migrating to -- and ultimately conquering -- Hollywood. My favorite movie in this genre is the 1991 Coen Brothers' classic Barton Fink. Inspired by the life of Clifford Odets, it's about a socialist playwright moving to Hollywood and entering a hallucinatory nightmare in his hotel room. The best part of the movie is, early on, when Barton meets with the eccentric head of the studio that's just hired him. He declares, "I mean I'm from New York myself, well, Minsk, if you want to go all the way back." Brilliant line. 

One hotel that many New York travellers Hollywood stayed back in the day was the Garden of Allah where folks like Humphrey Bogart and Robert Benchley lived and partied. It's long gone but had a storied history, and New Yorkers found a little bit of gritty bohemia in La La Land.

And talking about grity and NYC and the movies, there's perhaps no NYC movie grittier than the 1979 cult classic The Warriors. A violent, crazy dystopian nightmare of NYC in the 1970s, it's now 40 years old and seems like a it was made less in a different time than on another planet. This chronicle about the making of the movie is fascinating to read. 

Hollywood would be boring if it didn't have a little bit of NYC grit. 

The British Monarchy & NYC

Like many people, I have an unhealthy amount of totally irrational interest in the British monarchy.

I love the PBS show Victoria, I'm almost as excited for the third season of The Crown as I am for the final season of Game of Thrones, the wife and I actually watched both royal weddings (in 2011 and 2018), I just watched the two-part documentary on Princess Margaret, I read all the click bait about the royals that I can. 

Basically, when it comes to the monarchy, Mr NYC is like an old bored housewife.

Pourquoi?

Well, I guess it's because the monarchy has "all the elements": politics, money, fame, glamour, celebrity, and history. The most amazing thing about the British monarchy, both in the UK and around the world, is how it's a chain that wraps around time -- it links to the past, present, and future. It's living history, it looks back and moves forward at once. There's nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world.

In a world of rapid change, the British monarchy basically doesn't change -- it's a perverse anchor of stability. Yet it does "refresh" itself -- marriages and babies bring new faces, new personalities, redefining and modernizing this very old institution.

Such is the case of Meghan Markle, the half-black American divorcee who married Prince Harry last year. She is the latest fresh face, the latest reset of the British monarchy, and she's also pregnant -- bringing a literal new face into the world.

The princess (or Dutchess as she's technically known) was in NYC this week for a baby shower. I'll let others say what they will about it. But she's basically getting good press, people are happy to see her here. She's getting better press than the old Edward and Mrs Simpson, the notorious ex-King and his American wife who used to blow into NYC every year, live it up in high-style at the Waldorf Astoria, and then get out of town without, apparently, not paying their bills. (Royals, apparently, can be deadbeats.) 

I think we can thus conclude: NYC, and the world, will be fascinated with the British monarchy and the British monarchy will always enjoy visiting NYC.

Lee Radziwill RIP: American Royalty

We don't have royalty in America -- after all, our entire nation, our constitution, was founded in complete opposition to monarchy, and we are the first real and most successful modern republic since Rome.

But still, there are some people who, if we had a monarchy, would certainly qualify as royalty.

No one defined American royalty more than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Gorgeous, glamorous, patron of the arts and good causes, she was the First Lady of the United States, wife of the handsome, doomed President John Kennedy, a woman who knew great joy and tragedy in her life. After JFK's death, she moved to New York, married again (badly), and then, towards the end of her life, worked for a living as a book editor. She lived, she loved, she reached the heights of glamorous, money, and power, and she worked -- Jackie Kennedy was certainly "royal" in many ways but she was as American as a person can get.

Her sister Lee Radziwill almost did her one better -- she actually married into royalty and, like her sister Jackie, was a patron of good causes, the arts, and NYC. She was a pillar of society, a grande dame of NYC, and, now that she has died, the last of her kind -- the final connection to Camelot. 

Also, she and Jackie were cousins with the Beales, the wacky old lady and her daughter featured in the brilliant documentary Grey Gardens.

Did Robert Moses Destroy the Amazon (Campus)?

The real culprit, according to those in the know, for the failure of Amazon to build a new campus in NYC, is someone who has been dead for almost 40 years -- that's right, our friend, our buddy, our pal, Robert Moses.

Why?

Well, from the 1920s until the 1960s, the "master builder" rammed highways around the city and state, and built other projects in a totally irresponsible manner, wrecking neighborhoods and disposessing their residents. In the name of "progress", he warped this city to his car-centric, anti-poor priorities, underfunding public transit in the process, and basically ignoring the concerns of the communities he affected. Remember, this is the guy who wanted to destroy Soho and Greenwich Village by putting a highway through it -- that was stopped by Jane Jacobs, and NYC vowed never to let something so awful ever possibly happen again. 

By the time he left power in 1968, NYC was suffering a Robert Moses PTSD and new laws were enacted, including the little-known but extremely powerful public utilities committee, to prevent another Moses from building things in this city it didn't want, didn't need, and that would change it forever -- for the worse.

The result, today, is that it's practically impossible to build anything big in NYC as mayors and governors have learned to rue. It took 45 years to build three subway stops on the East Side, after all! You might call this an "overcorrection". 

So whether you were for or against the Amazon deal, this situation proves that NYC today is living in Robert Moses legacy -- in the city he shaped and in the reaction to that -- and his form of progress from yesterday makes progress today all the harder.

The Real (or Not) Things

So Amazon won't open a campus in Long Island City after all -- on this Valentine's Day, it's chosen the withdrawal method (sorry, couldn't resist).

Basically, since it refused to work with the community it was preparing to dominate, since it demanded $3 billion in tax breaks that some people thought might just be a give-away, since people DARED to ask questions about what this deal might do to NYC, since people wanted it to unionize, Amazon chose to back out and take its 25,000 jobs with them. 

I have mixed feelings about this -- I liked the idea of thousands of more jobs, obviously, but not the tax breaks and gentrification. We'll never know now if this was really going to be the economic engine it was promised -- but rarely do these kind of projects (like big stadiums) really trickle-down to the people in terms of more tax revenue.

So long Amazon -- it was never real.

Also, in the wake of AOC's shocking victory in her Congressional primary last year, a number of New York Congresspeople are facing potential primary challenges next year. They believe she represents the start of a movement that will capsize the political establishment and usher in a new class of younger, more progressive leaders.

Maybe. But probably not. 

In very few cases, incumbents almost always win. AOC was the exception because: 1) she was and is an amazing, raw, totally natural political talent the likes of which I haven't seen in NYC in a long time, and, let's be honest, most of these challengers, like most politicians, probably don't have that level of talent; 2) outsider that she was, AOC ran a very smart, coordinated, professional campaign, she was no amateur -- and many challenger campaigns are underfunded and amateurish; 3) the incumbent that AOC beat, Joe Crowley, had fallen out of favor in the district since everyone knows he basically lives in Maryland; and 4) the demographics and the political environment were on AOC's side -- she is a Hispanic and the district had become overwhelmingly non-white and Joe Crowley was, with all due respect, a white guy.

Numerous factors added up to help AOC win that were sui generis to her, the incumbent she beat, and the district and these factors were unlikely to be duplicated elsewhere. 

I remember back in the mid-1990s when Quentin Tarantino burst onto the movie scene -- suddenly, a whole generation of aspiring filmmakers wanted to write and direct movies just like his. There was a whole slew of Tarantino wrip-off movies that followed -- and they sucked, and they failed, and the people who made them went nowhere professionally. 

The same, I'm guessing, will be true here -- AOC is the Tarantino of politics, a brilliant and unique talent with amazing success, and a whole generation of young politicians wants to do what she did, wants to be her, and they just aren't, and they can't, and they won't be. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery -- but imitation is not and never will be the real thing. 

Note to Readers

This blog is signed up to Google Ads so I have no control over the ads that pop up here. Most of them are for products, services, and institutions I have no problem with.

However, some of the ads are for Ashley Madison, the notorious website that facilitates adultery.  I don't know why. 

Please let me make something 100% clear: I don't endorse AM. Not that I'm against "open relationships", polyamory, swinging, etc. I ain't no prude and I know a lot of people who enjoy the libertine lifestyle and, so long as it's all consensual and nobody gets hurt, have it at it! But, you know, AM is all about cheating and deception and I just can't get behind that. 

Just wanted to make that clear -- for da' record. 

Sad Day in Queens

Classic Mr NYC

Recently I re-watched the Coen Brothers' great 2013 movie Inside Llewyn Davis. Oh, how I love this flick!

My original post was an examination of why this is a great NYC movie. (It still is, by the way.) But what I didn't fully appreciate at the time was and is how radical, how subversive, how daring this movie is; how it completely shatters all conventions and norms of storytelling -- it does all the things you're not supposed to do in a movie, it thumbs its nose at "the rules" of a conventional plot and character development, but it does it so seamlessly, so straightforwardly, that you don't notice.

In short, Inside Llewyn Davis is about a folk singer whose career is going nowhere fast. In fact, this is a story about failure. That's it. It's not a tragedy -- Llewyn doesn't die, doesn't go to jail, doesn't lose everything (because he has almost nothing to begin with), doesn't gain the world only to lose his soul, etc. etc., cliche, cliche. No. It's just about a guy who tries and fails, who attempts to succeed and doesn't. He's an honest failure but a failure nonetheless. He doesn't go anywhere, his future is empty. The end.

Why? Because he's a bad guy? Not really. He's not a great guy (he bangs other guy's wives and has a temper problem) but, when he does wrong, he tries to make it right. So he's flawed but not irredeemable. Is he untalented? Not at all, in fact, he's a beautiful singer -- but he's not GREAT. His fate is sealed not because he does anything wrong but because, as he's told by a music producer at one point, there's just not "a lot of money here."

This is one of the only movies, only stories, I've seen that's about how and why people fail. About how random and how unpredictable failure and success is -- and how failure happens just because you fall a little short. We see this in elections all the time -- a few votes short here and there, and dreams of a political career, of public service, are dashed (often permanently so). Score just a little bit below the "mean" or whatever it is on a standardized test, and forget about getting into college or grad school, with all the career implications that implies. This movie shows how careers and lives are forever altered -- often shattered -- just because the powers that be, the umpires of life, the "means", the beancounters, the scorekeepers, the gatekeepers to the future, find you wanting and ... slam the gate. 

This doesn't happen because you're a bad person or a good person. It happens just because something, like money or a few votes or a few points or something, "isn't here."

I've been there. You've been there. We've all been there. And where are our movies? Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the precious few.

And does Llewyn learn anything from his failure? Does he grow as a person? Does he, as the storytelling Gods tell us he's supposed to, "arc." No! Why would he? It's not his character flaws that lead to his failure. His failure happens ... just because ...

You should read this article from a few years ago that brillantly sums up this movie and its message -- or lack thereof -- about failure. 

At the very end of the movie, Llewyn plays his final set at a nightclub and then walks off and the next act is a guy named Bob Dylan. Llewyn goes into an alley and gets beaten up. And this is the point -- one will go onto make music history and win the Nobel Prize while the other ... well, we don't know what happens to him in the long run. We check out on Llewyn at this point. After all, he's a failure, he has no future, he's destined to be forgotten, so we take our leave. 

This is what failure, ultimately, is -- nothing. A void. A blank page. An empty space. A non-memory. Nada zilch zero. 

And that's why this is probably the best movie about failure ever made.

Review: "Russian Doll" on Netflix

Russian Doll is about drugs.

Okay, it's not totally about drugs, but it's somewhat about drugs, and I really wanted to write "Russian Doll is about drugs" so I did. Okay, so that's out of the way now.

Actually, Russian Doll is about a woman who, while supposedly celebrating her 36th birthday, keeps dying in bizarre ways and then keeps reliving the same day over-and-over Groundhog Day style. Frustrated by this eternal recurrence, she ventures to figure out why -- dying again and again in the process -- eventually meeting a mysterious man condemned to the same fate. (And sometimes she does drugs.) 

I'm about half-way through this 8-part series and greatly enjoying it -- it's very funny, and I have no idea where it's going. That's a good thing -- it's completely unpredictable, very original storytelling. Natasha Lyonne plays the lead, and she's great -- fast-talking, wise-cracking, kind when she wants to be, tough when she needs to be, smart as hell, sexy in a dirty kind of way, no nonsense, unfiltered in her opinions, the ultimate NYC broad. The fact that she keeps dying is her only vulnerability. This is Lyonne's show in every way (she co-created it), and she's extremely watchable in every way.  

Obviously, Russian Doll set in NYC -- specifically the East Village, and the show rarely strays from the neighborhood. The show is a murder mystery, social satire, magical realist comedy/horror mash up and, something that is very hard to be these days, a great NYC show. 

Russian Doll is a great ride (especially, at one point, in an elevator but I won't give anything away).

Sesame Street @ 50

The world changes constantly but Sesame Street endures -- the legendary kid's show turned fifty this year and shows no signs of disappearing.

Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Bert & Ernie, Grover, Elmo, and so many others are still going strong. 

Apparently the show almost did go off the air but HBO and various business decisions saved it. Thank God!

Like everyone my age (even older), and certainly younger, I grew up watching Sesame Street. It helped me learn letters, numbers, and instilled in me a love of learning. No, the show didn't educate me, it didn't raise me, but it remains a happy memory from my childhood, and enriched me as it has so many others.

Now I have kids of my own, and they love Sesame Street too (well, my oldest says she's too old for it now but my youngest still loves it -- she calls it "Sessee"). 

Did you know Sesame Street has won more Emmys than any other show in history? Did you know there will soon be an actualy Sesame Street in NYC?

As a kid, I actually thought there was a real Sesame Street, and took the theme song -- "Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?" -- literally. Now there will be!

Happy birthday, Sesame Street! Here's the first episode from 1969: 

Cuomo's MTA Plan

The NYC Special Election of 1950

Last night there was a lively debate for the Public Advocate special election on February 26th. As previously noted, this is the first city-wide special election since 1950, when Acting Mayor Vincent Impelliteri was elected to complete the term of recently-resigned Mayor William O'Dwyer.

This upcoming special election was triggered when former Public Advocate Tish James was elected as New York State Attorney General last November and subsequently vacated the office. She ran for AG after former NY AG Eric Schneiderman resigned in a scandale.

Not surprisingly, scandale is what triggered the last city-wide special election in 1950. O'Dwyer was under heat for his connections to organized crime so he accepted President Truman's offer to become Ambassador to Mexico and promptly resigned in the summer of that year. City Council President Impelliteri became Acting Mayor and then ran in the special election.

This was at a time when Tammany Hall still exerted a lot of power over NYC politics and, for whatever reason, Tammany and Impelliteri had had a falling out -- so Tammany didn't support him for mayor. So Impelliteri, or Impy as he was popularly known, quickly created and ran on his own party line -- the Experience Party -- and won.

His victory would be short-lived. In 1950, the New York State government was completely controlled by Republicans, under the leadership of Governor Tom Dewey, and they did everything they could to thwart Impy's initiatives to govern the city (it's the opposite today, where the Democrats completely control the New York State government). Robert Moses was another powerful presence, heading various state and city agencies that turned Moses' policy preferences (i.e. building highways) into the mayor's. So Impy was boxed in -- and, in 1953, Tammany got its revenge when it supported Robert Wagner in the 1953 primary and Impy lost.

NYC would then not have another city-wide special election until now -- for almost 69 years. And whoever wins this race for Public Advocate will be in a powerful position to run for mayor either in 2021 or later on. 

Travis Buys a Gun

Learn more about this classic scene, and others, in Martin Scorsese's 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver. 

Where have you gone, Bloodgood Cutter?

Part of what makes NYC so great (besides, you know, everything) is that this is a city full of "characters" -- real life people who almost seem to have sprung from fiction. Teddy Roosevelt,  Jimmy Breslin, Woody Allen, Howard Stern, Ed Koch, John Gotti, Al Goldstein -- these are just some of the past and present "characters" who have defined the NYC sensibility (for better or worse).

But none of them were named Bloodgood Cutter -- and, if his name wasn't enough, he was a New York City character both in real life and fiction.   

Born in 1817, Bloodgood was something unimaginable in NYC today -- a "poet farmer". He came from a family of farmers on Long Island and eventually cultivated farmland in what today is Little Neck, the easternmost part of Queens. Very religious, he spent a lot of time in Queens, particularly in Flushing, where he would preach about living a virtuous life. And he loved poetry -- particularly his own -- and even self-published his own, apparently very bad, 500 page book of poems called "The Long Island Farmer's Poems." He was also ahead of his time -- apparently, he was very against smoking long before it was fashionable.

I'm sure if he was alive today, Bloodgood would have a lively social media presence.

But Bloodgood did have a "rendezvous with destiny" -- in 1876, he took a trip to the Middle East and one of his shipmates was a certain well-known writer named Mark Twain. The scribe of Huckleberry Finn became quite fond of Mr. Cutter and decided to base a character on him in his subsequent novel Innocents Abroad. And so the eccentric farmer-poet from Queens was enshrined in history.

Talking about being enshrined, Bloodgood Cutter's grave is quite a site to behold -- buried in Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, it's a fitting resting place for an NYC character in NYC.



By the way, talking about New York characters, there's currently a new documentary about the two great NYC reporters Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill now on HBO called "Deadline Artists."

Impressionist NYC

Some might call these blurry, but I call them "impressionist", views of NYC from the BQE on Saturday night.