Mozart in the Jungle, RIP

I just finished the fourth season of the Amazon show Mozart in the Jungle -- a wonderful comedy about the classical music world of NYC -- and was saddened to find out that this season is the last.

Amazon cancelled the show last month -- along with lots of others.

I didn't blog a lot about this show but it was an incredibly funny and warmhearted look at an industry (classical music) struggling to survive in the crazy world of 21st century culture and NYC. The characters were wonderfully realized, the writing was sharp, the stories were heartfelt, and it was a great look at a slice of life, a little world, in NYC. It was a show about artists, people who love what they do, and are willing sacrifice for it. It was a show about triumphs, disappointments, love, and everything else. It was wonderful.  

Most of all, it featured Bernadette Peters and Malcom McDowell, still going strong after decades in show business. It had a great cast. 

And now it's gone. 

It's gone because Amazon, after firing its previous programming chief in a #MeToo moment, hired a new person who's decided to cancel shows like Mozart (small, sophisticated boutique shows about real people and their struggles) in order to  spend  roughly a $1 billion to re-imagine Lord of the Rings. Apparently, Amazon wants its own Game of Thrones, its own Stranger Things, it's own big-time cultural buzzy hit. It wants a blockbuster.

Le sigh.

Forgive me, but can Amazon really do a better job with LOTR than Peter Jackson did with his movies? Does the culture really need or want this? And while I'm a HUGE fan of GOT and enjoy Stranger Things, I loved that Amazon had all these funky, small, literate shows -- like Mozart, Transparent and One Mississippi. These were original, groundbreaking, history-making shows, shows that truly pushed the art of television forward. 

But business is business, and this was probably inevitable. Still, it's disappointing. So let's just appreciate that for a brief, shining moment there was a place where shows like this could thrive. 

And, like all good things, like all great moments, they come to an end. 

Giuliani: Trump committed a crime but, you know, it's okay

Classic Mr NYC

Several years ago I blogged about "The Secret Places of NYC", the places that exist here that many New Yorkers have never gone to or even heard about. 

One of them was Hart Island, the remote pauper's grave for the city's destitute and dead. For generations penniless New Yorkers were buried there, destined to be forgotten.

But they weren't all forgotten.  

Right now there's a tussle under way between the Mayor's office and the city council about who should control Hart Island. Currently the Corrections Department manages but some on the council want the Parks Department to handle it and also to put it under the supervision of the Chief Medical Examiner. This would, in theory, make it easier for family members to visit the island and locate the remains of their dead family members. Bone fragments are surfacing there and family members want access to them.

It'll be interesting to see how this issue plays out -- and it'll show how we treat the truly lesser among us.

Crew Gardens

Where do the flights crews go, and what do they do, in between flights? 

Where do they live? 

When your job requires you to fly all over the country, and all over the world, day in day out, jumping from time city to city, country to country, time zone to time zone -- what kind of life do you have?

It's a wild and unique life, as you might imagine. So it's probably not a surprise that people who work on flight crews form tight bonds and have developed a community of literal fellow travelers. 

In NYC, between flights, many pilots and flight attendants live in the Kew Gardens section of Queens. Many of them share apartments and homes, sometimes just renting rooms full of bunk beds. And, as you might imagine, they party together, very often at bars that have been serving flight crews for decades.

Hence Kew Gardens is known in the airline industry as "Crew Gardens."

NYC has two major airports so there's a huge number of airline workers who live and work here and live in close proximity. It's not surprising that they have their community here. It's yet another of those little worlds within the giant world of NYC. 

Mentors and Mentees, Good n' Bad

I never had a mentor.

I never had someone say to me, "Hey kid, I'm gonna take a chance on you, show you the ropes, provide you some guidance, introduce you to some interesting people, give you a shot."

I never had someone who took any interest in me or my career or my hopes and dreams. No one ever showed me the way. I've always done everything on my own, unguided, unmoored. I guess no one ever thought I was worth the effort.

But I'm not bitter -- because mentors aren't always a good thing.

Take the example of Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. Roy Cohn was the lawyer for Joe McCarthy, the consigliere of Red Scare of the early 1950s, who also oversaw the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Cohn moved back to NYC after McCarthy's death and spent the rest of his life (he was disbarred and died in 1986) representing all sorts of corrupt figures and people in organized crime. He also worked for Trump's company and was a mentor to the young real estate developer in the 1970s and '80s -- and much of the viciousness we see every day from this loathsome POTUS is the product of his mentoring by Cohn.

And yet ... mentors can be a wonderful thing. 

Lou Reed, one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all times, was a poet at heart. His lyrics were as poetic as his music was harmonious. That's because, as a young man, was mentored by the great poet Delmore Schwartz, a Beat poet turned college professor who taught poetry to Reed as a young man -- and was a lasting influence and inspiration to the then young man.

The mentor/mentee relationship can be, at heart, a wonderful meeting of minds and energy or a toxic brew of egos and darkness. They can give us amazing art -- and ugly politics. They can inspire us -- or drag us down. 

So if, like me, you've always craved a mentor, then, like me, you can feel the lack of one in many ways; and yet, at the same time, you can be glad that you've never let another person have so much power over you -- or your fate.  

Michelle Wolf @ WHCD = Brilliant

"Leaving New York" @ Year One

A year ago this week I published my first novel, an eBook called Leaving New York. It's fun wild road trip about life in 2011, another time of innocence that we didn't know we were living through. 

I published several excerpts from the novel that you can read here. 

It's now priced at $0.99 so you have no excuse not to click on the picture of the cover to right and buy and enjoy your copy today!

Studio 54: Myths, Memories, and Manhattan(s)

I've blogged a lot about Studio 54, the legendary late '70s nightclub. For just a few short years, from 1977-1980 (basically the Carter Administration), it ruled nightlife in NYC and -- and the world -- in a way that no other place has before or since. It has a cultural hold on the popular imagination that defies time and memory.

Why is Studio 54 remembered so long after it's short reign and sharp demise?

Mainly: the stories. Lots and lots of stories about the wildness and debauchery that seemed to go on there night after night. Many of these stories (okay, all) involved celebrities -- and sex, drugs,  boogieing, big hair, and everything else you can imagine.  

But it's also a "last gasp" story about a time and place that was pre-AIDS, pre-Reagan, pre-gentrification, pre-just about everything we know today. It was a time of innocence (that wasn't) that was just about to be lost -- and it led us, for better or worst, to where we all today.

The ironic thing about Studio 54 is that it was actually a failure. It blazed bright for a very short time before the owners went to jail for tax fraud and the party ended.

To paraphrase Donald Trump, I like things that last. Things that endure because they're based on a solid foundation, on something of substance. Something like the Manhattan Cocktail, which I'm sure they served up at Studio 54 and that people still drink today. For me, that's something worth celebrating.  

April 24, 2018

The day of Tuesday, April 24th, in this year of our Lord 2018 anno domini, was not a day of earth-shaking history. But let it be recorded here that, in New York at least, some history was made.

First, a disclosure: for the time ever, your truly attended the taping of a late night show, specifically The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

It was a fun time, with the warm-up act Paul Mercurio doing some very funny stand-up, including having fun with some British tourists and a very impressive older married couple from New Hampshire (one of whom was ex-military) who both happened to be women.

When Mr. Colbert took the stage he, as always, "killed." I was in the balcony and saw the great man himself do his monologue right in my elevated site-line. Then he brought on his first guest: Hank Azaria, the talented actor who has done, according to his estimate, up to 30 voices on The Simpsons during his multi-decade run on the air. Lately there has been much controversy over the character of Apu, the lovable Indian convenience store clerk who Mr. Azaria has voiced for the shows entire run. Many people feel Apu is an offensive stereotype and that the non-Mr. Azaria shouldn't be doing the voice. And Colbert, fearless as he is funny, asked Azaria about this.

Little did I know when I got my tickets a while back that I'd see history being made: Hank Azaria, before my very eyes, before the rest of the world learned about it, said that he'd be willing to step aside from doing the voice of Apu. I've been watching The Simpsons since I was a little kid so to see him say this made it feel like a part of my childhood, and American culture, was ending and changing before my eyes. It was an amazing moment and Hank Azaria was very heartfelt. It's worth watching here because it's something I'll never forget.

And then, a few hours later, more history!

A bunch of special elections were held in New York state yesterday, including here in NYC, and they resulted in the first out-right Democratic majority in this state in years. It's should be an amazing moment, a moment of true Resistance to the horror of the Trump presidency but ... but ... an awful State Senator named Simcha Felder says that he'll keep sitting with the GOP because they've done the most to bribe. Felder is a revolted opportunist so this isn't surprising but, still, these elections send a signal that New York is fighting the Trump agenda tooth and nail.

Rarely is history, the right side of history, made on an otherwise normal night. 

Grateful Dead@Columbia U. Protests in 1968