Son of Brooklyn, got his start in the Greenwich Village clubs, then became a beloved, iconic stand-up comic and actor, Richard Lewis was a brilliant artist.
Richard has died at the age of 76, having been diagnosed with Parkinson's almost two years ago.
I remember in the 1990s Richard would call-in to Maria Molito's show on K-ROCK and make requests for classic rock songs. He would appear on Howard Stern a lot, talking frankly about his life. And, of course, he starred on two hit TV shows -- Anything But Love in the early 1990s and Curb Your Enthusiasm in the 2000s.
Richard was the classic case of the kid from NYC who went West to find fame and fortune but always kept the city in his soul. He was a funny man and a great humanist, and he'll be missed.
A few years ago I blogged about the late WNYC-TV which went off the air in 1996 after the city sold it off (WNYC radio still exists and is bigger than ever).
Now the city's Municipal Archives has digitized thousands of hours of tapes from WNYC-TV, from the 1940s to the 1980s. Obviously it's massive and impossible to watch everything but, if you're interested, you can find it and a history of the station here.
In the mid-1980s there was a scandal in NYC when a handsome, dissolute young man named Robert Chambers killed a young woman named Jennifer Levin in Central Park (during what, he called, rough sex gone awry).
It was one of those tabloid sagas -- known as the "Preppy Killer" -- that, decades later, was turned into a multi-part true crime documentary. I won't recount the whole sad tale here -- I blogged about it back in 2007 when Chambers, a mere four years out of prison, was rearrested and eventually sentenced to another heavy prison term for drug running.
Chambers was released last year and is living somewhere upstate. Lord knows what he's doing but, so long as he stays out of trouble, that's probably the best thing for him.
However, bad people, as we know, can inspire great art. I didn't know until just recently that the "Preppy Killer" case inspired an early song by the band The Killers (no pun intended) called "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine." It's a really great song although it's far darker than I ever realized -- told, frighteningly enough, from the killer's perspective.
Obviously a great song won't bring back Jennifer Levin or the erase her family's pain but it's a reminder that, sometimes, out of pain and sadness and tragedy something beautiful and meaninful and lasting can be created.
I always thought that the mysterious, prestigious, and somewhat scary Social Register was some kind of big fancy book with cream-colored paper kept in a vault.
It might be that because I can't find a list of its members anywhere but it actually does have a website and all the information you need to join it is clear and upfront.
It's much like private club -- you have to know members, get recommended, get voted in, and have some kind of prestige, etc. so it's not easy to join but it's not impossible.
And Alison Steele, the Nightbird, was in all of her radio glory, broadcasting on WNEW FM ("in ... stereo ..."). On this night/morning, she had dubbed herself the "Lovebird" and played romantic songs upon request and recited poems about love. She was at the top of her game, her voice confident, smooth and soothing, the greatness of her "theater-of-the-mind" on full display.
Even almost thirty years after her death, and fifty years after this specific broadcast, she sounds as fresh and wonderful as ever, her voice truly timeless.
And she really touches your heart when she talks and plays music about love. A classic.
Travis and Taylor were amorous on the football field after last night's Super Bowl.
And in a couple of days it'll be Valentine's Day, where couples everywhere will celebrate their passion.
So this being NYC -- the sexiest city in the world with the best deli -- it's a good time to re-appreciate the fact that Seinfeld determined that pastrami is the most sensual, the most erotic, of all the salted cured meats.
I think corned beef runs a close second.
But, really, bacon and -- hahaha -- sausage, should be considered the sexiest salted cured meats because they can be incorporated into breakfasts that can be served in bed.
Please feel free let me know your thoughts in the comments!
Like many who lived through the twenty-teens, I was a huge Game of Thrones fan.
Set in a fictional world of seven kingdoms living tenuously under one ruler, the entire premise of the show was that a once great family, a once powerful dynasty (the Targaryens) that had united the kingdoms and ruled for 300 years, have been overthrown -- and the new rulers are still grappling with the problems left in its wake. While the various remaining would-be kings are battling it out for power, the last Targaryen left alive is prowling around distant lands, scheming to return.
The prequel show, House of the Dragon, flashes back to a time when the Targaryens were in power, fighting amongst themselves, their fall distant yet becoming more and more inevitable.
What's brilliant about each show, what draws so many people in, is that both shows are haunted. Both series have a shadow over them, an extra dimension of drama and meaning. In one we are haunted by the now-gone years of power; in the other, we see their power, knowing that it's going away.
The Targaryens are ghosts as much as people -- and they live forever in a kind of mythical world inside a mythical world.
In GOT, even though the Targaryens are almost completely gone, they haunt the show -- people keep talking about them and obsessing over their impact on the seven kingdoms (gone but not forgotten). They may no longer have literal power but they still have power over the minds and souls of the people. And in House, we can't help but watch with a sense of dread that this family, this dynasty, at the height of its power, no matter what's going on or what they're doing, is inevitably doomeed, destined for ignominy.
In short, the Targaryens are doomed but they are forever present in peoples' minds and still meddling, in one way or another, in the kingdoms' business -- even after their doom.
Doom seems to be on a lot of people's minds these days. Our democracy and our environment are in a precarious place, a downward slide. But doom is not final -- it is simply, in many respects, a new way of being, a new normal called the "undervelt."
The "undervelt": an undergroud or underworld where (if I can be gauche enough to quote myself), "defines itself in opposition to the above ground, the outside world. It is in constant friction, a perennial resistance. Like ... trash -- we want to forget it, we want it out of our lives, but it never goes away."
Woody Allen used to be one of America, and especially NYC's, most acclaimed filmmakers. For over fifty years, he made fifty movies, some much more successful than others, many getting nominated for and winning multiple Academy Awards (Woody himself won four). But he's been dogged by controversy about his personal life. In the USA and NYC, he's been "cancelled" -- actors won't work with him, financiers won't pay for his movies, and he can't (or barely can) get them distributed in this country. He's been making his last several movies in Europe but in America and NYC he's a pariah.
And yet ...
He's not gone. And even though his latest movie, Coupe de Chance, hasn't been released in NYC or elsewhere in America (at least not yet), apparently there are secret screenings of it around town that have become quite popular.
In short, Woody's career now exists in the "undervelt."
Woody is no longer a mighty, acclaimed filmmaker. He's fallen hard. But now he's a figure of rebellion, someone people want to ignore but can't -- a perfect denizen of the undervelt. And it shows that his impact and his importance to cinema is so profound that, even though everyone in respectable society says they hate him, they obviously still care enough about his work to go see it -- albeit in secret.
Woody's work is now like the last Targaryen, rattling around in exile but forever messing with the heads of its antagonists.
I know there are many who bemoan "cancel culture" (I've done so myself in the past). Reading about how the work of a decades-long, Oscar-winning auteur is now being consumed like Western media in North Korea or pre-Internet porn is sad, whatever you think about him.
However, I view this whole "cancel culture" thing in another perspective.
First, no filmmaker is guarenteed or promised massive distribution. Most movies never get seen, many directors get their movies dumped into barely enough theaters to cover the movie's catering bill. No director, not even a formerly big-time one like Woody, is promised a big audience. A big career is not a right -- it's a privilege, a privilege few get and most eventually lose, one way or another. I really don't feel sorry for him or any of these "cancelled" people.
Second, even if you become hated, even if you're "cancelled" or ignored, if you do good work, no matter under what conditions or in what environment, it will last. People can try to "cancel" it, suppress it, censor it, belittle it, ignore it, whatever -- but it doesn't matter. It stands firm like the rock of Gibralter. It leaves the haters in the dust. It cannot be erased or ignored. It lives. It thrives. It stands the test of time and, eventually, inevitably, leaves the haters in the dust. The work rides high, even if its creator does not.
Third, I know what it's like to labor in the shadows, to have your work ignored, to live in the undervelt. But I persist. Because my work has impact and, most importantly, exists. This blog has been read nearly a million times. It's never gotten any kind of big outside attention or attention from the media, but it gets readers -- and always will.
Thus my message from the undervelt -- don't worry, don't get crazy about "cancel culture". Just do the work. Do it well. No matter what happens to you, good or bad, whether you deserve it or not, your work will last. The impact of your work and your life will outlast everyone and everything else.
So get to work -- there's no time to lose. And, hey, I can tell you first hand, the undervelt ain't that bad.
One of my heroes is the great 13th century traveller and chronicler Marco Polo.
A native of Venice, a man of his city, he ventured far away from his hometown, with his father and uncle in 1271, into the vast rich world of Asia. He travelled to China, served in the court of the great Kublai Khan, worked as a representative for him in modern day India and Vietnam and other places, accumulated wealth and myriad experiences, and then returned to Venice in 1295.
Marco subsequently dictated his story to a writer named Rustichello and soon after published history's first bestseller, The Travels of Marco Polo. This book changed history -- Europeans learned about the mindblowing civilizations of the East, their huge cities, their sophistications in money and printing, and so much more. Eventually it inspired other Europeans to travel far and wide -- including Christopher Columbus 200 years later.
Yours truly, Mr NYC, has actually read this book, probably one of the few people alive who has.
But first and last, Marco was a Venetian, and for hundreds of years before and after Marco Polo's life, it was the NYC of its time -- an exciting city of islands where "things happened" and fortunes were made -- Venice was the original Crossroads of the World. This BBC article makes the case plainly:
"Venice at the time was the New York of the world," explained historian Pieralvise Zorzi, whose family traces its roots back to Polo's time and beyond. It was an openminded and multicultural metropolis, a vibrant centre for trade between the East and the West, where the only true religion was business – and the Polo family excelled at it.
Marco Polo died in January, 1324, approximately 700 years ago. But his legend and his city persists. Today there are celebrations in Venice commerating one of their favorite sons. But the Venice of his time no longer exists. As this other article states:
As with all great centers of wealth like London and New York today, Venice glowed even as it slid into political and economic senescence; its residual riches continued to finance art, architecture, music and, though evanescent, a sense of authority and grandeur. Still, at the very end, Venice was becoming little more than a souvenir … the ghosts of the city persist — in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Merchant of Venice, in Thomas Mann’s novella [Death in Venice], J.M.W. Turner’s paintings, in the canals and piazzas clogged with tourists, each looking for a personal Venice.
And so it is today in NYC -- we are a great city of wealth and excitement, people travel here far and wide to find their NYCs, but we risk sliding into being a souvenoir if we don't keep this a city where people can afford to live and work.
This city must preserve what's great about it -- and not become its own legend.
Marco Polo remains one of my heroes because he experienced a great life, loved his city, and shared it with the world. That is what this blog, in many ways, is all about.
The 1970s and '80s was the Golden Age of the TV mini-series, as I recently blogged about. In many ways, it started specifically in 1977 with the historic mini-series Roots, a powerful saga about the history of slavery in America. Later on there would be other big historical TV epics like North & South, AD, The Winds of War, and others.
Then there was stuff like 79 Park Avenue.
Debuting the same year as Roots, 79 Park Avenue does not get the same kind of cultural respect. It's about a young woman trying to "make it" in NYC and decides to do so by becoming a Madam. It's a trashy story based on a trashy book. SEX! REAL ESTATE! NYC! SOFT-FOCUS PHOTOGRAPHY!
All the feels.
What's actually interesting about the series is that it was produced in the '70s but based on a novel published in the '50s about a story set in the '30s. It's a nostalgic-look at a nostalgic-look about a nostalgic-look of NYC.
It also stars the character actress Lesley Ann Warren and even Raymond Burr in a non-Perry Mason role.
What's also fascinating to realize is that, even though this series is totally forgotten today, it scored an audience of between 16-20 million people on the nights in October, 1977 is was broadcast. Today a show that gets half that many viewers is considered a huge success -- so, by today's standard, this would be a blockbuster.
Starred in the original runs of West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdy, Sweet Charity, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, amongst many others. Kept working late into her life, seemingly indestructable. Sadly gone at age 91.
A one of a kind, trailblazing, NYC icon. We won't see her likes again.
Rest in Peace -- although I hope you'll keep singing and dancing in eternity.
