Review: "Hair" (1979)

Recently I came upon an article in the Hollywood Reporter listing 47 iconic movie and TV sites in NYC. Read it here. (Why it's not an even 50, I can't say.) 

One location that's obviously cited is Central Park which has been used in too many movies and TV shows to count. But one of movies that's not on this list but that makes great use of nation's most famous urban park is Hair from 1979. 

Based on the late 1960s anti-war, anti-establishment hippie Broadway smash, it's about a young man named Claude from Oklahoma who comes to NYC on his way to enlist in the army before shipping to Vietnam. (Why a guy from Oklahoma would need to travel all the way to NYC to go into the army is odd but, hey, it's a movie). Anyhoo, while roaming around Central Park one afternoon he comes upon a group of hippies who befriend him and rock his world. He also gets close to a young beautiful society lady who is bored by her preppy boyfriend and upper class life. Eventually it all goes haywire and Claude goes into the army -- before his friends head out to Nevada, trying to rescue him from going to Vietnam. There's a big, surprising, ultimately tragic twist at the end about the randomness of friendship and fate.

When the musical Hair hit Broadway in 1968, it was a stunning, crazy, and almost dangerous thing. America was mired in the hopeless Vietnam war and the anti-war, hippie movement was gaining steam (Woodstock would be a year later). This musical rocked the culture, a show that was both highly political and highly entertaining -- plus, at various points, the cast members took their clothes off. Richard Nixon, right after he became President, imagined that he'd go to a show and, as soon as cast got naked, he'd get up and walk out, showing his solidarity with the Silent Majority, the squares in the "real America" (fortunately he never did it although it would have been lit). Like A Chorus Line, Rent and Hamilton later on, this show defined its time. 

But when the movie came in 1979, times had changed. Vietnam was over, Watergate and stagflation had and were traumatized the nation, and this movie already seemed like a museum piece. It was of and about another time. Hair the movie was moderately successfull but didn't have the same resonance as it had had on Broadway 11 years earlier. 

The movie was directed by Milos Forman, who had just won Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and would, later on, do so again for Amadeus. Hair is somewhat forgotten from his filmography. The cast is amazingly -- especially a young Treat Williams (RIP) as George, the hippie leader, and Beverly D'Angelo, the bored young deb. Claude is played by John Savage who had just had a huge success in The Deer Hunter. He's a good actor but rather miscast -- he's not really believable as a young Okie. The rest of the mostly unknown cast is quite good, including the late, wonderful Nell Carter singing in the park at night.

Still, there's something about the movie that sorta doesn't work -- it reminds me of the Rent musical, a great, brilliant show put to film that somehow, someway, sucks the life out of the story and score. But I still suggest seeing it for the music, the cast, and beautiful shot Central Park. 

The Scandalous Death of a NYC Vice-President

On this date 47 years ago, the 41st Vice-President of the United States, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, died of a heart attack. He was 70.

"Rocky", as he was known, was the scion of one of the richest families on Earth, and had been the governor of New York State from 1959 to 1973. His legacy in this city and state was significant, as I blogged about many years ago. In 1974 he became Vice-President after President Nixon had resigned and Gerald Ford became president. Rockefeller left office in 1977 and returned to NYC.

Two years later he was dead.

On the night of January 26, 1979, it was announced, as you'll see below, that he had died in his office at Rockefeller Center while working on a book in the presence of his bodyguard.

Ehhh ... not really.

Actually Rocky was in an East Side townhouse that he owned with his secretary Megan Marshack. This townhouse appears to have been a very classy love nest. Rocky and Megan were banging on the floor -- apparently she was riding him cowgirl when the old man had a heart attack. Now she obviously should have called 911 right away as that might have saved his life. But no. Instead she made a series of phone calls to her psychiatrist and her friend who rushed over to the townhouse. Together, apparently, they got Rocky dressed and then the friend called 911. But it was too late. The mighty Rocky -- billionaire, governor, Vice-President, titan of his times -- had died in the most tawdry way possible.

For days and weeks afterwards the scandal fascinated the NYC tabloids. But then ... it just kind of petered out. 

The Rockefeller's used their wealth and power to cover it up quite effectively. Rocky was creamated the very next day so no autopsy was performed. Megan Marshak, and presumably her friend, signed NDAs and were probably paid off. Also, it helped that at the same time this scandal was unfolding there was a revolution going on in Iran and that grabbed the headlines. And, of course, Rocky was out of office so this incident had no real political implications.

There were no criminal charges. No arrests. No lawsuits. No legal actions of any kind. No tell-all books or teary interviews or multi-part true crime documentaries. 

Amazingly, Megan Marshak remained quiet until her death in October 2024. She lived a relatively productive, and regular life. She worked at CBS News in NYC for almost 20 years before moving to Calfornia and living there until her death. She married later in life, had no children, and died in relative obscurity. Interestingly she was also 70 years old when she died, the same age as the great man she shtupped to death.

Half a century later, most New Yorkers probably haven't heard of Nelson Rockefeller much less the scandalous way that he left this mortal coil.

Mayor Z Talks Snow

As NYC prepares for a big snowstorm this weekend, our new mayor is on the case!

This is the first big test of his mayoralty and no doubt the tabloids and the Republicans want him to fail -- so it's good to see Mayor Z is preparing, communicating, and ready to go as this storm hits. 

A month in, it's interesting to see what a quiet, competent, nose-to-the-grindstone leader he's been. It's a HUUUUGE relief from the chaos of Eric Adams.

And talking about our former, unmissed mayor, the great NYC journalist Erroll Louis has written an interesting article about how the full scale of corruption in the Adams administration is still unknown. Even though he was only in office for four years, he number of people who worked for Adams that got indicted, the number of sleazy deals and activities, is breathtaking. It remind me of Nixon -- even years, decades after he resigned in disgrace, documents and tapes kept coming out revealing he was even worse that we knew. I'm sure the same is true of Eric Adams. 

Farewell to the Lion: Charlie Rangel RIP

Former US Representative Charles Rangel, who represented Harlem in Congress for nearly half-a-century, from 1971 to 2017, has died. He was 94.

Known as the Lion of Lennox Avenue, Rangel's career bridged the local politics of Harlem and NYC, and the vast power of the American government.

He was not only part of the Gang of Four that consolidated black political power in NYC but he also had the ear of mayors, governors, and presidents from both political parties for decades. He served on the Judiciary Committee in 1974, voting to impeach President Nixon for Watergate.

When Charlie Rangel spoke, people listened. He was a giant, truly a lion. 

I remember many years ago, Rangel was on the CNN political chat show Crossfire. Rangel was debating some issue against the conservative journalist Robert Novak. Novak was an asshole. He was super right-wing, he hated everybody, respected no one, trash talked just about everyone. But to Charlie Rangel he said, "Congressman, you know how much I respect you."

Now that's power. 

I'm currently watching the mini-serie The Leopard on Netflix, about a noble Sicilian family losing power in the 1860s during the Resorgimento, the unification of Itaty. The final lines are: "We were the Leopard, the lions; those who'll take our places will be little jackals, hyenas ..."

With the passing of Charlie Rangel, never has that been more true than today.

Once Upon a Time in Greenwich Village ... or ... Where Watergate Began

One fine day -- around noon on March 6th, 1970 to be exact, nearly 55 years ago -- a townhouse located at 18 West 11th Street exploded. In this beautiful, serene part of Greenwich Village, an unimaginable act of terror had occurred.

But not really. The explosion was an accident. 

Inside several young people who were part of the left-wing terrorist group the Weather Underground had been building bombs. They were planning to cross the river and attack Fort Dix in New Jersey, then Columbia University, but these young, brash, radicals had no experience handling explosives -- and tragedy ensued.

This very public act of (accidental) domestic terrorism freaked the city out -- as well as the White House of President Richard Nixon. And it set off a chain reaction that eventually led to the first Presidential resignation in American history.

In the aftermath of the Greenwich Village explosion, a young White House aide named Tom Huston wrote a 43-page memo. Dubbed the Huston Plan, it outlined how the US government should fight back against groups like the Weather Underground -- including break-ins, kidnapping, intercepting mail, wiretapping, blackmail, psy-ops, all kind of nasty and ILLEGAL stuff. Huston presented his plan to then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. No stranger to the dark arts of surveillance and disruption, Hoover actually rejected the plan -- he didn't want his agents to be put into a position where they might get arrested by local law enforcement and, as an old man, he no longer had the stomach to explain this kind of stuff to Congress. So he dismissed the Huston Plan and that, so it seemed, was that.

Nixon was pissed. He didn't want any more domestic terrorism on his watch and he ordered the plan implemented anyway -- until he backed off. But the idea that his White House might have to freelance on its own to stop America's domestic enemies remained a widely held belief amongst All the President's Men.

A year later, in April 1971, the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the press. This massive, secret report detailed how the United States had gotten mired in the Vietnam War and lied about being able to win an unwinnable war. The Republican President Nixon, at first, actually was delighted about the leak -- the Pentagon Papers indicted Nixon's two Democratic Presidential predecessors, JFK and LBJ, over their handling of the war -- and viewed it as a political boon for him. But then his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, told him that if the Communist Russian and Chinese governments saw that someone could leak secret information to the press and get away with it they would think that he, Nixon, was a "weakling." 

Nixon flipped out. He ordered that the man who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press, a former Pentagon aide named Daniel Ellsberg, be prosecuted or neutralized. And Nixon didn't want anymore leaks or terrorism or anything like it -- thus the White House Plumbers, a secret group of former FBI and CIA agents, to do dirty jobs for the White House to "plug" the leaks.

In the fall of 1971 two Plumbers -- G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt -- broke into the Los Angeles office of Daniel Ellsberg psychiatrist to find information about him that they could use for blackmail. They found nothing and ended up smashing up the doc's office. They returned to the White House empty handed, the Plumbers were disbanded.

But what should have been the end of the story was only the beginning. 

Hunt and Liddy were sent to the Nixon reelection committee called CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the president). Even though this two dopes had messed up their previous assignment, the geniuses at CREEP decided to put them in charge of "black advance" -- spying in Nixon's potential Democratic opponents and sabatoge their campaigns. Eventually this led to Hunt and Liddy and a group of Cubans breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee on June 17, 1972. Thus Watergate, the most consequential political scandal began. And two years and two months later, on August 9, 1974, Nixon would resign the presidency.

It's hard to realize that such momentous history happened within less than five years in the early 1970s. And obviously Watergate is the famous scandal in history.

The seeds of this most American tragedy weren't planted in the White House or even in Washington, DC -- it happened here on the streets of NYC, where history is always happening, once upon a time. 

The Business They Chose

More than once or twice I've blogged about the oddity that is Mayor Eric Adams -- you can read all about it here, no need to rehash it.

This new article elaborates more on this oddness, calling him the "chaos mayor."

But more than cataloguing the mayor's chaotic reign, it also shows how Adams, like other prominent politicians of this era, simply have no idea whatsoever of what it means to be a leader. They spend their time blaming others for their problems, they use overheated crises-ridden rhetoric, they constantly attack the press as being out to get them, and they openly engage in self-pity.

Poor me! Poor me! Everyone's mean to me, I'm a victim, all these conspiracies and dark forces are out to get me! 

It's not like they have power or something. 

In Adams' case, it comes down to his handling of the migrant problem. When they started coming into NYC, Adams showed that he was overwhelmed and unable to handle it. He said this problem was a "crises" that would "destroy New York City" and that we were about to "lose" the city. When the press asked him how he plans to handle this problem, he told others that they had to provide the answers about how to handle the problem. He demanded severe budget cuts in order to handle the problem -- even though the city is running surplus. Instead of projecting confidence in his skills and in his administration's ability to handle this problem, he basically said "I can't handle it! Oh my god, the city is going down, you tell me how to fix it!" 

Real leaders rush into a crises, come up with a plan, handle it in a pragmatic and confident manner, restore order, and fix it. Like that old guy in Godfather II, leaders say "This is the business we've chosen!" and get on with the job, showing that they're in charge and getting things under control. They don't whine and complain, attack their critics and demand pity. They work -- and the positive results speak for themselves and their leadership abilities.

You see this same problem with Trump --- the constant consipiracies, the constant attacks on critics, the constant self-pity. The former British Prime Minster Liz Truss, who managed to the screw up the UK economy in six weeks so badly that her own party kicked her out of office, is now out complaining that the Bank of England and the "blob" that is the UK Civil Service is responsible for her fall -- and not her own decisions. She was Prime Minister when the Queen died in 2022 and apparently Ms. Truss's reaction to this was "Why me?" Can you friggin' believe that?

It wasn't always like this. Leaders led and did the job. Jimmy Carter didn't complain, deflect, or demand pity during the Iran Hostage Crises. Reagan didn't either during Iran Contra. My God, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton got impeached and still worked hard! 

Eric Adams, like Trump and Truss and others, doesn't seem to get this. They think serving in high office is an excuse either to live the high life or execute ideological agendas -- not govern, not serve the public. And when things don't go their way, instead of sucking it up and getting to work, they WAAAAAHHHHH! 

The thing is, the public is much smarter than these folks. Trump lost the presidency (and hopefully will again), Truss was kicked out, and Adams looks like he'll lose next year.

The people want leaders and problem solvers -- not showboating, self-pitying egomaniacs. You chose this business, get it done.

The Presidents and the Kings

On December 21st, 1970, the President Richard Nixon met Elvis Presley, the King of Rock'n'Roll, in the Oval Office: 

Two years later, on December 19th, 1972, President Nixon had a brief condolence phone call with a very young Senator-elect Joe Biden who had just lost his wife and daughter in a horrific accident:

Nixon would resign just under two years later after the Watergate scandal and Biden would go on to serve as a US Senator, Vice-President, and President for the next 52 years. 

And on April 26, 2024, President Biden visited Howard Stern, the King of All Media, in his studio where he talked about his life, career, and the tragedies and triumphs that shaped his life:

All I can say is that, after listening to this interview and in this very crazy world, we're really lucky to have Joe Biden in the White House and Howard Stern on the airwaves. They keep us decent, they keep us sane. 

Presidential Deaths in NYC

Thirty years ago today, right here in NYC, the 37th President of the United States Richard Nixon died at the age of 81.

Like many, Nixon has always fascinated me -- he was perhaps one of the smartest people ever to become president and his rise from poverty in California to the heights of American power is truly astonishing. But he was so paranoid, so full of rage and anger, that he never seemed to enjoy his historic success or where his brilliant mind had taken him in life. Ultimately his rage and paranoia overwhelmed his genius and accomplishments, leading to his presidential and reputational demise. 

I've written a lot about the Nixon paradox over the years and, even when he died thirty years ago, people were trying to psychoanalize him.

But I come not to praise or criticize Richard Nixon but to bury him (again) along with the other US Presidents who have died in NYC. Nixon is the most recent of four presidents who expired within the five boroughs. The others are:

- James Monroe, 5th US President, died in NYC on July 4th, 1831 from heart failure at the age of 73. 

- Chester Arthur, 21st US President, died in NYC on November 18th, 1886 from a stroke at the age of 57. He's also only one of two presidents (the other being George Washington) who took the oath of office in NYC as well. 

- Herbert Hoover, 31st US President, died in NYC on October 20th, 1964 from an internal hemorrhage at the age of 90.

I won't speculate if any of the current living presidents will pass away in NYC but I can't think of a better place for someone who achieved America's highest office to go into their permament reward.  

And how appropriate that a criminal case against another former president is opening today in NYC on the anniversary of the death of this other criminal president -- an accountability that Nixon himself managed to avoid. 

Henry In the Heights

Lin Manuel-Miranda is probably the most famous son of Washington Heights.

The other is Henry Kissinger.

The 1970s US Secretary of State, who died at age 100, was a refugee from Nazi Germany when his family settled in Washington Heights in 1938. Henry only lived there a few years, going to George Washington High School (other alumni include Alan Greenspan, Harry Belefonte, Maria Callas, Ronnie Spector, and Manny Ramirez) before heading off to Harvard and foreign policy fame and fortune.

Amazingly, Kissinger's mother lived in Washington Heights until she died in 1998!

After Kissinger's historic run as Presidents Nixon and Ford's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State from 1969 to 1977, Kissinger returned to NYC and lived in style as a foreign policy "consultant" and advisor, a sort of international wise man. He was capital-R Respectable, an icon of the high society circuit, and consulted by Presidents of both parties for his foreign policy wisdom -- mainly due to his role in opening US relations with China in 1972. 

Of course, during his time in power, Henry also oversaw the carpet bombing of Cambodia, the defeat in Vietnam, and encouraged right-wing coups in Chile and Argentina that led to decades of dictatorship -- he was responsible for an incalculable number of deaths. His fans say that he was simply a practitioner of realpolitick, seeing the world as it is, not as we want it to be, and acting accordingly. His detractors say he was a war criminal who should have stood trial.

Well, whatever his legacy, Henry Kissinger was a child of NYC who made good in order to do bad.

Richard Nixon Talks Mets Baseball in 1987

Nelson Rockefeller Sworn in as 41st Vice-President -- December 19, 1974

Before a certain orange failed businessman/reality show buffoon became President of these United States on January 20, 2017 (mercifully evicted from office on January 20, 2021), the last New Yorker to serve in high office was Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller -- or Rocky.

Scion of one of the richest and most famous families on Earth, Nelson Rockefeller was a four-term Governor of New York State, first elected in 1958 before resigning in late 1973. A year later, however, Rocky was "called to serve" as Vice-President by President Gerald Ford.

Rockefeller's journey to the Vice-Presidency remains the most dramatic in history. In the 1960s, while Governor, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination multiple-times -- and lost. His presidential dreams were squashed, in large part, by his divorce and subsequent re-marriage to "Happy", this at a time when divorce was more a political liability than it is now. Bored as Governor, his presidential dreams dashed, Rockefeller finally quit as Governor to return to a private and luxurious life.

But history wasn't done with him yet. The Watergate scandal subsumed the country and the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1973, just a couple of months before Rockefeller quit as New York Governor, Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal. Agnew was replaced as VP by Gerald Ford, a genial Congressman from Michigan. And then, even more dramatically, in August 1974, Nixon quit as president under threat of impeachment and removal from office. Ford became president and, just like Nixon before, he needed a VP -- and so he called Rocky.

This special report of his swearing-in late 1974 is amazing, a glimpse at an extraordinary moment in time as the last New Yorker to become Vice-President takes office. Rocky's time at the top would be brief -- in 1976, Ford would dump him from the presidential ticket and Rocky would retire from politics completely. He returned to NYC, lived in his Upper East Side townhouse, and died in 1979 while banging his secretary -- oh, no, sorry, "working on his memoirs."

Enjoy.  

Moody NYC

The New York Times recently published a big article about ... how people are feeling.

About how they feel about NYC and their lives in it.

The "paper of record" wanted to gauge the "mood" of a city of 8.8 million people by speaking to a number of folks you could literally count on your hands and, from their anecdotes, come to a striking broad-based conclusion about the "mood" of all the residents of the nation's biggest metropolis. (Oh, they spoke to people in each of the five boroughs so I guess that makes it more "broad-based.")

The "mood" appears to be that everyone is freaking out about crime, everything is terrible, and no one can afford to live here. This attitude is so completely at odds with the reality of the evidence and facts on the ground -- crime remains at historic lows and more people live here than ever before -- that I'm stumped at the most respected paper in the city and country passing this off as journalism.

This kind of journalism is weird -- you never saw it before until the age of the Internet and social media. But perhaps there is something in the air in NYC that's making everything feel a little ... off.

Take, for example, our wacky mayor.

It turns out that he has a secret office in Brooklyn, right across the bridge from City Hall in Manhattan. This is honestly no big deal, mayor's have had hideout offices before (heck, Nixon famously didn't work in the Oval Office but in a little one off the Old Executive Office Building), but for some reason Mayor Adams kept it a secret for reasons that make no sense at all. Adams does a lot of weird things like hiring ethically dubious people, insulting low-skilled workers, lying about being a vegan, not being clear about where he lives, reiterating that crime is at historic highs when it's NOT ... and now this.

Adams is just a very weird dude and the city must be feeling very weird to have elected him. When you're the mayor of New York City, you are one of the most covered and criticized public officials in the country but the reality of this part of the job seems to have caught him entirely be surprise. He's secretive and ellusive and, honestly, I have no problem with wanting to maintain your privacy but, well, when you decide you want to be the mayor this isn't really going to be possible. But don't tell him that. 

So the mood in NYC right now is, in my humble opinion, contradictory -- people hate it here but more people than ever want to live here, the mayor doesn't want the press to cover him but wants to be seen everywhere, and day is night, up is down, and left is right.

So, honestly, my mood, the mood of this particular New Yorker, is confused and exhausted.  

Review: "The Gilded Age" (2022)

A decade ago the British TV show Downton Abbey took the world by storm. The tale of a noble family on a huge estate and their servants in the nineteen-teens and twenties -- think Upstairs, Downstairs meets Brideshead Revisited -- became everyone's favorite soap opera, a mix of historical grandeur combined with modern morality.

Downton Abbey was created by Julian Fellowes whose new show, much like his previous one, is a period piece set in the world of the rich and those who serve them. 

Set in New York City in 1882, The Gilded Age concerns two families who live across the street from each other (East 61st Street, precisely) but who live in totally different worlds -- the Old New York, Old Money Brooks vs. the social-climbing, New Money Russells. The story kicks off with Marian, the daughter of the sisters Ada and Agnes Brooks' estranged dead brother, coming to live with them in their NYC townhouse from Pennsylvania. On her way to the city, she meets Peggy who, for a variety of convenient reasons, moves in with Marian and her aunts. Peggy is a child of a black enclave in Brooklyn who wants to become a writer -- and who gets a job as a secretary to Agnes, and who must negotiate life as a black woman in white patriarchal world. Meanwhile, across the street, the railroad-rich but socially-poor Russells move into their newly constructed, Stanford B. White-designed, overly decorated mansion and throw a huge "mansion warming" party (the house is even derisively called "a folly"). It is their attempt to win over New York "society" and it fails completely -- almost no one comes. But when Marian meets Larry, the Russell's oldest son, well ... let's just say that things will get interesting.

I've only seen the pilot for this show so I can't tell if it'll be great or awful. So far the reviews of The Gilded Age have been mixed. It has the potential to be a beautiful, deeply-felt drama exploring the toxic mix of class and race, sex and society, power and submission. Fellowes is a very talented writer who creates great characters, snappy dialogue, and beautifully executed scenes. But, as in Downton, his observations about class and money and society are very heavy-handed and not subtle at all ("You're Old New York, don't forget it" is a real line -- okay then!). If it goes down that road, then the show will be a total bore.

However, what absolutely makes this show worth watching is the cast -- after all, Agnes and Ada are played by Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon and, honestly, I wish the show was just about them and no one else. Marian is played by someone named Louisa Jacobson who is very good (which is not surprising considering that she's Meryl Streep's daughter). The show is littered with Broadway actors like Donna Murphy and my personal favorite Audra McDonald and they are all great. And even Simon Jones, who forty-year ago this month was blazing the screens with Jeremy Irons in Brideshead Revisited, plays the Brooks' long-serving English butler. The cast along will keep me coming back. 

I just hope the storylines are as good as the actors. 

But it is wonderful to see a drama set during a fascinating period of New York City history that isn't often put on the screen. The Gilded Age reminds us that social striving, greed, lust, and all the attendant vagaries thereof, are nothing new. They are as old as Old New York.

And if you want to learn more about the real "gilded age" in NYC, go here and see below. 

Dick Gottfried Says Goodbye

Assemblyman Dick Gottfried, who has represented the West Side of Manhattan in Albany for 52 years, will retire at the end of 2022. He's the longest-serving legislator in New York State history, a link to this city's and state's past. 

When he entered the Assembly as a twenty-something, Richard Nixon was President, Nelson Rockefeller was Governor, and John Lindsay was Mayor. The Watergate scandal was two years in the future, the NYC fiscal crises was 5 years in the future (as was Saturday Night Live), Son of Sam was 6 six years in the future, and 9/11 and COVID-19 were 30 and 50 years in the future. His long career was a part of and an undercurrent of this history, a source of stability in tumultuous times.

Politicians like Dick Gottfried are increasingly rare these days in that he was a public servant as much as a politician. He didn't want glory, fame, or money, and he didn't get into nasty scandals or say bombastic things -- he just served his constituents, faithfully and honestly and thoughtfully, for more than half-a-century. This city and state were lucky to have him and we can only hope that we'll get more public servants like him in elected office in the future. 

Review: "The Equalizer" Then & Now

In the late 1980s one of the more curious drama shows of the decade popped up on network TV: The Equalizer.

Set in modern-day NYC, it was a show about a mysterious person with a secretive past -- it is understood that he worked for the CIA or MI6, simply referred to as "the agency" or "the company", some kind of spooky blackbag-jobbing government outfit -- who is now trying to redeem himself by using his vaguely criminal skills to help out ordinary people who find themselves in difficult situations. It was basically a serial with lots of stand-alone episodes, one-and-done storylines, following this flawed hero helping flawed people find justice that would otherwise be denied to them by a corrupt system.

He was, basically, a classy, super-smart, and well-spoken vigilante.

The original Equalizer ran from 1985-1989 and starred a British actor named Edward Woodward whose career was mostly in theater. This show was one of his only American projects and it made him, for a while, an unlikely star. It was one of the only shows made in NYC during this time, a sort of precursor to the decades-long run of Law & Order shows -- fictional crimes being solved by great actors on the real-life streets of NYC. During its short run, a huge array of actors with big careers ahead of them appeared on the show: Macauley Culkin, Kevin Spacey, Steve Buscemi, JT Walsh, one of the Beastie Boys, William H. Macy, Stanley Tucci, Cynthia Nixon, Tony Shalhoub, Ving Rhames, Chris Cooper, Oliver Platt, Christine Baranski, and many more. The Equalizer was never a huge show, it was one of those quiet sleeper hits that ran for a few years before vanishing completely. But then ...

... it had a second act. In 2014 a movie version of The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington came out and was a big hit. A 2018 sequel was also a big hit. And now ... 

... The Equalizer is back on TV! Back to returning justice on the streets of modern-day NYC only this time, instead of being an old British guy, The Equalizer is ... drumroll ... Queen Latifah! Who doesn't love her?

So this moderately popular NYC show that went off the air in 1989 became a big hit movie 25 years later and now a new show. And went from being an old English white dude to a funky American black lady. How weird is that? How great is that? Only in NYC.

In Search of Exiles

One-hundred years ago tonight Prince Edward of the United Kingdom was honored with a big dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. He was concluding a long North American tour, previously visiting Canada and Washington DC, and was closing it out in grand style in NYC. At this moment in time, Edward was at the center of the world -- the handsome young star of the royal family, icon of the British Empire, and a future King. The world genuflected to him, he was beloved and  feted everywhere he went -- and it was impossible to imagine on this night 100 years ago that, less than 20 years later, he would become one of the most famous exiles in history.

1919 was a turning point in world history -- a year after the end of the War to End All Wars, WWI,  known then as the Great War. The world was putting itself back to together, trying to pick up the spiritual and literal rubble of the most useless, insane act of violence in world history. The culture was changing too, casting off the crusty old world Edwardian culture and embracing the world of Dadaism and post-structuralism. This brilliant podcast from WNYC is all about how the "shell shock" of the war changed the culture of the world forever.

As for Edward himself, he would return to the Waldorf many years after 1919. He had abdicated the throne, a fallen man, exiled from his country and family, shacking up with his twice-divorced American wife, uninvited to his niece's wedding and coronation. In the new season of The Crown, Edward is shown at the end of his life in 1972, still showing a great, almost masochistic love for the family and monarchy that had doomed him into exile. (Right now, 100 years later, that niece, Queen Elizabeth II, would surely love to exile her son Prince Andrew after his bizarre TV interview where he spoke, badly, about his friendship with the late NYC financier/predator Jeffrey Epstein. While he probably won't be forced into literal exile like Edward was, Andrew probably will be in a kind of functional exile from now on. He shamed himself, and now his family and his country want little to do with him. So into the wasteland of exile he goes.)

But exile isn't just for royalty! In the era of #MeToo, any number of formerly prominent men are being exiled from their careers and social lives, banished from their professional circles and polite society. Liked Prince Edward 100 years, they used to exist at the center of things, they were the honored guests in powerful worlds -- only to be cast out, shunned, told to take a physical and reputational hike.

What does it mean to be an exile? To be banished from a place or a group of people? It means, most simply, to occupy a negative space -- not to live but simply to exist in a place far away (literally and otherwise)  from where you want to be. It means your invitation has been rescinded, your credentials revoked, your entry badge confiscated -- you're persona non grata in a place where you were once very ... persona grata. In short: it means you go from being wanted to unwanted.

What's more painful than that?

Here's another great example of a famous exile.

The great NYC journalist Pete Hamill, in late 1974, visited San Clemente, California in search of Richard Nixon. Two years earlier Nixon had won the biggest landslide in American presidential history -- he carried 49 states! -- and was as popular and powerful as any president had ever been. Nixon strode the world stage like a colossus, opening diplomatic relations with China, limiting nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union, and winding down the war in Vietnam. And then ... in 1973 and 1974, the Watergate scandal consumed him, forcing him to resign in August 1974 and into exile in California. In this article, Hamill roams around the area near Nixon's home, talking to people there about whether or not they have seen America's most famous exile (they hadn't), wondering about the state of mind of a man who very recently had not only lived in the White House but who also seemed to have the literal world at his feet -- and was now a hermit in a small Southern California town, hidden not only from the world he used to dominate but from his very own neighbors.

Later on Nixon would move to NYC (he died here in 1994), not quite as reviled as he had once been but still an exile from the world -- the political world -- that he had once ruled.

But being exile isn't just an existential state, it's more a state of mind. Being an exile is defined by a never-ending "wanting", a non-stop desire to have or be something you once had or were, now gone and locked away from you. It's defined by the aforementioned negative space, by a perennial emotional and mental sense of absence.

Being an exile is like being a living void, a sort of real-life zombie.  

Right now, there are hearings going on in DC about whether or not Donald Trump, the most vile president in US history, should be impeached. Maybe he will be, maybe he won't. But we can only hope that this modern day monster will be one day become an exile too, banned not only from the White House and political world but from the America's consciousness. Hopefully he will suffer a poitical and reputional fate, a total and complete exile, as bad as the ones Edward VIII and Richard Nixon and many others have suffered.

Subway Impeachment: New Yorker vs. New Yorker in DC Faceoff

This has to be unprecedented.

The President of the United States, Donnie Trump, is from NYC and is under threat of impeachment (if the latest batch of court filings mean anything) for directing his lawyer to coordinate illegal payments to former mistresses in order to buy their silence right before his election. This violates campaign finance laws and, by any right, should lead to his impeachment and removal.

And if that happens? If the POTUS is impeached?

The first step in the process falls to the House Judiciary Committee, who would have to vote to recommend impeachment to the whole House before they could vote to impeach the POTUS and send him to trial in the Senate. In 1974, this same committee recommended sending articles of impeachment to the Senate and, shortly thereafter, President Nixon resigned (when it became clear that the whole House would vote to impeach and the Senate would vote to convict/remove). If a similar amount of political pressure can be mustered, then a vote by this committee could lead to Trump's premature exit from the Oval Office (and I'm sure it wouldn't be the first thing he's done prematurely). 

The person who will chair the House Judiciary in 2019 and possibly to lead to Trump's premature evacuation from power will is another guy from NYC -- Congressman Jerrold Nadler from Manhattan. He's been in Congress for over 25 years and has enormous clout, respect, and, very soon, power. And Donald Trump's fate, one way or another, will fall into this hands next year.

As mentioned, this has to be unprecedented -- a New York President under threat of removal by New York Congressman. 

If it comes to this, it'll be the biggest "subway" event in American history, making any kind of "subway series" seem like nothing at all. 

Nixon & George Bush: December 31, 1971

Former President George H.W. Bush died this weekend. He was the first president I remember seeing elected and taking office (I was too young to remember the Carter presidency or the early days of Reagan's). Bush was VP and President for most of my childhood, a constant presence, until he was suddenly defeated by Bill Clinton and vanished from public view for a long time. 

Now he's gone for good, and he had a long, incredible life -- a true American story (whatever you thought of him).

Bush lived in NYC in the very early 1970s when he was the UN Ambassador under President Nixon. (He only did the job for two years before being recalled to DC to head the Republican National Committee.) This phone call between the then-current and future presidents from New Year's Eve 1971 is fascinating (it was recorded on the very same taping system that would bring Nixon down 

a few years later but, at this moment, the Watergate break-in hadn't happened yet).

Nixon calls Bush at the ambassador's residence at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC (the same hotel where I spent my wedding night decades later) and wishes him a "happy new year." Bush is overwhelmed by Nixon's thoughtfulness to call. Nixon asks him how he likes "fighting that New York society crowd" and Bush says that he hates the "New York society crowd" and he doesn't like his family living in NYC but that he is "ensconced in royal splendor", a reference to life at the Waldorf.

I wonder if Bush was just saying that to play up to Nixon's well-known resentment of "New York society" i.e. rich liberal Jewish people -- I hope that's the case. Either way, it's fascinating to listen to this moment in history between two momentous historical figures.

Mr NYC in California

This is another "blast from the past", my memories of traveling in California in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

I've actually been there several times and love, love, love it. Sadly I haven't been in over 15 years but, here they are, my favorite places to go and things to do that, if you ever find yourself in the Golden State, you might enjoy as well:

Los Angeles: I didn't spend a lot of time there but my main memories of LA were doing the Universal Studios tour (got to see the backlot where Back to the Future was shot) and the Nixon Museum (where they sanitize the disgraced man's legacy). I also went to the taping for the pilot of a very bad TV show where the warm up comedian was funnier than the actual show.  

The best part of LA -- leaving it, and driving up to Northern California. We drove along the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the most mind-blowing vistas in the world. We also saw Monterey and Carmel, two gorgeous towns between the state's two major cities (Clint Eastwood himself was Mayor of Carmel at one time). 

San Francisco: the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood was interesting. This was ground zero for the counter-culture, where The Greatful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and other great bands came to define the 1960s and American rebellion. My brother, his friend, and I walked around there on a Sunday night and we saw lots of young white homeless people who asked us for money for "kitty food." Then we went into an ice cream store where the young lady behind the counter wore just overalls and sunglasses -- at 9 PM at night. I don't remember the flavor of ice cream I ordered but I do recall her telling me that my selection was "mellow." I kid you not, this happened. I don't remember much of the food I ate in SF but the Stinking Rose restaurant was amazing. It's a place where they serve garlic on everything so be sure to go with people who really like you. Palo Alto: I loved Antonio’s Nuthouse, an “iconic” bar with lots of peanuts on the ground. There was also a gorgeous movie revival house (don't remember the name) there where we saw a screening of Lawrence of Arabia. Before the show there was a man playing music on a beautifully restored organ.

The Coppola ranch is something you must see. It is, obviously, gorgeous, and you can buy lots of great wine from the vineyard there. Also, if you're a big fan of Coppola's movies, you can see the desk from The Godfather, the "solid gold telephone" from II, surfboards from Apocalypse Now, and the great man's Oscars and Palm D'Or awards.

Santa Cruz: this area is near SF and is, obviously, stunning. I remember eating two great breakfasts there: one a veranda of a beautiful house and another at a restaurant on the end of a pier, the moutains surrounding us. 

San Simeon or the ”Hearst Castle”: this is the great estate built by William Randolf Hearst that inspired Xanadu from "Citizen Kane”. The Castle is an incredible marble  monument to aquisition, paintings and fabrics adorning every wall. There are swimming pools everywhere where Heart, Marion Davies, Charlie Chaplin and others used to party. The estate is massive, full of wild animals, and is roughly half the size of Rhode Island -- it's that big. San Simeon is a monument to American nobility -- an man-made tribute of a man to himself. I hope to return to California at some point in the future to see a lot more. And, when I do, I can't wait to blog all about it. 

P.S. California has a brand new Governor, Gavin Newsom, who was once mayor of San Fracisco and will take office in January.

P.P.S. Here's an interesting thing that happened to me in California: on my last night in LA, I returned late to the place where I was staying when I got a message from my mom that a "large package" had arrived from the top college I had applied to. The next morning, on a payphone at LAX next to the gate for my flight home, my dad told me over the phone that I'd been accepted. It was a life-changing moment -- a golden moment in the Golden State. 

... you know it ain't easy

Challenging power isn't easy -- power, after all, is called power for a reason: it's the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others and the course of events. It's the ability "to do" vs. "to want." We all "want" but few of us can "do" because we lack the ability. 

To challenge that ability, to try and take that ability away from someone, is brutally difficult and often fails. Power armors itself, ready to defend and strike its challengers at all times -- but sometimes, just sometimes, challengers find a chink in that armor, then defeat and capture it.

Such is what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did last month. Such is what Elizabeth Holtzman did in 1972 (Ocasio-Cortez beat a twenty-year incumbent and Holtzman beat a fifty-year incumbent). Such is what Julia Salazar is trying to do in September. Finding the chink, defeating the power, taking it over -- power doesn't yield without a fight but it can be beaten ... sometimes. Cynthia Nixon is trying to do it to Andrew Cuomo but it'll hard.

And what are the results from who has power vs. who doesn't?

Take for example, the "arc tunnel" that Governor Christie killed back in 2010 and that President Trump is trying to kill today. They don't want it for political reasons and used and are using their power to stop it. They people who do want it don't have the power -- or not enough. And so nothing gets done (for now). 

Same with the "pied-a-terre" tax that would apply to rich people who own but don't live in their NYC real estate as their primary residence. This tax would generate massive revenue for the city to fund affordable housing. But rich people, powerful people, don't want it so it's not happening (not now, at least).

That's why it's very important for us not only to give power to people we believe in but also to people who have the ability (that buzz word again) to find the chink in the armor of those other powerful people who impede progress and the common good.

Power isn't just about winning elections -- it's about having the ability to see where you can find it or steal it and, most of all, use it. What else is power for?