Classic Mr NYC

Last year I blogged about a Broadway show that failed -- in fact, it never debuted in the first place. It was a musical about the early years of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates that was weeks away from premiering until the money vanished and the show was cancelled. It made me think about "the delusion of art", about how artists are people who have odd, purely inspirational, delusional ideas to create something (a painting, a statue, an instillation, a movie, a book, a musical, a play, anything) and are also delusional enough to think that anyone will care about it or want to work on it or finance it or finally go to see it when it's completed and put on display.

Works of art can enshrine their creators into history, give them legacies that long outlast their lives, become part of the public consciousness and culture -- or they can fail, disapear, their creators efforts all for nought, sometimes even leading them to ruin.

I just read another story about a show that had been in the works for many years and almost made it to Broadway -- until its star created all sorts of trouble, leading to its closure off-Broadway, any hopes of big money and Tonys shot. It's a depressing story, reminding you of the perils, but how people pursue it because they love it, delusional, for better or worse, forever. 

La Vie Boheme Forever

I've blogged about the concept of "bohemia" before, a gathering or community of unconventional people, ususally artists, who live and support and love one another.

When the musical Rent came out in 1996, it glamorized and popularized the concept of NYC (especially the Lower East Side) as a great bohemian landscape, a place where people could congregate and let their various freak flags fly. Of course, the musical, set in the early 1990s, was about how bohemia was also being pushed out of NYC by the forces of money and gentrification, the coldly impersonal disrupting the highly personal.

But just like NYC is not just a city but a state of mind (hence this blog) bohemia exists in the imagination as much as in concrete and steel, and the flesh and bones of its denizens. Even as  bohemia has been shoved out and marginalized in modern NYC, its has and will always exist in the minds and souls of those who consider themselves unconventional, artistic, different, weird, outlandish, etc. etc. etc. As this article from 1992 demonstrates, bohemia exists within anyone who considers himself or herself a bohemian.

Bohemia is everywhere and will live forever.

La vie boheme is more like la boheme vivra pour toujours (although that's obviously a bit of a mouthful for a song title or refrain).

Review: "Angel Heart" (1987)

Here's another flick in the cannon of movies about New Yorkers who find themselves far from home, getting into all kinds of silliness.

Angel Heart stars Mickey Rourke at the height of his short-lived 1980s stardom as well as Robert De Niro in a supporting role. Rourke is a guy named Harry Angel, an NYC detective in 1955, who is hired by De Niro's character Louis Cyphre to find a deadbeat singer named Johnny Favorite. Angel locates Favorite in a mental institution upstate, only to find that he left more than a decade ago, the records of his residency at the institution cooked by a drug-addled, corrupt doctor. Angel discovers that Favorite made his way to New Orleans so Angel follows him there -- and then is dragged into a labyrinth of murder, the occult, and gumbo, plot twists abounding.

When this movie came out there was a lot of controversy. Just before its release in March of 1987, the MPAA forced the director to cut time out of some of its nastier scenes. But most of the controversy came from the casting of a young Lisa Bonet as a young New Orleans woman who holds clues to the mystery of the plot -- and has a really wild love scene with Rourke. At the time Bonet was on The Cosby Show, playing a wholesome character on a wholesome family show watched by over 30 million people per week (obviously Mr. Cosby himself wasn't that wholesome but that's another story). Anyway, Cosby and many of the squares were critical of Bonet appearing in this film, and a lot of critics just hated it. But Angel Heart has earned its place as the kind of sexy, rough, sensational movie for grown ups that we just don't see much of anymore.

The movie is worth seeing, however, for the great acting by Rourke, De Niro, Bonet, and the always luminous Charlotte Rampling. It's a movie with a lot of atmosphere, a lot of exotic mystique, worth seeing if you're in the mood for something "out there."

Tammany Hall Lives!

As election day draws near, and a record number of New Yorkers turn out to vote early, much attention has been drawn to the operations of the NYC Board of Elections.

And it ain't good attention.

This brutal article examines how the BOE is a legacy, a relic, a complete vestige of the old Tammany Hall patronage system. It is not, and never has been, staffed by election professionals or even people who could get regular jobs either in government or the private sector. The people who run and work at the BOE are friends and relatives of a various elected officials, total amateurs, cronyism in its purest form -- people who don't even rise to the level of hacks.

The incompetence, the mistakes, the unforced errors, the dissaray of the BOE has a been an embarrassment to NYC for a long time. Sadly, it doesn't seem like reform will ever happen because the people in charge of reforming it -- i.e. elected officials -- are the very same people who have benefited from the BOE being this asleep-at-the-wheel mess. 

No matter who wins in November, the BOE will probably continue its not-at-all funny comedy of errors.

The Wallpaper of NYC

 

Remembering Brilliant Food Emporium & D'Agostinos Supermarket Commercials

Imagine a powerful ballad, requiring a singer of great vocal power, a wall of sound with violins swelling in the background, a full musical blast of profundity -- and imagine it's about groceries. Living in NYC in the late 20th century, you couldn't get away from it -- the Food Emporium supermarket "jingle" that was so much more than just a jingle. It was a statement. It was belief system. It was an identity. It moved your soul and gave you chills. It began with the great lyrics, "Someone made a store just for MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Someone has my kind of QUALITEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" Yes, this supermarket didn't just sell you milk and produce and and canned food, etc. -- it understood you, it cared about you, it took you into its warm embrace and loved you. These commercials saturated the NYC airwaves back in the day, and Food Emporiums were all over town. Before Whole Foods, before Trader Joes, Food Emporium was the classy, yuppie shopping joint for New Yorkers -- and its jingle emphasized this fact with relish (which you could also, presumably, buy at Food Emporium). 

Then there was D'Agostinos. This was another sorta high-end grocery store ubiquitous around NYC back in the day. It also had memorable commercials but they didn't use emotion or appeals to one's higher nature -- they used sex. (D'Agostino's even went a little further in branding itself -- besides its commercials, D'Agastino was famous for its shopping bags called "D'Ag Bags.") But back to the sex: each commercial was about how much people loved D'Agastinos, how people couldn't get enough of D'Agastinos, how D'Agastinos gave its customers so much pleasure. And then the commercials would end with some sultry-sounding dame chanting, "Please, Mr. D'Agostino, move closer to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ..." That Mr. D'Agastino was quite the player! I guess the purpose of these commercials was to make its customers believe that shopping there would get them laid -- or at least get Mr. D'Agastino laid, it was rather confusing. 

As you note, both supermarket chains emphazed ME in their commercials -- me, in this case, being you or us.

Food Emporium and D'Agastinos are still around NYC but are much diminished. No longer mighty and sprawling chains of stores, they are pockmocked around the five boroughs, here and there. I haven't seen or heard any commercials for them recently but I'll always remember these great jingle, these great appeals to our emotions and loins, to get us to pony up for grub.

 

Gotta Love New Yorkers

On this day of Our Lord October 24, 2020 A.D. early voting began in NYC.

The polls opened at 10 AM and yours truly headed to the designated early polling site around 12:30 PM. The line was longggggggggggggggggg, massive, stretching out for blocks, and my total wait time was close to an hour-and-a-half. 

Needless to say, it was worth it -- even though my paper ballot jammed when I inserted it, one of the poll workers shouting "Dat's duh fourth time dat's happened!" (Lucky me.) Fortunately the machine indicated that my vote was counted so my exercise of democracy was validated. 

But what really impressed me was how well-behaved, how orderly, how drama-free, the whole experience was. No right-wing militia "poll watchers" blocked anyone's path. No one made noise or started fights or got into arguments or prevented anyone from voting. No one made trouble. No one cut the line. The horror shows you see about early voting in other parts of the country have not visited us. It was a just a bunch of solid citizens, salt-of-the-earth New Yorkers, doing the right thing with aplomb.

And everyone wore a mask.  

Beautiful to behold. We New Yorkers do, indeed, rawk. 

If you want more info about voting and early voting in NYC, go here.

Mr NYC in France, Holland & England

Memory is tricky. Some things we remember as clearly as a blue cloudless sky. Other things we remember only faintly or not at all. It doesn't matter how long ago or recently these events were -- we remember what we want to, for whatever reason, no matter how long ago. 

I think the memories that fade are those that can't be easily catagorized as "good" or "bad." We remember our traumas and our triumphs but rarely the things in between. 

As our movements in the outside world have been limited by the pandemic, as I've clocked more time at home than ever before, I've spent a lot of time thinking about trips I've taken in the past. Most of them I've blogged about here already but then, quite recently, my memory was jogged about a trip I had taken the summer befor my freshman year of high school. It was a five week student trip to France, Holland and England. For whatever reasons, I honestly hadn't thought about or remembered even going on this trip for years and years and years.

Until now.

I guess I didn't really remember this trip because I didn't like most of the other kids on this trip and there was lots of teenage nonesense (who wants to remember that?). And yet, as I thought about the trip again recently, I realized I didn't remember any of the other kids on it -- but I remember what I saw.

And what I saw was amazing.

First, France. We landed in an airport in Basel, Switzerland and took a bus across the French border to a small town called Argentierre. It was a small, picturesque country town. We stayed in a hostel up on a hill, with a stunning view of the Alps. We would then walk down into the town to get food and change money but we spent most of our time hiking the Alps and beholding the amazing vistas. After a few days we took an overnight train to Paris, emerging into the city in the early morning (in fact both of my trips to Paris, nearly 20 years apart, have involved my arrival by train). We stayed in an old fashioned stone building on a beautiful street with a courtyard, and we walked streets and over the bridges of this stunning city every day. One night we even ate in a Chinese restaurant. We visited the Louvre and, yes, saw the Mona Lisa; we visited the bizarre-looking Centre Pompidou (a modern art museum that is a piece of modern art itself), we walked through the Luxumbourg Gardens and strolled around at night, the city truly living up to its reputation as the city of lights.

Second, Holland. We took a train to, if I remember correctly, the Hague but we didn't see any of the international courts of justice. Instead, we got on bicycles and biked for several days around the most hilly parts of this otherwise very flat country. This was the roughest part of the trip for me -- by far. The bikes were big and metal and I had neither the size nor stamina for long stretches of biking (at one point we even biked past some royal palace behind a big gate). At the end of each day, at the various hostels we'd stop at, I would collapse from exhaustion (we did, however, spend one afternoon during our biking adventures at a topless beach -- that was interesting!). At one point, as we were biking, I had a really nasty fall and the skin from part of my left knee was dug out, exposing a vein. It took a long time to heal and I still have a scar to this day. Fortunately, we soon ended the biking portion of the journey and headed to Amsterdam. I love this town. Highly walkable, gorgeous canals, lovely and simple architecture. We went to all of the big museums (I don't remember all of them, sadly), and, of course, we saw Anne Frank's house which was moving, sad, and inspiring. And, yes, we strolled around the notorious Red Light District although obvious we didn't patronize it. Nor did we go into any of the pot cafes. However, I did go into some of the McDonalds and, not for the nothing, I laughed the loudest when the movie Pulp Fiction came out and the Vincent Vega character talked about Royales with Cheese and people in Amsterdam soaking french fries with mayonaise. I saw all that with my own eyes, a couple of years before Mr. Quentin Tarantino did!

Third, England. We took a boat to get there, a boat from Belgium. I don't remember where in Belgium we left from or where in England we landed at. But on the day we landed we took a boat to Cambridge and stayed at the university. Our home was called Sidney Sussex College (British universities are made up of a number of "colleges"), whose most famous alumni (in real life) is Oliver Cromwell and (fictional) is Sherlock Holmes. Again, memories of this time was scarce, but I remember we ate in these huge neo-classical dining halls and we rowed down the River Cam in punts which is a huge tradition there. Next we headed north to the beautiful Lake District where we spent days backpacking around the stunning hills and dales around the lakes, mist everywhere. We also visited Rydle Mount, the modest but gorgeous home of the poet William Wordsworth whose family still owns it to this day. Then we headed down to London and stayed at the University of London, a massive and rather dreary modern-y place. I've been to London several times since then and I honestly don't remember much about this particular visit except that we spent a lot of time hanging out in the city's parks -- including the infamous Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park where, on Sundays, people stand and kvetch about whatever's on their mind. One guy I saw spent his time shouting "I'm perfect! I'm perfect!"

After that, we came back to NYC.

And that's it. That's all I remember. But these vague memories of that trip, a long time ago, has inspired me to go back to France, Holland and England as soon as possible -- and to enjoy it properly this time!

Le Freak So Chic

In the 1970s, there was a moment when it seemed like adult moves and mainstream movies might merge -- where actual hardcore sex movies would go mainstream. Much of this had to do with the twin successes of Deepthroat and Last Tango in Paris, both of which not only hit at the box office but became popular amongst the "beautiful people", the trendsetters, known as "porno chic."

In NYC, these movies were very popular, and the Village Voice even wrote an article about this supposedly burgeoning "movement" in 1973. It seemed to be the dawn of a new era, a whole new culture, a truly liberated world. 

Nope.

If you've has seen Boogie Nights or The Deuce, you know that the concept of "porno chic", of adult and mainstream movies merging, of the freaks and the squares combining, died a quick death with the rise of videotape and Ronald Reagan in 1980s. So that's why it's fascinating to read about the height of this moment back in the 1970s when being freaky was very chic -- and when NYC was still a freaky place. 

Review: "New Year's Day" (1989)

New York City has produced many unique independent film makers -- famous ones like Woody Allen and Spike Lee, mid-level famous ones like Jim Jarmusch and Abel Ferrara, and then more obscure ones like Hal Hartley and Henry Jaglom. 

Jaglom is an interesting case. Born in England, his family fled the Nazis and came to NYC in the 1940s. Jaglom was part of the New Hollywood of the 1960s and '70s (he was an editor on Easy Rider in 1969), then became a director himself, but he never achieved the heights of some of his contemporaries. Instead, he's made a large number of very small, very intimate films, usually about people in show business, usually starring his friends and family members. They're almost like well-made home movies -- personal, naturalistic, short on story but big on characters, and highly improvised.

One of them is New Year's Day from 1989.

It's about a middle-aged New Yorker, played by Jaglom, moving back to the city after a failed marriage in Los Angeles. He arrives at the apartment he's just rented, on the first day of the year, to discover that the three women who are moving out are in fact still there for one more day. At first he tries to find a hotel but everything's booked. So the women invite him to stay and, over the course of the day, more and more people show up, an odd assortment of characters, and an impromtu party begins. Jaglom's character, Drew, begins to flirt and fall for one of the women named Lucy (played by a pre-Friends Maggie Wheeler) who is herself moving to LA to escape a bad relationship and recharge her career (her sleazy ex-boyfriend is a very young, pre-fame David Duchovny). The other two women are struggling themselves -- one of them, played by the late Gwen Welles, is depressed and behaves badly because her friends are moving away, and the other one, played by an actress named Melanie Winter, strongly wants a child -- and is looking for the right father. Over the course of the day, and many, many, many, many conversations (the movie is all conversations, no action), these lives touch and bounce off of each other (in some ways good, in some ways bad) as a new year and new lives begin.

The entire movie takes place inside this NYC apartment on this particular New Year's Day and there's really no plot to speak of -- just lots of talking and philosophizing. But the acting is very good, totally believable, and it's a rare movie where people speak like actual human beings. It's worth seeing and you can find it on Amazon Prime. New Year's Day is the only movie I've seen set on the always strange, weird first day of the year -- where everything seems and feels possible until you realize that the past is never gone and the future is never certain.

Elastic NYC Style

When that perfect day arrives -- if it arrives -- and COVID-19 is no more, people will look back at what others wrote about NYC during this time, and either praise or mock the predictions that the city was "dead" or would "never die."

Count me in the latter group but, that said, who knows? (Just to hedge my bet.) NYC is being altered by COVID-19 in ways we could never imagine before, and the fall-out is beyond anything we'll ever be able to reckon with. So maybe the city will go into decline -- but, for my money, it'll roar back better than ever.

So when I read yet another article about the future of NYC by a lifelong New Yorker, I really liked what this person said: "The city is so elastic."

The adjective of elastic is being "able to resume its normal shape spontaneously after contraction, dilatation, or distortion."

I think that sums up what NYC is and has always been -- a place that snaps back after trauma. A place that recovers quickly. Although I would quibble with one thing: this city never goes back to "normal" because being "normal" is not what NYC does. We wouldn't want to live in a "normal" city -- there're are plenty of those if you want them. God help us if we were "normal"!

No, the elasticity of NYC is that we take a set back, build on it, learn from it, and become better. We snap ahead, not back.

That's elastic NYC style!

Whitey Ford, Chairman of the Board - RIP

One of the greatest Yankees ever to take the field, Whitey Ford, has died at 91.

A son of NYC, Whitey grew up in Astoria and spent his entire career with the Bronx Bombers in the 1950s and '60s. He was a demon pitcher, racking up strike-out records, and winning 236 games, the most of any Yankees pitcher ever. This record includes eleven pennants and six World Series championships. Whitey also won the Cy Young Award and the World Series MVP. In fact, his nickname "Chairman of the Board" came from his string of World Series wins -- that rooting for Whitey and the Yankees was like rooting for the head of a big company to keep delivering record profits. Whitey retired in 1967 and then worked with the Yankees as a coach, living a great life. He was a legend, of the kind of only-in-NYC, humble player that we'll probably never see the likes of again.

Interview: Michele Myles of Daredevil Tattoo

Tattooing has always intimidated me. Having one’s body turned into a canvas, a needle with ink going into flesh, sounds completely nerve-racking. If you think about it, the vulnerability that goes with getting a tattoo isn’t just physical -- it’s also emotional and psychological. Getting a tattoo morphs and adds to your identity, it provides you with a new dimensionality. When you get a tattoo, you display yourself to the world in a new and revealing way. It’s life changing thing.

And yet tattooing is more popular than ever. It has moved from the fringes of American society well into the mainstream. People love their tattoos – and tattoo artists.

Being a tattoo artist requires a brave soul, a strong artistic sensibility – and steady hands. It requires confidence and skills most don’t possess. And few tattoo artists, either in NYC or elsewhere, are as experienced and acclaimed as Michele Myles. The founder and operator of Daredevil Tattoo on the Lower East Side, the demand for Michele’s work has remained high for decades. She has tattooed celebrities, given lectures in the art of tattooing, and also curates her own tattoo museum. As an artist, a teacher, and a historian of tattooing, Michele is a popular and absolute master. 

Michele was kind enough to take some time for Mr NYC to answer some questions about her profession, her store, and the possible future of tattooing in NYC during COVID-19.

What made you want to become a tattoo artist? What makes tattoos magical for you?

I got my first tattoo when I was still in high school. I loved that tattooing was a craft with a rich history. So many things are mass produced and disposable I love that tattooing in many ways has remained largely unchanged from what it was 100 years ago.

It seems like tattoos have gotten more popular in the last couple of decades? Why do you think that is?

Media coverage through all of the TV shows and celebrities with tattoos has made tattooing mainstream in ways I never would have imagined. Pop culture has embraced tattooing and made it acceptable to the masses.

How did you come to found your store Daredevil Tattoo? What is exciting about have your own store, and what are the challenges of being a tattoo artist in NYC?

We opened Daredevil in 1997 after tattooing was legalized in NYC after a 36 year ban. Running a business in NYC is challenging no matter what you’re selling and now with COVID it’s even more so. We’re fortunate that we are as established as we are its helping us get through these crazy times.

Do most of your customers want tattoos for aesthetic reasons or is there often a personal motivation, like remembering a loved one or a special event?

We tattoo all sorts of people at the shop. Some of our clients have large scale ongoing projects and we also get people coming in for their first tattoos. Some people get work for aesthetic reasons other have personal motivations.

What is the most common part of the body where people want their tattoos? What are the easiest and hardest parts of the body to work on?

Arms, shoulders, legs are common. Stomach and ribs are tricky spots to get tattooed.

You tattooed Whoopi Goldberg! Have you had any other famous clients that you can tell us about?

Probably the most famous people besides Whoopie are Joan Jett and Boy George, who were each a pleasure to meet and get to know.

I've never gotten a tattoo but I'm thinking about it. What is a good first tattoo for people to get?

Whatever pops into your head we can draw it up for you or if you have any pics you like you can bring them in to use as reference.

How many tattoos do you have, and what do they mean to you?

A bunch. I just pick stuff I like the look of.

What are some of your most interesting or bizarre tattoo requests?

My favorite is if someone throws out an idea and lets me do my thing. You started your business in 1997.

How has your business, and the culture of tattooing in NYC, changed in the last twenty-odd years?

Somehow both tattooing and the Lower East Side have achieved respectability in tandem almost over the last 20 years, something I never expected or foresaw.

How has COVID-19 affected your business? Where do you think tattooing in NYC goes from here?

Everything sucks. We’re hanging in there but I’m most concerned with impending shut downs and no aid this time around to help us get through it. I think the biggest changes coming out of Covid will be the effect on tattoo conventions. And I wonder what a future without tourism for the foreseeable future holds. I saw today that international flights into JFK are down 93% which insane. Hoping for the best for the city. This is a tough one to get through for everyone.

Any other thoughts you'd like to share? 

We have a tattoo museum as part of our shop. I do walking tours through Airbnb experiences usually on Thursdays which is the best way to visit the museum since we have reduced capacity right now. Here’s a link.

Thanks Michelle! Best of luck to you and your store during this time!

Please visit the Daredevil Tatoo website and museum link above and try to support Michelle and her colleagues if you can (I’m planning on getting my own first tattoo soon). Also, you can read more about Michelle career and the challenges her industry faces on NY1, CNN, and other major media.

NYC 1970s Street Scenes

I love photos of old NYC. I love seeing these snapshots in time, recorded fleeting moments of people walking the streets, hanging in the parks, going to parades and events, just "doing their 'thang", oh-so-many decades ago, in a city that no longer exists.

It's history being made before our eyes. These photos collapse time between then and now, taking us into a momentary blip across an expanse of time. 

When we consume history, either textually or visually or otherwise, it's easy for our minds to assume that these people knew or were even thinking about the history they were living through -- that they somehow knew what was coming. Of course, they didn't just like we don't know what's going to happen in the future. Looking at this new batch of 1970s street scenes, you see New Yorkers enjoying themselves, being carefree -- they didn't know what the future would be and, happily, they didn't care.

They were living for today and we get to remember them, so many tomorrows afterwards.

Eddie Van Halen @ MSG 2007 - RIP

Review: "My Dinner with Andre" (1982) & "Vanya on 42nd Street" (1994)

There are, of course, a multitude of NYC movies but none are as intimate, as personal, and as wholly originally as My Dinner with Andre and Vanya on 42nd Street. Both were the brainchildren of actor/writer Wallace Shawn, experimental theater director/actor Andre Gregory, and the late French movie director Louis Malle. 

My Dinner with Andre is about two old friends discussing the nature of life, experience, and happiness. It stars Shawn and Gregory playing barely fictionalized versions of themselves sharing a meal at the Cafe des Artistes. There's no plot, the movie is pure dialogue, but it completely holds your attention. Meeting after a number of years, Gregory tells Shawn about how he has just returned from spending years in Poland and other places in Europe, engaging in all sorts of weird, bizarre theater, and having amazing, life-changing experiences. He proclaims that going out into the world, into the wild, embracing life in all its craziness, is the only way to live -- and that most people live meaningless lives of quiet deseperation. Shawn disagrees. He believes that there is much joy and experience and wisdom to be gained from the daily routines of life, that living a pleasant life is enough (there's great happiness to be found in a cup of coffee, for example), and that it'd be impossible for most people to live as Gregory does. Disguised as a simple film of two people eating and talking about their livevs, it's actually a great existentialist and philosophical debate about human happiness. Deep -- but not at all pretentious. And I, for one, am someone who believes that two people sharing a meal can be a fascinating setting for a film. 

A decade later, Shawn, Gregory, and Malle reteamed to make Vanya on 42nd Street. Again, it's a very simple premise that is much more than the sum of its parts -- the movie involves a group of actors, including a young Julianne Moore, performing Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov. They perform it without sets, costumes, or props on the stage of the then-decaying New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street, in front of a small audience under Gregory's stage direction (a few years later this theater was bought by Disney and remodeled into a glistening jewel). Because of the bare bones minimalism of the production, you go head-first into the story and dialogue and characters, you are absorbed into the world of Chekov's miserable 19th century Russian professor and his gorgeous second wife. The acting is powerful, great talents at the top of their game, and the emotion and sadness of the story hits the viewer hard. It's an extraordinary theatrical and cinematic experience, something almost no other film has ever achieved.

Louis Malle directed many films over his career and Vanya was his last one before his death. Shawn, of course, has had a wildly successful career in movies and television, and Gregory continues to direct and act in theater and sometimes in film. Both movies probably couldn't get made today and even though both films profoundly examine the timeless aspects of human nature, both are also snapshots in time -- a meal, a performance, the early-1980s, the mid-1990s -- that the somehow manage to encompass the totality of human experience in a timeless way.

I highly recommend both movies, particularly in these times when humanity feels more under assault than ever.  

Gotta Love New Yorkers

I try not to post a lot about COVID-19 on here because, well, it's not like we're reminded that we're living in this pandemic all the time. 

And yet ...

... I enjoy hearing the occasional "how I'm surviving" story because it reminds me that none of us are alone in this situation. We really are all in this together, whether we like it or not. 

Here's the story of one New Yorker, originally from London, about how she's surviving the pandemic in the city -- and how she alternates between hope and sadness, between staying busy and feeling sadness, and how we're all trying to find a new normal in this totally abnormal time. 

COVID-19 Spikes in NYC

 

Remembering WNYC-TV

New York City has changed in many ways during my lifetime, much of it in the physical infrastructure of the city itself: old buildings torn down and new shiny ones put up, neighborhoods gentrified from poor to rich, pedestrian plazas and new parks, bike lanes -- you name it, this town has transformed dramatically since the turn of this century. If a time-traveller from thirty years ago was to stroll the city streets today, he or she would be like Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, looking in wonder at how the old town had become techy and neon.

And they'd also discover that the city's old public TV station, WNYC-TV, is no longer around. 

Today we live in the age of the Internet, streaming shows, and literally thousands of cable channels. We drown in content from all over the world. But it wasn't always like this. Once upon a time, and not so long ago, television was three and a half-networks, local stations, and a bunch of cable channels showing repeats, old movies, and news. Here in NYC any "alternative" programming was reserved for public television stations like Channel 13 which, then and now, mostly showed documentaries, British TV, and children's shows.

WNYC-TV was different.

Owned by the city, a sister broadcaster to WNYC radio (which is bigger and more popular than ever today), and located on Channel 3, WNYC-TV was a bizarre hodgepodge of programming. It was a cross between PBS and public access, a true oddity. WNYC-TV would show local public affairs shows, coverage of the United Nations General Assembly, foreign news from Japan and Italy, soccer games, and music videos.

Like the city itself, the station had a gritty, street-level vibe but also an international flavor. It was intensely local and extremely global. 

It also showed a lot of very weird and off-beat British TV, the kind of stuff you didn't see on Masterpiece Theater.  During the week, the station would show episodes of the working class British soap opera EastEnders. Very popular in the UK (and still on), the show basically consisted of lots of cocky-accented people yelling at each other in pubs and dreary houses. On Saturday nights, there was The Diary of Adrian Mole, about an English teenager dealing with the miseries of his home life and school (being a teenager at the time, I identified with him except that he had a cute girlfriend named Pandora and, uh ... well, anyway). There was The Fall and Rise of Reginal Perrin, about a food company executive who hated his life so much that in basically every scene he was trying to kill himself, only to get interrupted. There was The Young Ones, an extremely raunchy show about a bunch of university pals living together in a messy house. And there was Shelley, about an overeducated and unemployed man living in London, spending the entire time making fun of people who are more sucessful than him. It's also where I discovered Blackadder!

These shows were like nothing else on regular American TV at the time, and they did quite a number on my impressionable teenage mind. I felt lucky to live in a city where we had a station like this.

And then I went to college. And WNYC-TV vanished. 

In 1996, the city sold off WNYC-TV and radio. A foundation was started to buy and run the radio station, and today it's a broadcasting and podcasting powerhouse. But WNYC-TV was sold off to some commercial broadcaster who just leased out its airwaves. Any trace or connection to the city was gone. All that is left of WNYC-TV are various clips on YouTube, some of which you can see below, including the final signoff in 1996.

This is a part of the city that is gone today but whose spirit still lives on. 

Review: "The King of Staten Island" (2020)

The "coming-of-age" story is an old one. A young man or woman, usually raised in a conservative, closed-knit family or community, goes out into the world and learns important Life Lessons. These include personal and professional triumphs and failures, romantic thrills and disapointments, and a transition from the innocence of childhood to the wisdom of adulthood. 

All of us come of age some way, somehow, and stories about it are great fodder for movies. 

Once upon a time childhood ended for most young people when they graduated from high school -- even in college, after the age of eighteen, people were considered adults. That's when they came of age! But in 21st century America, childhood and "coming of age" seems to last until people are thirty. More and more Americans in their twenties are living at home, delaying marriage and childhood (the marriage and birth rates have plunged in recent years), and treating adulthood as a disease to be avoided at all costs. 

That's a great way to say that this is exactly what the new movie The King of Staten Island is about -- a man of 24, living with his mother on Staten Island, unemployed and totally directionless, smoking tons of weed, hanging out with his posse of similar overgrown children, and hooking up with a girl who, despite her better judgement, loves this guy.

The guy in question is named Scott and he's played by Pete Davidson from Saturday Night Live. Based on Davidson's own life (whose from Staten Island and whose father died on 9/11), Scott is living through the trauma of his father's untimely death many years earlier, his sister who has now left home for college, and his widowed mother who is coming out of her shell and starting to date again. Scott is feeling left behind, miserable, but a series of events change the direction of his life and family -- giving this otherwise hopeless young man some hope for the future.

That's it. That's the whole plot of the movie.

And it is executed quite well. Davidson is a very good leading man, the supporting cast is just as interesting as him (especially Marissa Tomei who plays his mother), and there are lots of funny scenes. There are few movies about working class life, so it's great to see one when it comes along. The movie is directed by Judd Apatow quite well, and he gives it the humane, loving touch that he has in so many of his previous films. And yet, like his previous films, Apatow makes the movie too damn long. He tells an hour-and-a-half long story in almost two-and-a-half hours, there are lots of scenes that, while entertaining, are totally pointless, and, just when you think the move is over ... it goes on ... and on ... and on.

And, as the title suggests, it's a big Staten Island movie. The borough is shot and presented in a loving way, making it seem like a forgotten jewel beyond Manhattan and the rest of the city, the most loving portrait of the forgotten borough since Working Girl. At one point one of the characters observes that, one day, Staten Island will become a hot place to live like Brooklyn.

Enjoy.