So you can tell how big of a sports fan Mr NYC is by the fact that I failed to mention earlier that the Knicks made it to the NBA playoffs this year -- and won their first playoff game since 2013.
Unlike the Giants and Yankees who dominate NYC and national football and baseball -- with the Jets and the Mets always showing promise early in their seasons before flaming out -- the Knicks have rarely come close to the ultimate in basketball glory. As a youngster I remember the strong Patrick Ewing years and, more recently, "Linsanity", but otherwise the Knicks have been mediocre or worse. Their ownership and coaching have also, over the years, generated lots of drama and attracted much negative attention.
So, as you might imagine, it's great to see the Knicks doing so well this year even if they fail to advance in the playoffs. It's a reminder of the city's spirit -- never quitting.
And whether or not the Knicks are doing well or not, you can be sure that Oscar-winning filmmaker and #1 Knicks fan Spike Lee will be on the sidelines cheering them on ... and occasionally offering his own commentary of the team's performance. Recently he gave a big interview on WNYC about his love of the Knicks as well as his upcoming multi-part documentary about NYC since 9/11. I can't wait for this.
Lest anyone thought otherwise, the spirit of this city is very much alive -- and never went away.
Recently I blogged about a failed Broadway musical called Teddy & Alice. It ran for about two months in late 1987 and early 1988 and has been forgotten and never revived since. Another show that also had a brief run around that time has had a more interesting afterlife -- Chess.
Chess was the brainchild of the musical savant Tim Rice (former partner of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the scribes of Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita) who wrote it with Bjorn Ulvaeus, the genius who wrote most of ABBA's big hit songs. The concept of Chess was certainly of its time: set in the depths of the 1980s Cold War, it's about American and Soviet chess masters, facing each other down in world-wide competitions, with money, women, and international politics getting in their way.
Summarizing the plot is hard because originally the musical started out as a concept album in 1984 and, once staged, apparently the 1986 London stage show in the West End had a different story than the 1988 Broadway version. The plot was constantly being re-written and revised. In its original previews on Broadway in 1988, Chess had running time of 4 hours and then was cut-down to 3 hours 15 minutes when it finally opened in late April. Needless to say the length made it less than appealing to ticket-buyers. Chess also failed quickly because it cost a fortune to stage, full of fancy lighting and special effects and moving stages. It needed to gross a ton of money each week to stay afloat -- and didn't. The 1980s was the era of spectacle musicals like Starlight Express that aimed to dazzle the auidences' eyes as much as satisfy their ears. Chess was another entry in this genre that has mostly faded away -- people just didn't want to spend their time seeing a show of German opera-like legnth that assaulted their senses all night long.
The reviews in London in '86 had been mixed but the reviews in NYC in 1988 were scathing -- Frank Rich in the Times said it had an "ostensible story ... the evening has the threatrical consistency of quicksand", and that the show just hammers home the analogy that the world is basically one big chess game and we are all its pawns. The show-stopping song is called "Nobody's Side" where the heroic lady chessmaster manager, who works for the American player but is in love with the Russian player (c'est la guerre!), croons away "And when he gives me reasons/To justify each move ... Everbody's playing the games/But nobody's rules are the same/Nobody's on nobody's side."
Ya' dig?
Some other deep meaning, powerful lyrics: "I cross over borders but I'm still there now ... Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart/My land's only borders lie around my heart."
Huh? (Still, you get chills when you actually hear it sung.)
In the 30+ years since Chess bombed on Broadway, it has actually had a rich afterlife with revivals and "concert musicals" done around the world. In 2009 I saw a concert version on TV that had been recorded in London in 2008, featuring Idina Menzel, Josh Groban and Adam Pascal from Rent. They were brilliant but my impression, even from this version, was that while the show had some powerful, beautiful, really great songs, the story was a confusing boring mess.
I can't resist: musically, Chess is great; plotwise, Chess is ... a mess!
So far Chess has never been revived on Broadway -- besides its story problems, the show became immeadiately and painfully dated in the 1990s when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Maybe one day it'll come back to Broadway, if the plot can be brought under control and if there is interest in a show about something that clearly is now a historical era.
And it does have some great songs that stand the test of time so, in many ways, Chess will continue playing (haha get it?) for decades to come.
P.S. The big opening song to the second act, "One Night in Bangkok" was actually turned into a music video that got some play on MTV and as a radio single. That was always the problem with the show -- it was a bunch of singles strung together to tell some kind of story ... that no one understands to this day.
For a long time I had no idea who I would rank first in next month's primary but, as times goes on, it's clear that Kathryn Garcia should be the next mayor of NYC.
One reason and one reason only: experience. She has lots of it. She's worked in city government nearly her entire life, she knows how it operates, and she knows the city inside-out. Right now the city needs a real manager and a real hands-on tactician -- and that's her. She's not flashy, she's not looking to be a celebrity, she's not in it for her ego -- she just wants to run the city well.
There are movies, there are documentaries, and then there are visual meditations -- films that don't tell a story, exactly, but that through images and words make you think and ponder them as well as wonder how they relate to your life.
Such is the case with News from Home.
In 1976, the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Ackerman came back to NYC after having lived here for a couple of years in the early 1970s. She wanted to document the city that had played an important part in her development as a director. Ackerman shot huge amounts of footage of Manhattan street scenes, starting in Tribeca, working upwards to Midtown, and then uptown and towards the Bronx. Eventually it ends on the Staten Island Ferry, pulling away from the mighty isle, the great buildings looming and moving away (including, of course, the World Trade Centers). The city moving away from her is clearly metaphoric.
Most of the scenes are of people walking and cars rushing by on busy streets, at all hours of the day and night, with numerous forays into the subway. It is pure 1970s NYC, presented totally unfiltered and without sentimentality.
During the film, there are occasional voiceovers, done by Ackerman herself, reading from letters her mother sent to her while she was living in NYC a few years earlier -- the "news from home." The letters are about the mundane life her family is living back in Belgium and asking how she is enjoying life in the city. There are no shocking revelations from the letter, nothing dramatic. The film and letters are simply about how life passes by, both literally in the streets of the city and figuratively in the lives of people. Its simplicity is what makes News From Home so powerful.
Chantal Ackerman was a fascinating and pioneering director who sadly died in 2015. Read more about her and her incredible work here and watch News From Home below.
William Cullen Bryant Park in Midtown is opening back up. William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens has over 2600 students. There's William Cullen Bryant Triangle Park in the Bronx. Out on Long Island there's even the William Cullent Bryant Preserve as well as a William Cullen Bryant Viaduct.
He was a 19th century romantic poet, one of the first and most influential American poets. Among his fans and the writers he influenced were Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. Originally from Massachusetts, he lived and worked most of his life in NYC and, in addition to artistic achievements, became leading citizen of the city. Amongst the projects he proposed and advocated for -- a big park in the middle of Manhattan and a big museum in that very same park.
Yes, Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art were basically his brainchildren.
Greatly admired in his time, his legacy lives on in his poetry and the city he loved. He was even quoted by Martin Luther King in his speech "Give Us the Ballot": "Truth Crushed to Earth Shall Rise Again."
