Steven Bochco RIP

Growing up, I'll admit, I probably watched too much TV -- but that's because TV had some good stuff on it. And, in retrospect, it was changing. 

As a kid, I enjoyed watching all those 80s and 90's shows that appealed to adolescent minds -- The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Cheers, Seinfeld, etc -- but there were also other shows, usually dramas, that were darker and morally complex, which featured flawed characters who sometimes made bad decisions, very often because they were living under immense personal and professional pressure. 

Very often those shows had been created or co-created by a man named Steven Bochco.  He died yesterday at the age of 74.

His big hits in the closing decades of the 20th century were Hill Street Blues, LA Law, Doogie Howser MD, and NYPD Blue. These were brilliantly written, very moving, and often very funny shows that showed the complexity of people living their lives in intense professional environments. In many ways, those shows gave me insights into what it would be like to be a grown up, what the worlds of love and friendship and work might be like, how things could erupt at any moment that might upend people's lives -- and how we weren't always guaranteed happy endings. The plots of episodes would build on each other in the manner of soap operas (but without the cheesiness) and sometimes characters, characters who we had come to love and adore, would -- GASP! -- die. Like, you know, in real life.  

Today we live in "The Golden Age of Television" (TV is the only things in our society that seems to be getting better instead of worse) but it wouldn't have been possible if Bochco hadn't paved the way more than thirty years earlier. To this, we owe him a huge debt.

And Steven Bochco was a NYC boy, a graduate of the High School of Performing Arts. RIP.

P.S. I remember an episode of LA Law that I saw when I was a kid, where the sleazy lawyer Arnie is trying to convince his hapless secretary Roxanne to help him defect to another law firm. She's torn, excited by the opportunity but saying that she doesn't want to leave the old firm because it's her "home" and the people who work there are her "family." Arnie then reminds Roxanne of a couple of times (from previous seasons) when she almost got fired and was also denied a raise. He tells her that, despite her feelings, this firm isn't really her home and the people there aren't really her family. 

That, right there, was what made that show and others by Bochco so great: a mostly unsympathetic character like Arnie offering an underling some very good, brutally honest advice, based on events that had happened earlier in the season. It also taught me, a kid who had never had a job at that point, what the working world was really like. I never forgot that lesson and have remembered well into my long working life. 

Thanks again, Mr Bochco.

Hill Street Blues, LA Law, Doogie Howser MD, and NYPD Blue also had the best opening credits and themes of any TV shows at the time. I can't find one of them but here are the other two:

The Dodgers Connection

Airplane hijackings have an ominous place in American history -- particularly in NYC.

And, if you think about it, hijacking planes is a very recent phenomenon in the annals of crime. For millennia there has been murdering, thievery, pirating, rape, etc., etc. -- but forceably commandeering aircraft in the sky is only as old as the airplane itself. (Hijacking is something the Wright brothers probably didn't consider when they were inventing air flight, just like the creators of the Internet and social media didn't think those inventions would be used to subvert democracy). 

So when was the first airplane hijacking in American history -- and who did it?

Believe it or not, the first such recorded crime was committed by a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers named Len Koeneck. On September 16, 1935, the baseball player had just been released by the team when they were playing in Chicago. Len got on a plane to Detroit where he got good and drunk and attacked the crew. They chained him down and dumped him in Detroit.

Since hijacking had yet to become a feared crime, no one thought it odd that he should then be allowed to get on another flight, this time to Toronto en route to Buffalo (where Len hoped to get back into minor league ball). Again, he got wasted, and this time attacked the pilots and lunged for the controls (apparently hoping to divert the flight directly to Buffalo). A brawl ensued. Len was a big man, hard to fight, and the pilots were frightened that the out of control former Dodger would cause the plane to crash. So one of the pilots slammed him in the head with a fire extinguisher and, due to blunt force trauma, he died. The pilots landed in Toronto and were never charged with a crime.

It's a wild tale: the first hijacking in American history was committed by a professional baseball player -- and was thwarted. And had an NYC connection. 

Crazy. 

Thankfully Bobby Thomson was still to come almost sixteen years later. 

The Last Imus Show

Today was Don Imus's final show.

After almost 50 years on NYC radio he turned off the mike for good. 

You can listen to the very last few minutes of his career here. 

Call Me Al (You Need Help)

When I was a kid, Al D'Amato was political giant in New York. A Republican U.S. Senator, he was known as "Senator Pothole" -- the man who "brought home the bacon", "filled the potholes", and was a tireless advocate for his state. Yes, he was conservative and voted that way in the senate, but he was less of an ideologue and more of an old-fashioned retail politician who's main concern was the state he represented and not his party. You don't see a lot of politicians like that any more, especially Republicans. 

Oh, how times have changed.

In 1998, D'Amato lost his senate seat to Chuck Schumer (who's now the Senate Minority Leader and might be, let's hope, the Majority Leader some day). But that wasn't a problem for Al -- he moved to NYC, become a high-priced lobbyist, and appeared to be living La Dolce Alphonse. Who needs a boring old senate seat when you got cash, bling, booze, broads, parties, and influence? 

I'll take that over being a senator any day. He had a great second act.

Sadly, like so much these days, Al D'Amato has gone wrong. He's no longer Senator Al or living La Dolce Alphonse. Instead, he's an old man going through a nasty divorce and he's better known these days for being kicked off airplanes and being caught yelling at this estranged wife. Apparently, he did just that while she was recovering in a hospital bed.

Poor man. He's clearly troubled. I hope he gets some help and puts this sad chapter behind him.

Classic Mr NYC

Years before he became the darling of Broadway and the culture at large, Alexander Hamilton was still best known as the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. 

And, like so many a public figure since, he had a ... STORMY personal life (pun entirely intended). And he had a temper too.

It got him killed. Insult flew between Hamilton and Vice-President Aaron Burr, leading to their infamous duel over in New Jersey. After "the damn fool" Burr shot him, Hamilton was ferried to Manhattan where he finally died. He was only 47-years old. 

Le sigh. 

Exactly where in Manhattan the great man expired is up too much debate. As I noted in this 2009 post, there's a plaque in Greenwich Village claiming to be the place where he died. Only it's wrong. Hamilton didn't die there! The building or house where he did is long, long gone so no one really know. It's a bit of incorrect history on display in NYC and it was noted here long ago. 

Classic!

Paul McCartney @ March for Our Lives NYC - March 24, 2018

City of Secrets

It's easy to think that secrets are bad -- but we all have them. We all have things about ourselves and our pasts that we don't want to share with others, even those closest to us. 

Some secrets are scary, weird, or gross, and we know better than to reveal them. Where do you think the expression "TMI" came from? 

Others are simply very personal, very meaningful in ways that are unique only to us, and letting  people know about them would lessen the inherent value, even magic, they contain for us. 

And, naturally, some secrets are things we're just ashamed of and wish to forget. Hopefully, perhaps, we've also learned something from them. 

Secrets, mysteries, enigmas -- we all have them. They make us, at least in part, for better or worse, who we are.

And yet, sometimes, we'll reveal our secrets although maybe not for years, decades, or even centuries later. Certain secrets need to germinate, grow inside us, become a fuller and more complete truth before they can be shared with the world. They're like old letters we find at the back of a drawer when we're cleaning out the desk of someone who just died. They're like the story someone tells us about our childhoods or families that didn't know, and that change our impressions (again, for better or worse) about ourselves, our upbringings, and those close to us.

A few NYC-related examples made me think of these kinds of secrets, secrets that we keep but eventually reveal. And they made me think.

First, a fun one, about new tours at the Met Museum where we get the lowdown -- the dirty secrets -- about some of the great museum's finest masterpieces. 

Second, a heartfelt conversation with Mike D from the Beastie Boys about the Brooklyn rap group's history. One of the first albums I ever bought was 1987's License to Ill, their classic anthem "You Gotta Fight For Your Right (To Party)" one of the defining songs of my youth. He talks all about growing up in NYC and what influenced the group -- a group whose music influenced me as a kid. 

Third, a memoir, a secret memoir, that the great NYC photographer Bill Cunningham was working on but never published. It was discovered after his death and is about his life, his career, and the power of photography. He was a quiet man who led an amazing life and we'll be learning secrets about him and the city he loved -- and that loved him back in spades.  

  

When you have a vast old city like NYC there's going to be a secrets around every corner. In the great musical Company, one of the characters sings that "It's a city of strangers." 

Yes, and it's also a City of Secrets -- and always will be. 

Farewell to the I-Man .. I guess ...

Now More than Ever!

When Richard Nixon ran for re-election in 1972 -- in what was then the dirtiest, most crime-ridden campaign before 2016 -- his slogan was "Nixon: Now More than Ever!"

Now, almost half a century later, we find ourselves living with another corrupt, dangerous president who, embarrassingly enough, is also from NYC.

Yet he happens to be just one of the 8.6 million people -- you read that number right -- who call the "Big Apple" home (although he currently doesn't live here, thank the Lord Almighty). 

A new Census Bureau survey indicates that the population of our dear city is bigger than ever.  There are now, literally, more New Yorkers than ever before. In the 400+ history of NYC, never before have this many people lived within the five boroughs. The population has increased by almost 450,000 since 2010. We're now past the halfway point where, pretty soon, this'll be the place where we'll be talking about "nine million stories in the naked city."

But forget the gasbag from NYC who's currently stinking up the White House. Instead, read about this New Yorker, an amazing artist who uses metals and "overlooked materials" in his work. These are the kind of people who make this city great and, in the end, give us hope.

And we need hope -- now more than ever!

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!