"Live From Here" No More

The public radio show "Live From Here" has been cancelled.

For those of you who aren't public radio buffs, "Live From Here" was the successor to "A Prairie Home Companion", a similar variety show hosted by Garrison Keillor for nearly 40 years. Lots of music, lots of comedy, it was a fun and wacky hipster version of the Grand Old Opry. "Live" was hosted by the singer Chris Thile, and the show had recently re-located from St. Paul, MN (where "Prairie" and then "Live" originated from) to NYC.

The whole point of bringing the show here was so that it could attract lots of big name guests (it did!) but the financial impact COVID-19 was apparently too much for it to bare. It depended, in part, on ticket sales, and it's unlikely that live shows like this will return anytime soon. So now "Live From Here" is gone.

This is really, really sad. I loved the show. It ran on Saturday nights from 6-8 PM on WNYC, and was a staple of its Saturday night schedule. I'd listen to it either in the kitchen while making dinner or with my wife and kids in the car if we were going to or coming from someplace. It was a relief to turn it on and listen to some fun people having fun, being creative, singing and joking to their hearts content, giving us all a temporary reprieve from the horror-show of the world. "Live", like "Prairie" before it, was sort of an inverse to "Saturday Night Live" -- it was on radio early in the evening and had more music than comedy. It was a real treat.

A treat that has now been snatched away from us. It's another part of the cultural fabric of NYC that's unravelled and I hope that, maybe some day when this is all over, it can be resurrected. 

P.S. This is the show where I discovered Brandi Carlille! 

Sam Kinison & Lou Reed on "Saturday Night Live" -- November 15, 1986

It's hard to imagine that an episode of Saturday Night Live like this would ever air today -- one hosted by the most outrageous comedian of his time and, as the musical guest, one of the darkest and most groundbreaking musicians in rock history.

But this actually happened on the night of November 15, 1986 when bad boy comic Sam Kinison -- riding high as a comedy king and coming off the success of his movie Back to School -- hosted the show for the second time. He was his usual over-the-top self, jamming with the band, performing an over-the-top monologue, and yelling and blazing his way through several sketches. There was no comedian quite like Sam Kinison before or since. Sadly he died in 1992 in a car accident, but his comedic legacy lives on.

I can't find any clips of Lou Reed from this show but, according to the information I have, he perfomed the songs "I Love You, Suzanne" and "The Original Wrapper." I've posted those songs here. 

This was just one of many shows in the long, long history of SNL -- but it was also a moment in time when the rebels, the contrarians, the lunatics of comedy and music crashed the gates and ran the asylum ... at least for this one night.

Eddie Murphy on SNL

It's hard to believe but it's almost been thirty years since Brooklyn-native Eddie Murphy first outraged America on Saturday Night Live. He was only 19 years old or something at the time and had been found by the SNL producers working the comedy clubs, his talent obvious to all.

If you ever read the definitive book on SNL, Live from New York, Eddie first appeared as a minor featured player during the 1980-81 season. He almost never appeared in sketches and, when he did, had little to do. This season has gone down as one of the worst in the show's history but it was obvious to everyone that Eddie was super-funny and had been criminally under used.

After that disastrous season, nearly all of the cast members (including Gilbert Gottfried) were fired save Eddie and Joe Piscopo. The new cast and the next three seasons were largely built around these two, and Eddie etched some of his most memorable characters that have become pop culture icons: Gumby ("I'm Gumby dammit!"), Mr Robinson's Neighborhood ("Hello little chidrin'"), Buckwheat ("Oh-tay!"), Velvet Jones ("Do you wanna be a ho?"), as well as such brilliant celebrity impression as Stevie Wonder and, seen here, James Brown.

Eddie Murphy left SNL mid-season in 1984 (twenty-five years ago!) and went on to have a rather up-and-down movie career (mostly down in my humble opinion). He also had a bad falling out with SNL in the 1990s when David Spade made a joke on "Weekend Update" about Eddie's flailing movie career at the time. Apparently Eddie is very thin-skinned and was so angry that he swore that he'd never again have anything to do with Saturday Night Live ever again.

Poor us.

Since then both Eddie and the show have basically jumped the shark but thankfully we can always watch the old episodes and remember that great time when Eddie and SNL were dangerously funny -- New York institutions both at their zenith.

Jeremy Irons & Bob Odenkirk: A "Saturday Night Live" Memory

On March 23, 1991, two days before he won the Best Actor Oscar for the movie Reversal of Fortune, Jeremy Irons hosted Saturday Night Live and performed this wild monologue: 

Irons has said in interviews that hosting SNL was one of the most terrifying things he ever did -- which he why he's probably never hosted it since then. 

Almost exactly thirty-years later, the man behind the sketch, the man who wrote it, then-anonymous comedy-scribe and now current Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk told the story behind this monologue, and how Irons originally didn't want to do it and yelled at him:

Great story! The story behind the scenes is always more interesting than the scene itself. 

Remembering Gilbert Gottfried

Happy New Year! Before we march any further into 2023, I want briefly want to remember someone who left us 2022 -- the wild comedian Gilbert Gottfried.

A Brooklyn-native and lifelong New Yorker, Gilbert had a massive 40+ year career as a standup comic, actor, voiceover artist, commercial pitchman, and TV host. He should never had had the big career that he did: he was physically unattractive, his voice was grating, he was beyond offensive, he was a just plain weird. In short, Gilbert Gottfried was the total opposite of what it normally takes to succeed in showbusiness and yet he did, brilliantly, because he was funny as hell, a total original. Audiences couldn't get enough of him because, in so many ways, he was them and they him. 

Gilbert had some notable career highs -- he was in Beverly Hills Cops II, was a voice in the 1993 classic Aladdin, and was featured in the popular documentary The Aristocrats. He appeared on the Howard Stern radio show many time, birthing many classic bits. He was always on TV doing standup and selling out clubs. He was everywhere, all the time, and very popular.

Gilbert was also part of the notorious 1980-81 cast of Saturday Night Live, (famous for being totally awful but for giving the world Eddie Murphy). 

In the 1990s, Gilbert hosted the USA cable channel show Up All Night, a truly bizarre thing where, on Friday nights, he would introduce bizarre B-movies then do shtick before and after commercial breaks. Gilbert hosted the Friday night version and then Rhonda Shear hosted the Saturday night version (I think I'm right). I would watch Up All Night and enjoyed both of them more than the movies (it's because Gilbert was funny and Rhonda was hot) and it was a real relic of my youth. 

Gilbert died in April 2022 at age 67. The world, and NYC, is much less funny without him. 

A Prairie Home Companion

There's lots to do on any given Saturday night in New York City but it's not every Saturday night in NYC where you can go to "A Prairie Home Companion." But last night a bunch of us went to the 1174th live broadcast of Garrison Keillor's radio variety program at Town Hall.

It was a great show and hopefully you'll hear it this weekend on your local public radio station. Wearing his trademark suite and red sneakers, Keillor was hilarious and quick-witted as always (best joke of the night: when the Pope is in town this month he'll spend most of his time listening to confession from Elliot Spitzer). Keillor was joined by Scottish chanteuse Jean Redpath, who several beautiful songs, as well as by country music star Brad Paisley (who sang several HILARIOUS and naughty songs). Also, a local poet read several funny short poems and Keillor and the band sang several delightful songs.

Of course there was a Guy Noir mystery story (special guest: Kimberly Williams-Paisley, star of The Father of the Bride movies and TV series According to Jim, also wife of Brad) that involved demolitions (gotta hear it to believe it) and, naturally, the News from Lake Wobegon.

I'm not able to hear "Prairie" every week but I do my best to. It's such an sweet, fun, innocent, old-fashioned show that it's almost hard to believe that such an uncool, thoroughly unhip thing could still exist in this deeply cynical age. But thankfully it does and, when it does to NYC, we should be grateful.

"A Prairie Home Companion" is broadcast locally on WNYC 93.9 FM, Saturday afternoons at 6 PM. It's rebroadcast on Sundays at 11 AM on WNYC 820 AM. Check out their website for more info.

There Must Be 50 Ways to Love NYC

They don't call it the "rat race" for nuttin'. 

Sometimes living in NYC is like being a rat -- a desperate, exhausting, frantic race for survival. A rat will do anything to survive, and survivin' in NYC is all that and more.

But we live here because we know -- we know! -- in the the depths of our soul, in the recesses of our brains, in the lining of our bowels (okay, that was gross) that all the expense and craziness of NYC is worth it. Damn worth it. Because if a New Yorker is forced to live anywhere else, they might just start to consider suicide. 

Today I heard Nora Ephron on the radio say that when she moved to California as a child, she didn't care how great the weather was -- she wanted to go back to NYC right away. 

On Saturday night I was walking around Bryant Park with my wife. The weather was perfect, the gorgeous buildings piercing the sky with their blasting lights. It was the perfect New York night. And my wife and I agreed that if you live in NYC and you look at this site and don't feel excited and grateful to live here, then you should leave immediately and move to ... wherever. 

In short, we New Yorkers live here because we have to. 

That is why I was so happy to find this latest blog post from the Village Voice entitled 50 Reasons to Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City. Authored by someone named Jen Doll, it's a great, brilliant piece, writing at it's finest. You should click on the link and read it here but I'll just give you a few of the best reasons:

47. There is always someone crazier than you. ALWAYS.

46. The view from the Brooklyn Bridge.

45. The view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

26. Smart people are the norm, not the exception. (Which doesn't mean they're sane, but at least no one's boring.)

13. There is an insane Korean day spa (Spa Castle) waiting for you in Flushing. And Russian and Turkish baths in the East Village.

6. You can be alone, but never feel lonely. And vice versa. But if you die and aren't found until a year later, you won't be the first.

This article was so effective that it it led to lots of "haters" making negative comments. And Ms. Doll brilliantly hit back. 

Remember: this is NYC. No one ever shrinks from a fight here.  

"30 Rock": The First Great NYC Show of the 21st Century

Every decade or so there's a show that, more than the others, actually "gets" New York. By "get" I mean it perfectly encapsulates the New York City attitude and vibe, captures and expresses the city's l'essence and joie de vivre, its id, ego, and superego -- that actually makes you feel it has the city in its bloodstream.

In the 1950s, it was The Honeymooners.

In the 1960s ... well, okay, I can't think of one.

In the 1970s, it was Saturday Night Live.

In the 1980s, it was Late Night with David Letterman (Late Night was a show for New Yorkers; The Late Show is a show for tourists).

In the 1990s, it was Mad About You (no, not Seinfeld; I will explain in a moment).

And now, in the '00s, it's 30 Rock.

Lots of shows have tried to be great New York shows and some have come close. Sex and the City and Seinfeld are obviously the closest and, while they're great shows, I wouldn't say they are necessarily great New York shows. While I loved them, I didn't get that same palpable New York City vibe that I got from the aforementioned.

Others have tried to be great New York City shows, of course, and failed miserably. Don't get me started on Friends or some of that dreck that used to be on the NBC Thursday night line-up in the late 1990s. Fortunately 30 Rock is one show on the current NBC Thursday line-up and it, in my opinion, qualifies as the next great New York show.

What makes 30 Rock so awesome? What do I love this show about a show? Maybe it's the neurotic and self-deprecating head writer Liz Lemon (a hilarious Tina Fey) or the absolutely brilliant Alec Baldwin as Jack, the big network honcho (his character may seem outrageously over the top but I've worked for guys like that and they do, believe me, exist). And of course there's Tracy Morgan, the ridiculous star of the fictional "Tracy Jordan" who may seem like a pampered celebrity but is actually a buddy to everyone. The cast is so funny, the writing so sharp, you can't have a pulse and not love it.

But what makes it a great New York show is that it has that same irreverent, devil-may-care, caffeine-fueled, Type A attitude that almost all New Yorkers feel and identify with. It gets how people live in this town (i.e. working a lot, eating take-out, negotiating the Darwinian worlds of dating and office politics). It feels like it's "on the level" with the majority of New Yorkers. And, as a New Yorker watching it, I feel it's giving me a wink and smile, saying "We get you buddy. We feel your pain. It's ours too."

What else can a great New York show do? Let's hope "30 Rock" continues to thrive and thrive. Our city will be the better for it.

Postscript: there actually was a show in the early 1990s called Flying Blind and it had the potential to be a really great New York show. Sadly a lousy time slot and ratings made the Fox network give it a short lifespan. One abbreviated season does not a great New York show make but Mr NYC remembers it fondly.

Joe Franklin RIP

Long before late night television became a big money battlefield, most late night TV was local (even the mother of all late night talk shows, Tonight, began as a local NYC show in 1954). While Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson hosted Tonight between 1954 to 1992, here in NYC one guy had them beat for longevity: Joe Franklin, who hosted his own eponymous late night  show from 1950 to 1993, mostly on WOR. Many credit Joe Franklin for really inventing the TV talk show as we know it.

His show was wacky -- and totally New York. Joe Franklin did not have a band or do an opening monologue. Instead, he sat behind a desk, with a gigantic microphone sticking into his face, and interviewed a parade of eclectic guests, including movie stars, US presidents, rock bands, plate twirlers, restaurant owners, and men dressed as tomatoes (as some have called them, they were the greats, the near-greats, the not-so-greats, the ingrates, and the never-weres).  Joe Franklin interviewed an 18-year old Julia Roberts, interviewed Ronald Reagan five times (before he was president), and was one of the first shows to feature Bette Midler and Barbra Steisand. He was so admired by Billy Crystal that Crystal did several sketches imitating Joe Franklin on "Saturday Night Live." (In the 1970s and 1980s, when WOR was a "superstation" carried on cable systems around the country, Joe Franklin was technically national.)

Joe Franklin was New York. His carried the city in his voice and his show seemed to reflect the city in its glamor and grit, its highs and lows, its beauty and strangeness, the fact that this was a city of the rich and famous as well as the ordinary and totally weird. Honestly, his show's production values were little better than public access but that was part of its charm -- it was low-rent and democratic, just like NYC used to be.

As a kid, I recall seeing Joe Franklin a few times, usually during the summer or during school vacations, when I was allowed to be up at 1 AM or whatever un-Godly hour his show was on. There was something so reassuring about his manner, you felt like you had a friend at that time of night who was looking out for you. He was great.

Joe Franklin died a few days ago at the age of 88 and, like the New York that his show used to broadcast to on those late nights, he will be missed.

Eddie Izzard @ Madison Square Garden

Memo from NYC

There are certain cities, at certain points in time, that become legendary, mythic, memorable; that grab the popular imagination for years, decades afterwards.

These cities and their golden eras are usually powered by a unique perfect storm of artistic creativity, cultural exuberance, sexual liberty, and, most of all, lifestyle, something that makes people from far away -- geographically, even temporally -- say, "I want to go there! I want to be there! I want to be part of it! I want to live that way!" 

And, most of all, "I wish I had been there!"   

To whit: Paris in the 1920s (think Midnight in Paris). Berlin in the early 1930s (think Cabaret). London in the 1960s (think Blowout). NYC in the 1970s (think Taxi Driver or early Saturday Night Live). 

And Portland in the 2010s. Think Portlandia. 

The popular sketch TV show is ending tonight after eight seasons. It's had an amazing run.

Perhaps it's too early to declare this but I will: thanks to this show, thanks to the era it started in (2011) and captured (mostly the Obama era), thanks to the "hipster lifestyle" it both ridiculed and lionized, Portlandia and Portland in the second decade of the 20th century have now gone into the history books as a city and era that will be remembered decades later as a mythic time and place. It defined something uniquely American at the time, something culturally trailblazing, and we'll be studying this place and its era in the future. 

Want to understand what hipster culture in general and the city of Portland were like at this time? Watch Portlandia. And understand Portland. It's that simple.

Remember Girls? The ultimate NYC hipster show of the 2010s started a year after Portlandia and ended a year earlier. It existed in the shadows of this show, almost like a satellite. Girls wouldn't have made sense without Portlandia.  

I take a little bit of pride that I was onto this show and its influence at the time. In 2010, a year before Portlandia premiered, I visited the city itself and had a great, memorable time. I saw it then as a special place, a city just bursting with culture and creativity, a place where people wanted to live and thrive (or retire, as the joke goes). 

Then, a year later, along came the show. I thought it would be good. I didn't realize it would become so popular and last almost a decade!

But eras end -- they have to or otherwise they aren't special, unique. Paris in the 1920s and Berlin in the 1930s were destroyed by Depression and War. London in the 1960s petered out. NYC in the 1970s went from crazy to boring. And Portland in the 2010s ... well Trump.

Great as it was, Portlandia these days seems more dated and a little less relevant. We can no longer laugh at the hipster lifestyle in quite the same way when the cloud of fascism hangs over it. And Portland, apparently, is no longer the same city that the TV show first parodied. 

You can't fully appreciate an era until it's long over and another era has come and gone. It doesn't come into clear, mental relief until the biases of its day are gone. So twenty-years from now we'll look back at Portlandia and laugh again. 

For now, however, we bid it adieu. From a grateful New Yorker, thanks for the laughs! 

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.

Party -- or P***y? -- Ferry

Recently the oldest ferry in the fleet of the Staten Island Ferry was decommissioned and put up for sale. The initial asking price by the city was for less than $200K but, shockingly, a bidding war broke out and it was finally purchased for closer to $300K. (Just further proof that all NYC real estate is valuable, even if it's an old frail boat that has to be docked somewhere). 

The reason that this purchase is making news is because two of the buyers (in the consortium that funded the acquisition) are Colin Jost and Pete Davidson. Both men are sons of the Forgotten Borough, cast members of Saturday Night Live, and lovers of super hot and successful woman -- Scarlett Johansson for Mr. Jost, Kim Kardashian and various other beauties for Mr. Davidson; considering their busy jobs and amorous duties, it's amazing they had time to buy a boat! 

Their plans for this ferry are unclear but tentatively it will be some kind of "entertainment venue." It might be an event space, or a performance space, or just some kind of floating nightclub. Millions of dollars will doubtless be needed to turn it into something cool but, whenever it opens to the public, it's certain to become quite a hot spot (my wife has already said she wants us to check it out which of course seals the importance of that excursion). 

I have to say I'm a big fan of this project because I love the repurposing of old and useless NYC infrastructure into something new and artistic (like the Highline or the TWA Terminal). It gives the city a sense of renewal and reimagination. In this case, this ferry that used to shlep New Yorkers back and forth between Staten Island and Manhattan, mostly people commuting to and from work, will now be a destination party boat, where people can let loose and get wild.

Considering that two if its owners are renowned swordsmen, much like Studio 54 before it, it will probably become a place where ladies and gents (and ladies and ladies and gents and gents) will engage in all kinds of coitus. In fact, my guess is that soon people will stop calling it a "party ferry" and it will become known as a "p***y ferry." And if another ferry is decommissioned, sold and turned into a party boat, we may have more than one of these floating around the waters of NYC. 

Who knows? We might have two p***y ferries passing in the night! 

(I wrote this whole blog post just to make that joke, forgive me.)

The Band on SNL — October 30, 1976

Nearly fifty years ago -- on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976 -- the great rock band The Band gave their final performance (with the original lineup) at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, CA. 

It was a nearly six-hour long show where The Band played their greatest hits ("Up on Cripple Creek", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "It Makes No Difference") with with many guests including Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Hawkins, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Neil Young, and Mr Bob Dylan (amongst others). 

The concert was filmed by Martin Scorsese (the same year that Taxi Driver was release) and it became a landmark documentary, considered one of the greatest concert documentaries ever made, called The Last Waltz.

This one concert -“The end of an era” was how many people referred to the close of 1976. The dreams of the 60s and early 70s had faded, and we were ready for a revelation, a revolt, a changing of the guard. Punk rock—and, later, hip-hop—wanted to give music and culture a good slap in the face. It felt like everyone wanted to break something. - performed and recorded just over a month before my birth -- was a singular moment in music and cultural history. Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist and chief lyricist for The Band wrote, in 2016:

“The end of an era” was how many people referred to the close of 1976. The dreams of the 60s and early 70s had faded, and we were ready for a revelation, a revolt, a changing of the guard. Punk rock—and, later, hip-hop—wanted to give music and culture a good slap in the face. It felt like everyone wanted to break something.

The end of that era, that faded world, was what I was born into -- and its intense to think about, how my beginning was at the end of something.

I love the music of The Band, and I went to see a re-release of The Last Waltz with my friends in 2002. As mentioned, the concert took place in San Francisco but, about a month earlier, The Band appeared on Saturday Night Live and was introduced by the writer-actor Buck Henry who mentioned that their final show was coming up. 

What an amazing moment in culture -- and in the history of SNL, NYC, and the culture at large.

Larry Josephson, RIP

When I was in high school, on those wild and crazy Saturday nights when I was at home, before watching Sisters and Saturday Night Live, I'd listen to a quirky show on WNYC radio called Modern Times, hosted by radio-lifer Larry Josephson.

Josephson has died at the age of 83.

Despite its august title, Modern Times was a freeform show where Josephson rifted on odd topics, occasionally playing music or comedy bits. Sometimes he'd interview people as well. Josephson's manner was calm, quiet, but funny. I remember that he played Bob & Ray's hilarious rendition of "Do you think I'm sexy?" whose career he was involved in promoting. One time I remember he told a scary but fascinating story about coming home one day and confronting a man with a knife who was going to rob him -- and instead they had a long conversation. I never heard a show like it, before or since.

Josephson had a long career in NYC radio, mostly at WBAI, and was part of the freeform radio-generation that included Joe Frank, Bob Fast and Steve Post. In many way, they were podcasters before podcasters, making radio interesting and showing what was possible with the medium of air, uncorrupted by commercial interests. He was a pioneer, and we won't see his likes on the radio ever again. RIP.

Jan Hooks RIP

Back in the late 1980s, when I was a kid and started watching "Saturday Night Live", Jan Hooks was part of the cast. It was, in retrospect, one of the great periods for SNL. Along with Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Mike Meyers, and Victoria Jackson, this was the time of such memorable recurring sketches as "Wayne's World", "Sprockets", "Church Lady", the first President Bush, Caveman Lawyers, and lots more. Hooks and Nora Dunn had a recurring sketch, the Sweeney Sisters, about two over-the-hill, over-the-top lounge singers which was very funny.

But Jan Hooks stood out as the best female impersonator in the history of SNL. There simply wasn't one female person of note that she didn't impersonate and totally nail: Tammy Faye Bakker, Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, Sinead O'Connor, Diane Sawyer and, as you can see here, Kathie Lee Gifford. Jan Hooks just dissolved into whoever she was imitating and, sometimes, she seemed more real and believable than the real people. You never got the sense that Jan Hooks was trying to be funny -- she just was funny, naturally, and made it seem totally effortless. She was amazingly talented.

Jan Hooks never had a huge career after SNL -- she was on some sitcoms and did guest roles here and there. It's too bad, because she was as good as any man who came out of that show. It was harder, then, for female comedians to brake out but she paved the way for people like Kristen Wiig and Sarah Silverman who came afterwards. But Jan Hooks was a memorable talent and her death at age 57 is very sad.

But I'll always remember the laughter she gave me as a kid back on those dark Saturday nights in front of the TV. Thank you, Jan.    

NYC Back in the Day

The thing about NYC is that it's a city with a fascinating past but that is always,  relentlessly, looking into the future. And Mr NYC tries to be as future-oriented as possible, following the trajectory of the greatest city on earth.

But ... the past never fully vanishes. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, we are always going against the current, "borne back ceaselessly into the past."

To put it another way, people will always be fascinated by NYC back in the day.

So here are some various examples.

Nostalgia for NYC back in the day is so huge that there's literally an entire Youtube Channel called ... NYC Nostalgia. It has numerous videos chronicling life in NYC in the last couple of decades and centuries, including about things you might not necessarily realize existed. For example, did you know there were motorcycle gangs all over NYC? Yes, there were, as this video shows:

Then there's the money. Yes, NYC was built by great wealth and generated great wealth. Heck, there's an entire show about it called The Guilded Age about the late-19th century when NYC's wealth changed the entire nation.

Sometimes this wealth produced great things and sometimes ... not so much.

This was true even before the Gilded Age, before families like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers -- families that name many of our streets like the Astors, the Jeromes, the Schermerhorns, the Delanceys, and many others. Here's a great video about some of these families that used to rule NYC back in the day, the original city elite:

And then there's the darkness. Look at this photo taken in October 2001 at Ground Zero, a month after 9/11:

Ouch. You got then-Commissioner Bernard Kerik who ended up going to jail for corruption (and is now deceased). It includes then-Mayor Rudy Giuilani who later committed treason but trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and wound up broke, indicted and disgraced. And then there's the now former Prince Andrew, who's been arrested for corruption and settled a mult-million dollar sexual abuse lawsuit. The photo above was taken only six or seven months after this infamous photo:

The then-prince was in NYC at that time to pay his respects to the families whose loved-ones has perished, to visit and thank the first responders for their work, and extend sympathy to a traumatized city. 

It appears that, during this visit to NYC, in the aftermath of this horrific event, Prince Andrew came to town not only to provide comfort but also to do some partying with Russian broads. Watch this video about Andrew's 9/11 jaunt, it'll both fascinate and disgust you:

And to think that these dark people were the ones taking care of NYC at this dark time only makes the darkness even darker -- darkness on top of darkness. And today when we see images of the now former prince, this is what we see:

But let's end this look at NYC back in the day on a happier, funnier note.

In the early 1980s, as Saturday Night Live was transitioning out of its '70s heyday, the show went into a critical and ratings downturn -- and flirted with cancellation. But it was saved by a 19-year old kid who was still living with his parents in Brooklyn named Eddie Murphy. His comic brilliance was so blazing, so wild and fascinating, that he saved the show that has lasted for half-a-century. When SNL started back in the day it was a curiousity -- a quirky, funky 1970s late-night sketch show from NYC. But Eddie Murphy turned it into an institution that defines the city and its impact on American culture to this day. 

By the way, you can watch one of Eddie Murphy's funniest "Mister Robinson's Neighborhood" sketches below and the entire archive for your enjoyment here. 

Howard Stern For Governor -- No, Forever!

Howard Stern is promoting his new book and, for the first time in years, he is out and about doing lots of interviews. (My wife has promised me a new Kindle with this book loaded on it for Father's Day.)

The recurring theme of these interviews, and apparent raison d'etre for his new book, is how the once raunchy and outrageous 1980s & 1990s radio DJ became a major 21st century media icon. It's about how Howard as "evolved" from "bad boy shock jock" to "thought-provoking" interviewer and cultural pulse-taker. 

As someone who has listened to Howard for almost 30 years, I can attest first-hand that this change in the man and his show are very real. In some ways they're both better than ever -- Howard seems like a much kinder, much more empathetic guy; the interviews are simply better than anything you'll hear anywhere else. But I also miss the old Howard -- the take-no-prisoners style and the (admittedly dated and "un-woke") craziness of having women come into the studio to have bologna and bread tossed at their smeared-with-mayonnaise posteriors, plus strippers and porn stars coming in to undress, get spanked, and operate various mechanical devices on their Devil bits. 

Oh, those were the days!

Back when I started listening to him, Howard loved to do stunts like the Open Sores tennis match in Flushing, his various "funerals" for DJs in other markets that he overtook in the ratings, the massive book signings he had for his first two books, and lots more. 

But nothing topped what he did in 1994 when he actually ran for New York State governor against then-Governor Mario Cuomo (the current gub's dad). Howard even secured the nomination of the Libertarian Party and had an agenda -- get highway work to be performed in night so he didn't have to sit in traffic, restore the death penalty (and fill pot holls on the highways with the chary remains of the executed), and then resign so his Lieutenant Governor, a real politician, could take over. Howard rose rapidly in the polls but then bailed on the campaign when the very real possibility that he might win materialized (he claimed that he didn't want to reveal his finances, a rather thin but good excuse to get out).

The "Howard Stern for Governor" stunt was short-lived and ridiculous but, at the time, it accomplished the task of getting him tons of attention. It even got his parodied brilliantly on Saturday Night Live -- 25 years ago this week! -- at a time when the show was otherwise awful. And it spawned a song called "Howard Stern for Governor" that was dopey and heartfelt. 

It's hard to believe that this happened more than a quarter of a century ago -- and, as we see, something much more awful and outrageous than Governor Howard Stern is happening now.

The big difference between Howard and other outrageous media personalities is that he understood that his shtick was always an act and not something to be truly acted upon -- unlike other DJs who performed truly dangerous and illegal stunts that got them fired or charged with crimes, or others who actually got elected to office on even more ridiculous and hateful agendas. That's why, after so many decades, Howard is still around and more respected than ever while other media figures of his ilk have either flamed out or became truly hated. 

Twenty-five years ago we said Howard Stern for Governor. Today we say Howard Stern Forever!

TV on the Movies

This is a must read: Vanity Fair culture critic James Wolcott makes a very convincing case that today, in the second decade of the 21st century, TV shows are better than movies. In terms of quality, originality, writing, acting, excitement -- Wolcott says TV is whipping the movies' tuchus.

And I agree. 

Very rarely these days do I get excited about a movie. I don't care for the big Twilight/Harry Potter/Hunger Game "event" movies. They're all noise and action without really interesting plots or characters. Plus, they're all skewed to teenage girls which, at last check, I'm not. I'm more interested in movies by really great directors with good stories and characters but, honestly, most of our great directors aren't making such great movies these days. 

To whit: with the exception of Midnight in Paris last year, Woody Allen hasn't made an exciting movie in a long time. Scorsese used to make exciting movies but they have become less so over time (Goodfellas? Exciting! Hugo? Uh....). Robert Altman is sadly dead. Spike Jonze and David Russell make very few films. I still get excited whenever Quentin Tarantino makes a movie but he seems only to make one every five or six years. And don't get me started on Cameron Crowe and James L. Brooks: Say Anything ..., Almost Famous, Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News are some of my favorites ever. But their most recent movies have been unwatchable. It's like watching great athletes who used to win every competition come in last. 

TV, however, has been an autre histoire. 

In the last ten years there have been some TV shows that have gotten me crazy excited: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Rescue Me, The Wire, True Blood, Lost, 30 Rock, The Office, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey, Portlandia, Modern Family and lots of others -- really great shows with complex characters, interesting stories, brilliant film making, and amazing production values. And right now I salivate (well, almost) over Game of Thrones and Mad Men. The fact that they're on back to back on the same nights has sent me into geeky heaven. (Heck, even Saturday Night Live is funny again for the first time in 20 years.) 

I'm stunned at the quality of these shows and amazed at how much I'd rather stay at home and watch them (on TV or Netflix) instead of schlepping to the movies and plunk down ten bucks -- only to sit next to or behind douches who talk during the movie or have their cell phones go off. Increasingly, not only are the movies bad but the movie going experience has gotten expensive and annoying.

Plus, snobs who used to ignore TV seem to be ignoring the movies these days. 

Wolcott writes: "Even in cine-mad Manhattan, where the admonitory ghost of Susan Sontag haunts theaters by night, the new movie that everybody’s talking about is being talked about by a shrinking number of everybodies. It’s seldom the presiding topic of cocktail chat and intellectual quarrel, as it was when critic Pauline Kael led the wagon train. (Her successors at The New Yorker, David Denby and Anthony Lane, might as well be tinkling the piano in the hotel lobby for all the commotion they create.)" He also makes the point that it's pretty sad when a cliched, plodding movie like Bridesmaids is acclaimed as one of the best comedies of the year. 

I couldn't even get through it. It just wasn't that funny. 

Wolcott also says Reese Witherspoon is an example of what has happened not only to movies but movie stars: she used to give great performances in fun or excellent movies like Legally Blonde and Walk the Line. Now she's stuck in drivel like This Means War. When was the last time Tom Cruise had a good movie? He used to have one every year. Now everyone talks about Mad Men's Jon Hamm and Tom Cruise is better known for his weird Scientology worship these days. 

Wolcott even asks a great rhetorical question: "Does anyone think The Artist is better than Mad Men?"

Hear hear. 

We really do seem to be living in a golden age of TV and a dark ages of movies. Maybe this will change. But probably not for a while. Movies must respond to the demands of moviegoers -- who are increasingly kids and dopes who care more about spectacle than story. Meanwhile, as TV has gotten more niche driven and cable has found a business model to thrive, there are more outlets for original, daring stuff. Ultimately, like everything, it comes down to money: if the studios can only make money with big noisy junk and TV can make money producing quality -- guess what? That's what you're gonna see!

I'm a culture geek and I want movies and TV to be equally good and compelling. Hopefully, some day, a business model will emerge where great movies can be produced again. But as of now, the David of the small screen has conquered the Goliath of the big screen.  

Review: "The Ice Storm" (1994 & 1997)

As a young, overeducated man who grew up with lots of books in the house, I will confess that I had literary pretensions. I dreamed about writing a great book that would be critically acclaimed and would sell big and would be turned into a hit Oscar-winning movie and that I would be rich and famous and happy for the rest of my life.

Yeah, so that didn't happen. I became Mr NYC instead. 

But I will confess that, when I was operating under such a delusion, I wanted to write like Rick Moody whose 1994 novel The Ice Storm became a great movie in 1997.

As I write this post, ice has consumed the life of NYC ergo my thoughts are turning to the meaning of ice, of what ice can represent -- beyond the expanding molecules of H2O. 

The Ice Storm is a very funny, very dark story about two families in New Canaan, CT, a wealthy suburb of NYC. The story takes places over Thanksgiving, 1973 where the fates of two families tragically collide while an ice storm bears down on them. Interspersed with the domestic drama -- focused on adultery, alchoholism, teen sex & "swapping", drugs, and lives held together by lies -- are wry commentaries about the popular and political culture of early 1970s America. The country is enjoying movies like The Exorcist and books like Breakfast of Champions while the Watergate scandal envolopes the nation -- the idea that darkness and corruption are endemic to the very soul of the country that the characters live in (the October 1973 Saturday Night Massacre had just occurred, as shown below). 

In a sense, they and us are already doomed.

The novel is a great read although you'll want to take a breather every so often. Moody's writing is funny but also deeply sarcastic and cynical, very "in quotes", often mocking and derisive in tone. The best word to describe the novel is "acerbic." But the humanity in the darkness of these characters' lives cuts through, and that's what makes it a powerful read. And it has an interesting twist at the end. 

The movie is also powerful although a bit more overtly emotional. It was directed by Ang Lee who would later go on to make big hits like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. The cast is amazing -- Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver along with a young Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood. Even more interesting is that this was the film that brought Tobey Magiure, pre-Spiderman, and Katie Holmes, pre-Dawson's Creek/Tom Cruise, into prominence. And it's beautifully directed and shot, the beauty clearly at odds with the ugly lives portrayed.

It also is something of an NYC movie -- this is a story about the commuters, the people who live comfortably outside the city but whose jobs and identities exist there. And at one point the Tobey Maguire character flees to a night of booze and drugs and a failed attempt at sex at an Upper East Side apartment before he flees to Grand Central Terminal before the very real "ice storm" prevents him getting home. 

What The Ice Storm reminds us is that darkness and corruption in the personal and political lives of America is nothing new -- it seems to be our constant, perenial existential state. I'm personally interested in this story because it's set just a few short years before I was actually born -- given me a sort of window into the world that I was soon to join.

And given the current weather both real and political, it's a book and a movie more timely than ever.

Highly recommended.