Mr NYC in Boston

For reasons that defy logic and simple comprehension, in my nearly half-century wandering the earth, and despite travelling multiple times to Europe, Asia, and all over the USA ... I never made it to the city of Boston, just a few hours away.

Last month -- finally! -- I did.  

And I loved it! It's a great town, and very much an East Coast city -- compact, dense, highly walkable, history bursting out of every corner. Having spent time in Midwestern (like St. Louis) and Western cities (like Kansas City, Denver, and Phoenix), which are much more spread out, much less dense, much less walkable, much more industrial, and much less historic, Boston shares an obvious kinship with NYC but also feels distinct with a much more British, much more Old World feel.

I did and saw a lot when I was there and it'd be exhausting to write about it all but here are some of the many highlights that I saw, including a few snaps that I took:

We got around town on the T, Boston's subway/trolley system that is actually the oldest urban subway system in the USA (starting in 1897, about seven years before the first NYC subway line opened). I loved how, when the train approached, it dinged -- love me some dinging! 

One of our trips on the T took us to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Built by its namesake in the style of a 15th-century Venetian pallatzo, it houses a great collection of European and Asian art, all in rooms that are made it look like part of great historical houses. It also has a gorgeous, greenhouse-like courtyard and stainglass windows, just a beautiful and invigorating place to enjoy gorgeous art.

The museum is also the site of the biggest art theft in American history which happened on March 18, 1990 -- and remains unsolved. 

Later we walked around Beacon Hill, the central historic and upscale residential neighborhood of Boston, and also the location of the State Capitol. It is full of gorgeous Federal-style townhouses (notable residents include poet Robert Frost, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Homes, Daniel Webster, Senator John Kerry, and many other historic figures), and it's also the location of the bar from Cheers -- which still draws a crowd more than 30 years since it went off the air. 

Nearby we also visited the Old City Hall, just a gorgeous building, to the Old Historic Meeting House -- a Colonial building that is perhaps the single most important single building in American history. This is where the first protests against British rule were organized in 1768 and where the Boston tea party was planned in December 1773. The sparks for the American Revolution were lit here, history turning on its axis in this building, the world we live in today formed in this modest place.

Other places we saw but I didn't get good pictures of are the Paul Revere House, home of the famous rider along with the Faneuil Hill marketplace, a place where lots of Revolutionary protests took place and that, today, houses perhaps the best food court I've ever eaten in.

We also walked all over the main park of Boston -- Boston Common -- and also passed by the first Macy's store ever opened in the USA.

The last big place we visited was the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It is located on the waterfront of the Dorchester neighborhood, and it's surprisingly modest and simple, considering what a glamorous figure he was and what an outsized impact he left on American history. Since Kennedy's presidency was rather short, a lot of the exhibits are about his time fighting in WW2, his time in the Senate, his marriage to Jackie, and then his winning presidential campaign in 1960. There's also an entire film and exhibit about the Cuban Missile Crises, where JFK's role in saving the world from nuclear armaggedon in October 1962. My favorite part of this exhibit and everything we saw in the museum were JFK's personal notes he took during the crises where he wrote, on the top of the right-hand page, he wrote and circles "Missile, Missile, Missile." There's nothing about his assisination or, obviously, all the broads that he banged (no video of Marilyn Monroe breathily singing "Happy birthday ... Mister ... President" ...) but the museum does a good job summarizing his life, legacy, and aspirations for the country and the world.

Last but not least was the Brattle Book Store, the oldest and largest used book shop. It's located right by Boston Common and is totally unpretentious -- until you discover that it first opened in 1825 and was a favored bookstore of JD Salinger. In fact, it also appears in the new Oscar-nominated movie The Holdovers. 

So that was my trip to "Bahhston." Great town, great sites, great streets (just let's not get into the NYC/Boston sports rivarlies 'cause that means war). And as we drove into town our Spotify played a little joke on us ...

                                                        

And, speaking of jokes, we also saw clowns and pants. 

That is all.

P.S. Even though a lot of it was filmed in NYC, the 2006 Oscar-winner The Departed takes place in Boston -- and it's Jack Nicholson's last great movie and performance.

Remembering Mark Harris, A Man of No Talent

I've been a fan of radio host Howard Stern for more than thirty years. What's always made him so great is that, besides being funny and outrageous himself, he always put people on his show who were even funnier and more outrageous than him -- making the rest of us look boring and sane in comparison. 

These were people who, no matter what, would create, in Howard's words, "great radio."

One of them was a bizarre character named Mark Harris.

Mark was a married to an movie actress and comic named Martha Raye, who appeared in silly comedies in the 1930 and '40s, then on TV sometimes in the 1950s, and beyond. She's forgotten today as none of her work was really that memorable but she's beloved by people who love old-timey Hollywood. She died in 1994. 

Martha also had a crazy private life, being married around seven times -- and her last husband was this creepy fellow Mark Harris, a man decades her junior who was obviously a golddigger as well as a conservative Republican gay-hustler-aspriring singer/songwriter/talk show host. 

Mark would pop up on Howard's show for around fifteen years, from the early 1990s, after he'd married Martha, until the mid-2000s, about fifteen years after her death. He was always promoting some horrible song or cabaret act that he was performing, or pitching TV shows that were never going to get made. Howard and the crew would goof on him relentlessly but Mark took it in stride.

Mark was truly a man of great ambition and no talent. In the last decade-plus Mark vanished from view and from Howard's show -- and it was revealed a few years ago that he had died. His life was strange, tragic, and also somewhat magical -- a real only-in-America type. But he left a legacy, one that few of us can say, of leaving behind hours and hours of "great radio."

P.S. After Mark died, I thought the best way to remember him would be with a riff from "A Horse With No Name" by America:

Mark Harris went through life with no talent or fame

But he was really good on Howard's show

When you have no talent no one remembers your name

And there ain't no one but Howard to give you some pain

La la la la la la la

Richard Lewis RIP

Son of Brooklyn, got his start in the Greenwich Village clubs, then became a beloved, iconic stand-up comic and actor, Richard Lewis was a brilliant artist.

Richard has died at the age of 76, having been diagnosed with Parkinson's almost two years ago.

I remember in the 1990s Richard would call-in to Maria Molito's show on K-ROCK and make requests for classic rock songs. He would appear on Howard Stern a lot, talking frankly about his life. And, of course, he starred on two hit TV shows -- Anything But Love in the early 1990s and Curb Your Enthusiasm in the 2000s. 

Richard was the classic case of the kid from NYC who went West to find fame and fortune but always kept the city in his soul. He was a funny man and a great humanist, and he'll be missed. 

The WNYC-TV Archives

A few years ago I blogged about the late WNYC-TV which went off the air in 1996 after the city sold it off (WNYC radio still exists and is bigger than ever).

Now the city's Municipal Archives has digitized thousands of hours of tapes from WNYC-TV, from the 1940s to the 1980s. Obviously it's massive and impossible to watch everything but, if you're interested, you can find it and a history of the station here.

Jenny Was ... Remembered

In the mid-1980s there was a scandal in NYC when a handsome, dissolute young man named Robert Chambers killed a young woman named Jennifer Levin in Central Park (during what, he called, rough sex gone awry). 

It was one of those tabloid sagas -- known as the "Preppy Killer" -- that, decades later, was turned into a multi-part true crime documentary. I won't recount the whole sad tale here -- I blogged about it back in 2007 when Chambers, a mere four years out of prison, was rearrested and eventually sentenced to another heavy prison term for drug running. 

Chambers was released last year and is living somewhere upstate. Lord knows what he's doing but, so long as he stays out of trouble, that's probably the best thing for him.

However, bad people, as we know, can inspire great art. I didn't know until just recently that the "Preppy Killer" case inspired an early song by the band The Killers (no pun intended) called "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine." It's a really great song although it's far darker than I ever realized -- told, frighteningly enough, from the killer's perspective. 

Obviously a great song won't bring back Jennifer Levin or the erase her family's pain but it's a reminder that, sometimes, out of pain and sadness and tragedy something beautiful and meaninful and lasting can be created. 

Queens Man Goes Broke

The Social Register Lives!

I always thought that the mysterious, prestigious, and somewhat scary Social Register was some kind of big fancy book with cream-colored paper kept in a vault.

It might be that because I can't find a list of its members anywhere but it actually does have a website and all the information you need to join it is clear and upfront.

It's much like private club -- you have to know members, get recommended, get voted in, and have some kind of prestige, etc. so it's not easy to join but it's not impossible.

Hmmm ... think I'd make the cut? Nah.

Alison Steele, the Nightbird, on February 14, 1977

Valentine's Day 1977 was a Monday.

I was a new born baby, six weeks old.

Jimmy Carter had been president for three weeks. Abe Beame was mayor. 

The #1 song in the country was Manfred Mann's cover of  Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light". 

New York City had just begun one of its most historically important, consequential year's ever. 

And Alison Steele, the Nightbird, was in all of her radio glory, broadcasting on WNEW FM ("in ... stereo ..."). On this night/morning, she had dubbed herself the "Lovebird" and played romantic songs upon request and recited poems about love. She was at the top of her game, her voice confident, smooth and soothing, the greatness of her "theater-of-the-mind" on full display. 

Even almost thirty years after her death, and fifty years after this specific broadcast, she sounds as fresh and wonderful as ever, her voice truly timeless.

And she really touches your heart when she talks and plays music about love. A classic. 

What's the Sexiest of All the Salted Cured Meats?

Love is in the air.

Travis and Taylor were amorous on the football field after last night's Super Bowl.

And in a couple of days it'll be Valentine's Day, where couples everywhere will celebrate their passion.

So this being NYC -- the sexiest city in the world with the best deli -- it's a good time to re-appreciate the fact that Seinfeld determined that pastrami is the most sensual, the most erotic, of all the salted cured meats.

I think corned beef runs a close second. 

But, really, bacon and -- hahaha -- sausage, should be considered the sexiest salted cured meats because they can be incorporated into breakfasts that can be served in bed. 

Please feel free let me know your thoughts in the comments! 

Notes from Undervelt

Like many who lived through the twenty-teens, I was a huge Game of Thrones fan.

Set in a fictional world of seven kingdoms living tenuously under one ruler, the entire premise of the show was that a once great family, a once powerful dynasty (the Targaryens) that had united the kingdoms and ruled for 300 years, have been overthrown -- and the new rulers are still grappling with the problems left in its wake. While the various remaining would-be kings are battling it out for power, the last Targaryen left alive is prowling around distant lands, scheming to return.

The prequel show, House of the Dragon, flashes back to a time when the Targaryens were in power, fighting amongst themselves, their fall distant yet becoming more and more inevitable.

What's brilliant about each show, what draws so many people in, is that both shows are haunted. Both series have a shadow over them, an extra dimension of drama and meaning. In one we are haunted by the now-gone years of power; in the other, we see their power, knowing that it's going away. 

The Targaryens are ghosts as much as people -- and they live forever in a kind of mythical world inside a mythical world.

In GOT, even though the Targaryens are almost completely gone, they haunt the show -- people keep talking about them and obsessing over their impact on the seven kingdoms (gone but not forgotten). They may no longer have literal power but they still have power over the minds and souls of the people. And in House, we can't help but watch with a sense of dread that this family, this dynasty, at the height of its power, no matter what's going on or what they're doing, is inevitably doomeed, destined for ignominy.

In short, the Targaryens are doomed but they are forever present in peoples' minds and still meddling, in one way or another, in the kingdoms' business -- even after their doom. 

Doom seems to be on a lot of people's minds these days. Our democracy and our environment are in a precarious place, a downward slide. But doom is not final -- it is simply, in many respects, a new way of being, a new normal called the "undervelt." 

The "undervelt": an undergroud or underworld where (if I can be gauche enough to quote myself), "defines itself in opposition to the above ground, the outside world. It is in constant friction, a perennial resistance. Like ... trash -- we want to forget it, we want it out of our lives, but it never goes away."

Woody Allen used to be one of America, and especially NYC's, most acclaimed filmmakers. For over fifty years, he made fifty movies, some much more successful than others, many getting nominated for and winning multiple Academy Awards (Woody himself won four). But he's been dogged by controversy about his personal life. In the USA and NYC, he's been "cancelled" -- actors won't work with him, financiers won't pay for his movies, and he can't (or barely can) get them distributed in this country. He's been making his last several movies in Europe but in America and NYC he's a pariah.

And yet ...

He's not gone. And even though his latest movie, Coupe de Chance, hasn't been released in NYC or elsewhere in America (at least not yet), apparently there are secret screenings of it around town that have become quite popular. 

In short, Woody's career now exists in the "undervelt."

Woody is no longer a mighty, acclaimed filmmaker. He's fallen hard. But now he's a figure of rebellion, someone people want to ignore but can't -- a perfect denizen of the undervelt. And it shows that his impact and his importance to cinema is so profound that, even though everyone in respectable society says they hate him, they obviously still care enough about his work to go see it -- albeit in secret.

Woody's work is now like the last Targaryen, rattling around in exile but forever messing with the heads of its antagonists.   

I know there are many who bemoan "cancel culture" (I've done so myself in the past). Reading about how the work of a decades-long, Oscar-winning auteur is now being consumed like Western media in North Korea or pre-Internet porn is sad, whatever you think about him. 

However, I view this whole "cancel culture" thing in another perspective.

First, no filmmaker is guarenteed or promised massive distribution. Most movies never get seen, many directors get their movies dumped into barely enough theaters to cover the movie's catering bill. No director, not even a formerly big-time one like Woody, is promised a big audience. A big career is not a right -- it's a privilege, a privilege few get and most eventually lose, one way or another. I really don't feel sorry for him or any of these "cancelled" people. 

Second, even if you become hated, even if you're "cancelled" or ignored, if you do good work, no matter under what conditions or in what environment, it will last. People can try to "cancel" it, suppress it, censor it, belittle it, ignore it, whatever -- but it doesn't matter. It stands firm like the rock of Gibralter. It leaves the haters in the dust. It cannot be erased or ignored. It lives. It thrives. It stands the test of time and, eventually, inevitably, leaves the haters in the dust. The work rides high, even if its creator does not. 

Third, I know what it's like to labor in the shadows, to have your work ignored, to live in the undervelt. But I persist. Because my work has impact and, most importantly, exists. This blog has been read nearly a million times. It's never gotten any kind of big outside attention or attention from the media, but it gets readers -- and always will. 

Thus my message from the undervelt -- don't worry, don't get crazy about "cancel culture". Just do the work. Do it well. No matter what happens to you, good or bad, whether you deserve it or not, your work will last. The impact of your work and your life will outlast everyone and everything else.

So get to work -- there's no time to lose. And, hey, I can tell you first hand, the undervelt ain't that bad.