College Editor 

I'm playing around with Blogger technology to add photos to the site. I have no idea what I'm doing. This looked like a good one to start with. Yes, I used to have hair on top.

Sparkle Time: "Valley of the Dolls" Due on DVD!

Ace Village Voice columnist Michael Musto has exciting news for culture vultures: the prayers of 50,000,000 Jacqueline Susann fans will be answered in 2006 when the greatest bad movie ever made, "Valley of the Dolls," debuts on DVD. Musto writes in his "La Dolce Musto" column that the DVD "is being sumptuously repackaged, and there will even be special featrues, like a documentary I've been interviewed for."

Since this summer I have become a dues-paying member of the cult of VOTD. I always had the vague impression that it was incredibly racy, and I always liked the poignant theme song as performed by Dionne Warwick (true story: I was once in the Toys R Us store in Westport CT and the public address system actually played this song; some eager-beaver marketer took the "dolls" reference too literally).

The weight of second-hand impressions finally pushed me to read the paperback. Its sweeping plot staggers from 1945 New York to swingin' Hollywood in the 1960s and back to New York. Susann's time as an actress gives the early sections about the Broadway scene a real sense of authenticity.

Still hungry to go deeper into VOTD, I found the movie through the NY Public Library. The movie brings the book to fetid life, with some of the most unintentionally hilarious dialogue and bizarre cinematography ever made. A carpet-chewing Patty Duke brings just the right tone to scrappy singer/star Neely O'Hara, while lovely and doomed Sharon Tate plays the lovely and doomed Jennifer North. Richard Dreyfuss makes a blink-and-he's-gone appearance, by the way. I would definitely see VOTD again, this time with a group of people so we can savor certain parts and let our jaws drop in unison.

The British website Dollsoup has a great discussion of the movie, with prime bits of dialogue, such as the famous Helen Lawson/Neely O'Hara battle):

Helen Lawson: They kicked you outa Hollywood, so ya come crawling back to Broadway. Well Brooahdway doesn't go for BOOOZE and dope.

As the mood strikes me, I'll provide more random wisdom from the book and the movie. In the meantime, as I trudge through the search for creative and romantic fulfillment, I'll tell myself, in the immortal pep-talk words spoken by Neely O'Hara to Neely O'Hara:

SPARKLE, MISSION2MOSCOW, SPARKLE!

12 Years Gone: The Return of Jody Watley

In 1993, during marital crisis No. 177, I raced along the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, feeling exceptionally down about the wreckage of my life. Then radio played a song with lyrics that captured a mood a despair and loss of love. It hit me very hard.

I did not hear the song again for 12 years, until three days after I posted an entry on my new fave radio station, the Mix 102.7 FM in New York. I wrote about that kind of dance music, and immediately the universe hurls the music back at me: same parkway, different station, same electrified response. Could this be a "compulsion of music," similar to my madcap experience discussed a week ago about "The Da Vinci Code"?

This time, however, I listened carefully and learned that the artist was Jody Watley. I searched online and found, indeed, she recorded the song in 1987 with the title, "Don't You Want Me." The lyrics that packed such a jolt are:

Are you looking for a new love?
Or does commitment seem to bring you down?

Twelve years later, the song sounded as powerful as ever. However, changing life circumstances altered my emotional response. It is no longer a lament for love slipping away, day by day. Rather, I view it as an aural artifact from a past time of life -- and as a checklist of enquiries that can be useful now that I've moved far beyond the wreckage of 1993.

A Compulsion of Words: Morrie Schwartz Edition, Rena Frank Chapter

Last Tuesday "Nightline" on ABC finished concluded its 25-year run with Ted Koppel. The final episode looked back on the most popular episodes Nightlight ever ran, involving retired college professor Morrie Schwartz. He had inspired, through his public battle of Lou Gehrig's Disease, the book "Tuesdays with Morrie" by sportswriter Mitch Albom.

The book appeared in 1998; in typical fashion, my interest lagged the general public's by years. I found a copy at a summer library sale and grabbed it. I read it about six weeks before the Nightlight rebroadcast. This congruence of book and viewing, although not as striking as "The Da Vinci Code" episode discussed last week, is still eerie.

The book touched me on several levels. I had my own Morrie. For 13 years I volunteered with Dorot, a group that served the Jewish elderly in New York. My Morrie, if you will, was Rena Frank, a retired nurse who escaped Germany in 1938 for England, settling into New York in 1952. We spoke at least weekly on the phone. My visits to her apartment at 216 W. 102nd Street lasted all afternoon, fortified by cucumber sandwiches, tea, and cookies. I never left without a bulging envelope full of newspaper articles that she thought would interest me, along with copies of "Hadassah" magazine and the annual City of Berlin calendar.

Rena had an amazing sense of timing. In the 1980s my freelance lifestyle allowed me to travel a month at a time. I would return from places like London, Australia, and Moscow and 15 minutes later the phone would ring. "Oh, hello, Mission2Moscow, I vas just going to liff a message for you," Rena would say in her thick German accent. I imagined she had been calling to "liff a message" every 15 minutes for several hours, waiting for me to pick up.

Once, a year into our relationship, I staggered home from a holiday office party with a few too many screwdrivers sloshing in my low-alcohol-tolerance bloodstream. The phone rang. "Hellllo, Mission2Moscow," she chirped.

"Hi, Rena, I just walked in the door and I think I'm going to be siiiick . . . " I said, and, indeed, I was. We chuckled about that for years.

She died on January 18, 1994, exactly six months shy of the birth of my son. I am bitterly disappointed that Rena, of all people, did not live to see that happy occasion.

I could say a lot more, and I will, later. Everybody should have a Morrie, a Rena, in their lives. They prepare us -- prepare me -- to be a Morrie or Rena to a generation not yet born.

Dater's Choice: Pick Four out of Five

An old software development maxim always charms me: “You can have it Fast, you can have it Good, or you can have it Cheap. Pick Two.” In short, you can’t have it all.

I've decided that a similar analysis applies in the Jewish dating world. The thought came to me after two lissome ladies in the Mid-Atlantic region replied to emails I sent them remarking on my height-challenged stature. One wrote back, "I hate to admit it but, although you sound quite interesting and I usually don't let height make a difference, I am afraid that 4" difference in our height (without shoes) was too much of a difference. I am sorry. I just grew too much!!!"

To which I replied, software development glowing red-hot in my synapses, "Good luck on the quest for the tall single straight Jewish male! At least I got four out of the five key attributes. Here's hoping you find five-out-of-five, or a four-out-of-five that works." I did not suggest she read this article, but perhaps she would benefit from it.

The process works the same in boy-girl matters as in project management. If you can't achieve the ideal, what attributes matter the most? Given the dimensions of . . .

Height
Marital Status
Sexual Orientation
Religion
Gender

. . . which one is least important? Time and again "height" has been an absolute deal-killer, except for a handful of women with truly progressive views on these matters. My attitude: If if doesn't bother me, why should it bother you? As my ever-so-practical mother used to say, "There's more to love." And. as I wrote to one woman, "Seen horizontally, I'm quite tall."

I'll even throw out the "gender" factor to focus on the first four. Which three out of four matter? How about a nice tall Episcopalian, or a tall married man -- a tall married man can be ever so charming and sophisticated, and you know he's going to ask for a divorce very soon, because he said so.

I have a vision of the future for some of these people. I see her at a bar mitzvah, five or 10 years from now, still searching. Her voice sounds alarmingly like that of comedienne Phyllis Diller. "That Mission2Moscow feller was interested in me, but he was only 5' 5!! No sirree bob, I like to wear heels and he was just too darned short," she cackles maniacally, unaware of time and tide's toll on her own appearance. "I've got my standards -- no compromising on men who aren't six feet tall!"

Then she grabs the bar mitzvah boy's tallest friend. "Come on, sonny, let's go do the hokey-pokey. Stand up straight!"

Suddenly, across the room, she spies the tall vision of her dreams and she glides over. After some talk, she realizes, finally, what attribute is worth a compromise.

Final thought: the two Mid-Atlantic women mentioned above are in their 40s and 50s and have never married. IMHO (blog talk, look it up), their odds of going five-for-five approach absolute zero. But if they hit for the dating cycle, I'll be the first to congratulate them.

42 Years Later: Another November 22

The American media thrives on anniversaries, remembrance of the same things passing again and again.

And yet today, November 22, 2005, 42 years after November 22, 1963, barely anybody has a comment. A Google news search on "November 22, 1963" turns up only 31 hits, hardly any from major media outlets. The silence is odd, unsettling in its deviation from the ritualized mourning common in our society.

With all the recent misfortunes and blind alleys, Americans are too tired or distracted to memorialize the past. For once, we are leaving the dead to rest.

John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. I am now three years older than he was on that day.

Watch Out: It's a Republican (Laff) Riot

In 1982 I attended an event that so traumatized me that I lost my appetite for political stand-up comedy for decades. I took a date to a radical comedy night at Stuyvesant High School in New York. After four or five wretched acts, along the lines, "Hey man, Reagan really sucks, man," we snuck out to comfort ourselves with ice cream and Tab.

Except for one or two nights of improv, I never again had any interest in comedy clubs. The pain of bad political comedy remained raw and unhealed. Then, perhaps soothed by the calm balm of John Roberts as the new Chief Justice, my interest in stand-up comedy perked up. I started to get in touch with my long-suppressed desire for political stand-up by checking out a Margaret Cho CD from the library. While I disagree with her politically, Cho was very amusing and sometimes moving. "Say," I thought, "This political stand-up isn't so bad. Could some of it, left or right, actually be funny? How long should I let one horrid experience keep me away from the potential enjoyment the comic experience?"

Encouraged by my "date" with Margaret Cho, I bravely decided to "come out of the comic closet." My venue of choice: Don't Tell Mama in New York with its "Republican Riot" line-up for Friday Nov. 18. Leaving my office high over swanky Park Avenue, I wandered to West 46th Street. I was shown to a small round table about five minutes before show time, joining about seven other patrons. Hmmm, I thought, New York connoisseurs of Republican humor must be otherwise occupied tonight.

I did see none other than Mr. Ivan Lenin, Russian-born creative soul and driving force behind the group Communists For Kerry (CFK). I'd met Ivan before when photographing CFK at the Aug. 29, 2004 anti-war rally in New York, and later at a CFK street theater event at Union Square before the November election. We chatted after the show, and I'm happy to do some log-rolling for my fellow blognik.

The evening began right on time when MC Julia Gorin, a prolific writer and comic who came to the US from the USSR, headed on stage. The lineup featured Greg Banks, gay GOP comic (on crutches, no less, counting twice on the diversity-o-meter); Jewish marine veteran Dave Rosner (who showed his flat, hairy stomach), Indian-Japanese voiceover master Daniel Nainan, and New York Post editorial writer Robert George, with Gorin hitting the stage between acts with HIGHLY un-PC material regarding certain participants in the War on Terror (hint: they aren't Jews, Christians, Buddhists, or Hindus).

The material and yuk level varied. One comic shouted to the crowd, "Do you want tax cuts?" and we shouted back, "Yeah!" That pretty much rocked the house. Hey, you had to be there.

Naiman tickled the audience with imitations of his Indian father and Japanese mother. I can see him becoming the straight male Indian-Japanese conservative equivalent of Margaret Cho, a high compliment indeed. Robert George, self-described black Catholic West Indian Republican, had a polished delivery and plainly knows how to work a room.

Gorin closed the night with her material, including scabrous comments on Oprah Magazine's interview with the would-be girlfriend of a suicide bomber. She drew on her background an an immigrant to critique the US Jewish community, saying something like, "A lot of American Jews were disappointed when they found out Russian Jews moved to the US and became Republicans. They said, 'If we had known you'd become conservatives, we would have left your ass in Russia!'"

Bottom line: Conservatives can be funny, although, as with anybody, they've got to be funny first and conservative second. Was I snorting and drooling with helpless mirth? Not really, but I stayed amused, most of the time. More important, Republic Riot renewed my faith in political stand-up comedy, whether it comes from the left, the center, the right, the far right, or East Texas. Today, I can dream of the day when Margaret Cho, Oprah Winfrey, and Julia Gorin share a stage and a hug, sisters in arms, declaring their allegiance to truth, justice, and the American way of political comedy.

And then they introduce Oprah Magazine's Man of the Year, Sen. Zell Miller.

Like I said, I'm dreaming.

The Compulsion of Words

Twice in my life a compulsion gripped me to finish a book, to race ahead and be done with it for some reason I didn't understand.

This first happened when I read John Hersey's "Hiroshima," about the atomic bomb attack on Japan. I finished this book late on the night of Sept. 9, 2001.

The second happened today, when I slogged through the last 150 pages of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." Ordinarily this type of book would take me two weeks to read; it had a level of mechanical mystery that moved the plot forward, but the writing and concept did not inspire me in the way of, say, "A Conspiracy of Paper" by David Liss. Yet I decided to shorten the reading cycle on an obligation-free Saturday and so I kept pushing forward.

I finished it around 6:15 pm, and a half-hour later I was signing in at the local Jewish Community Center for "Tapestry: A Community Celebration of Jewish Learning." I had no idea what classes I would take. Most were filled, so I selected two from those that remained open. The first was on Kabbalah. The second was on "The Jewish View of Human Sexuality," presented by the rabbi from the local Young Israel.

At the beginning of the session he announced, "I'm going to talk about something from the book 'The Da Vinci Code.'" This stunned me; I had finished the book barely an hour earlier. And I hardly expected an Orthodox rabbi to discuss a book on esoteric practices and the (fictional) hidden history of the Catholic Church.

The rabbi discussed Talmudic passages on sex, dealing with the big preconception (Jews don't have sex through a hole in a sheet), obligations, the commentaries against sex standing up (which reminded me of the joke that Southern Baptists don't have sex standing up because somebody might think they were dancing), and my favorite Talmudic story about the Garden of Eden (before Eve arrived on the scene, Adam had sex with all the animals, and found them lacking).

Near the end of the class the rabbi handed us copies of pages 308-309 and 445-446. I won't give the book away, but the passages indeed connected to the theme of the class. With the book so fresh in my mind, the lesson had a vivid immediacy. Read the book, and you'll never look at the Star of David the same way.

Still, I have to wonder at what strange cosmic force pushed me along on Saturday, page after page, until I finished. Some actions lie beyond rational thought.

The Republicans Attack! Weapon of Choice: Progressive Rock

Going back to at least Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" theme two decades ago, the Republicans have shown a knack for communicating their message. In the past week, they've unleashed another attention-getting message. It caught my attention not just for what it says -- that Democrats saw Saddam Hussein as a threat -- but how it says it. Go here and click on the video link on the home page.

Listen to the soundtrack playing behind the Democratic talking heads. Rather than pull ominous classical music, the GOP marketing mavens selected the bewitching riff from "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" by Traffic, from 1971. What midnight planning session led to this stroke of genius, I know not, but the choice works incredibly well.

What's the message of the music? I doubt the GOP is taking a subliminal poke at the Democrats with the title of the song (which stops when Pres. Bush speaks at the end of the 3:45-long video). Perhaps it suggests that Republicans know all about great pop-culture references, with "Low Spark" a counter-intuitive choice from a group associated with "square" culture.

Most deliciously, maybe the music is deliberately ambiguous, not meant to chastise or wave flags, but to simply unfold and let the viewers locate their own emotional response.

A Modest Improvement for Sir Eric's Song, "Cocaine"

Over the summer, during a long drive to Washington, D.C., young Shmoikel and I checked out different radio stations. We finally settled on a classic rock station that wowwed me with a broader selection of songs than these tightly formatted stations usually play. Somewhere around the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore the station played Eric Clapton's version of "Cocaine," by J.J. Cale.

Something clicked in me. I realized that this song cried out for some slight editing. The song resonates, but even the classics benefit from occasional spiffing up -- in the same spirit that generations of grade schoolers have tinkered with the lyrics to the "Star Spangled Banner" (speaking of Fort McHenry . . . )

So here's what I did. As the song played on the radio, the revised -- and, I think, improved -- version of "Cocaine" burst full-fledged into my mind. I simply substituted the word "SpongeBob" whenever Sir Eric mentioned "cocaine." And you know what? The song rocked! Just read the new lyrics below. I'm sure you'll agree with me:

By j. j. cale (revised by Mission2Moscow)

If you wanna hang out you’ve got to take her out; SpongeBob.
If you wanna get down, down on the ground; SpongeBob.
She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie; SpongeBob.

If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues; SpongeBob.
When your day is done and you wanna run; SpongeBob.
She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie; SpongeBob.

If your thing is gone and you wanna ride on; SpongeBob.
Don’t forget this fact, you can’t get it back; SpongeBob.
She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie; SpongeBob.

She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie; SpongeBob.

Now, honestly, isn't that better? Some of you may scoff, and say, "Come on, Mission2Moscow, that's a stupid idea. Eric Clapton was singing about drugs, not a beloved TV cartoon character." That's true, up to a point, but Sir Eric sang about cocaine only because SpongeBob hadn't been invented yet. I think it very likely that Sir Eric may want to re-record the song after he reads this post (if I can get it to him past his manager, lawyer, and security guards).

All I ask is that you give this new version a fair listening. Just get up off your tuchis, go to your CD collection and pull out a Clapton CD with this song. Put it on your CD player. Crank it up loud, now a little louder. And every time Sir Eric sings "cocaine," shout "SpongeBob." You might want to even have your kids in the room to join the fun, since they love SpongeBob, too. Yell loud enough, and your kids won't ask what "cocaine" is.

I'm not ashamed to say I did exactly this on I-95, singing lustily, and the toll collectors really got into the spirit of it, often breaking out in song with me as I handed my money to them. Not once did DEA agents stop me to ask why I was playing this particular song over and over.

Like I said, it rocks. Try it and then I dare you to tell me I'm wrong.

A Pleasure, and Not a Guilty One

In July 1985 I met a woman named Loretta (real name, too) at a New York dance place called Visage, way out on West 56th Street. "I'm a reporter -- I write on computer stuff," I shouted into her ear over the thumping beat, and that caught her attention.

We kept talking. Before long she yelled, "I've taken the EST training and I'm also in therapy." Knowing my interest in Russia, she told me about the great possibilities of EST moving into the USSR.

I think about Loretta and our screwdrivers- and disco-driven night at Visage when I cruise Fairfield County in my fabulous 2004 Hyundai Elantra, radio tuned in to my new fave station, The New Mix 102.7 (technically WNEW, but nobody calls it that) in New York. The concept is simple: disco and dance classics, with long blocks of ad-free music. Over the past two months or so, I have found myself returning again and again to the station as a listening pleasure. To my surprise, I recognize only about half the music, compared to the 100% recognition rate on classic rock stations. "Coming up another big block of the Stones, Billy Joel, Elton John, Bruce, the Eagles, Madonna, Chicago, Cher" zzzzzzzzz. (I dazzle my son, Schmoikel, with my ability to name almost any song on a classic rock station within 5 seconds.)

The music on 102.7 is so compulsively fun, fresh and emotionally connected that I don't mind hearing stuff I know well. For the same reason, I never get tired of listening to the soundtrack to the movie "Carlito's Way," which sure beats listening to the soundtrack of "Schindler's List" (just some of the primo swag I got as a reporter in the home video industry).

Besides reminding me of Loretta, the music takes me back to parties, events, and those intimate moments in life where Barry White or Marvin Gaye were just what the love doctor ordered. Call me a hopeless romantic, but when I hear Tavares singing . . .

Now winter's gonna turn to spring
And you haven't accomplished a thing
So baby can't you make me just a little time
Cause you never know what's on my mind

It only takes a minute girl
To fall in love, to fall in love
It only takes a minute girl
To fall in love, let's fall in love

. . . then I feel a nerve in my brain getting strummed like a guitar string. And I like that feeling. Not to overanalyze dance music, but it connects both musically and lyrically to intense parts of my life.

Even the numbers 102.7 are magic. Mix is the latest incarnation for a station that's struggled to find a workable format for years. Classic rock, talk, one flop after another. After I moved to NYC in 1980, I quickly came to favor 102.7 in its identity as WNEW-FM, "The Place Where Rock Lives." With a great line-up of DJs like Richard Near and Pete Fornatele, it marked the last time I listened to a rock station with any sense of real identification. I even had an 'NEW gym bag and attended a listener event at the Bottom Line. Then tastes changed, ratings tanked, and the search for a winning format began. The DJs adapted, then scattered. I gave up on the station as my own interests moved toward jazz, blues and Latin genres.

But now, the format wheel has spun again and Mix 102.7 is a winner, at least for me. It goes beyond nostalgia to deliver a likable and vibrant sound and message. Maybe Loretta's listening to it right now and remembering that kooky reporter with the Russia fixation. And all I have to do is turn the beat on to remind myself that, really, it only takes a minute.

Here's hoping the special minute has arrived for my new 'NEW friends at 102.7, the sound of the past and the future.

They're All Democrats in France

Question: How do you tell the difference between Democrats, Republicans and Southern Republicans?

The answer can be found by posing the following question:

You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, an Islamic Terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah, raises the knife, and charges at you. You are carrying a Glock cal .40, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?

Democrat’s Answer:

Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question!
Does the man look poor! Or oppressed?
Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?
Could we run away?
What does my wife think?
What about the kids?
Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?
What does the law say about this situation?
Does the Glock have appropriate safety built into it?
Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children?
Is it possible he’d be happy with just killing me?
Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?
If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me?
Should I call 9-1-1?
Why is this street so deserted?
Why isn’t he happy playing nighttime basketball?
We need to raise taxes, have a paint and weed day and make this happier, healthier street that would discourage such behavior.
This is all so confusing! I need to debate this with some friends for few days and try to come to a consensus.
Can I call Howard Dean or John Kerry and see what they think I should do?

Republican’s Answer:

BANG!

Southern Republican’s Answer:

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!BANG! click…..(sounds of reloading).
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!BANG! click
Daughter: “Nice grouping, Daddy! Were those the Winchester Silver Tips or Hollow Points?”

John Fowles, Lord of Flip Value

In addition to Tom Sawyer and biographies of Davy Crockett, my most memorable adolescent reading experience involved The French Lieutenant's Woman, written by John Fowles, who died on Monday. This is remarkable especially because I did not read the entire book until I was in my 40s.

I did, however, read a page or two while a teenager, around 1974. Somehow I got my hands on the paperback edition and, with a hormonal teenage male's unerring instinct for "the good parts," my eye fell on page 313. (that's the hardback I found at the Westport library, end of chapter 40; go ahead and pull the paperback off the shelf and see what I mean; I'll wait for you.)

"She reached then and took his recalcitrant right hand and led it under her robe to . . . " You get the point -- certainly, the male protagonist did.

As you are now experiencing, my heart raced, my puka-bead necklace quivered, my imagination soared, and what seemed like scaldingly erotic prose permanently burned itself into my id. At that moment, Fowles scored at the top of the "flip value" scale. For those unfamiliar with this essential male concept, "flip value" refers to the number of enjoyable parts of a book or publication. So, um, Sports Illustrated has high flip value when you flip through the magazine and finds lots of stories involving teams you want to read about. High flip value equals lots of good sections with fine, insightful writing, or something like that.

I never treated this as secret knowledge. At the town library I once nudged my friend D and said, "Hey, man, take a look at page 313." He did, exclaiming, "Why, Mission2Moscow!"

Fowles' passage lingered in my mind for decades. I finally decided to read the book (I never saw the movie, since Meryl Streep movies by definition have little "flip value"). Reading the scalding passages in context, their meaning changed radically. The 16-year old M2M totally misinterpreted the book and the action. Soon after hands go into robe, the chapter ends, "He was racked by an intolerable spasm. Twisting sideways he began to vomit into the pillow beside her shocked, flungback head." Ewwwwww. That's on page 315.

Still, my mind drifts back to the pure jolt of Fowles' language, the elegance of possibility, a glide rather than a slam into intimacy. For that I'll always be grateful. Skimming The French Lieutenant's Woman yet again, I don't see flip value, but only value.

Dept. of Most Unfortunate Timing

Far be it from me to waste a few minutes of prime page-flipping time at the dentist's office. On Saturday before my semi-annual checkup I perused the November issue of Travel+Leisure. The cover article, titled, "Best of Paris," is in some places unintentionally amusing in light of the current youthful hijinks in France.

Writer Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni starts with an overview of the political potential of prime minister Dominique de Villepin and interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, then writes, "They're just part of the general excitement and optimism of Paris these days." (Both men figure prominently in the excitement of Paris, although the optimism is suddenly subdued.)

Soon, Fraser-Cavassoni uncorks THE best line in the entire issue, "Suddenly, the City of Light is smoldering again."

Let me repeat, just to make sure you don't mis-read it: "Suddenly, the City of Light is smoldering again."

Elsewhere, the article discusses the Hôtel du Petit Moulin, with the wonderful note that the rooms are "a riot of color."

Oui, oui, les French know much these tempestuous days about "a riot of color." Or should be that "riots of color"?

As we used to say in Hidalgo County, oy gevalt.

The Secret Relationship of Jews and Cricket: Who Knew?

Leave the comfortable yet self-tormented shores of American Ashkenazic Jewry and wonders emerge from the fog. Jewish film festivals are a great way to vicariously meet our landsmen of different habits and hues, and actions. See enough films and startling patterns take shape. I had that experience during the Jewish Film Festival of Lower Fairfield County, which finished last night. Out of the three films I saw, two of them involved the deep love of Jews for . . . cricket.

I delighted to see people playing cricket, a game far removed from the mainstream American, and American Jewish, experience. Well, not totally removed; in 2000 I played cricket for the one time in my life, when a team from the Stamford office of Mongoose & Co. (my affectionate pet name for the World's Greatest Consulting Firm, which employed me at the time) squared off against a team from a New Jersey office. Mostly I recall how hard it was to hit the ball, and the little sandwiches we ate on the sidelines.

So the Jews-and-cricket themes resonated with me. First I saw Wondrous Oblivion, set in London in the early 1960s. David Wiseman, 11, is the son of Holocaust survivors. He's a cricket fanatic but not a very good player, as the cruel boys of Slitherin House (oops, wrong movie, right characteristics) remind him. Hope emerges when a cricket-enabled Jamaican family moves in next door. What follows combines elements of "Bend It Like Beckham" with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"

Last night's closing film, Turn Left at the End of the World, is an exceptionally good Israeli/French film from last year. It deals with Indian and Moroccan immigrants to Israel in 1968. Tensions abound, but the Indians find solace and a way of contributing to their new desert community through cricket. Compared to the green fields of Wondrous Oblivion, Turn Lefts puts cricket in a desert, complete with camels and highly untraditional audience behavior. In another contrast, Turn Left throbs with images of hot and naughty Sephardic girls. This Hebrew-language site has stills from the movie that give a slight sense of the visually delightful cast (and that applies to the guys in the film, too).

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, cricket. Sorry, I got distracted there by Sephardic girls. Other bloggers have thought more deeply about the intense relationship of Jews and cricket, and you can read their informed thinking at Normblog and Adloyada. So the next time you see cricketeers in a park, splendid in white and eating cucumber sandwiches, just remember -- they may include members of the tribe, sticky wicket division.

Bring Me the Aroma of Carlos Santana

Cosmopolitan magazine always amuses and informs me, far more than the lame pages of, say, GQ or Maxim. The October issue alerted me to the dangers of thongs and unhygienic bikini waxes (ouch!). The ads are great, too, for mysterious products I never need, in colors of subtleties I'll never grasp.

Without a doubt the most attention-grabbing ad in the October issue has the simple headling, "Introducing Carlos Santana(TM) fragrances for men and women." The tagline at the bottom purrs, "Arouse Your Senses." Red-themed native-looking artwork shows Santana with his ever-present hat against a background of densely drawn bongos, spirals, hands, eyes-in-hearts, and even a man looking like Carlos putting his hand on the head of a kneeling peon, an ambiguous scene suggesting either a blessing or a plea for oral sex.

Now, celebrity perfumes are common. Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Jessica Parker, Shania Twain have them. I can see the logical connection between fashionable, attractive women and fragrannces. But the connection is much more tenuous with men, as seen in the belly-flop of Donald Trump's fragrance.

Santana's stab at the smell test connects me to a lot of musical memories. Coming of age in the late 1960s in a heavily Hispanic part of the country, I liked his early music with its mix of Latin rhythms and Spanish lyrics and rock instrumentation. Abraxas from 1970 had very heavy (as we used to say then) liner notes. Early Santana had a sound that remains fresh 35 years later; the only other group I can say that about is ZZ Top. The music was so evocative of swirling colors, palm trees, the border experience, the possibilities of music beyond Anglo pop sounds.

I always wondered what Santana (the man, not the band) smelled like. After Woodstock, I figured he was sweaty. After he went off the spiritual deep end and called himself Devadip Carlos Santana, I figured he smelled like an Austin head shop full of black-light posters.

And now Santana is answering the question, at fine retail outlets everywhere. Or, cut out the middleman and buy directly from the Santana website. Santana is sending his message of peace and love to a suffering world with fragrances for both men and women. He must be doing something right in the technical sense, since perfume pros like the stuff.

Like a good marketer, Santana knows the difference between boys and girls. Not for him is a unisexual odor for everybody. Nope, sometimes he smells like a guy, and in those very special moments he wants to smell like a girl. So he made sure his products have just the right appeal for the moment. Note:

For men: "This smooth, woody musk fragrance was inspired by the music and passions of Carlos Santana. The aroma just after rainfall, in combination with the clean notes of Maja soap, is the essence of this timeless creation."

"Carlos Santana For Women blends exotic fruits with subtle florals and rounds out the scent with soft, sensuous musk to create a seductive, warm fragrance."

I have to wonder what smooth-talker got Santana to sign up for this misguided vanity project. (He may not even be that serious about it. The Santana Fragrances site is still under construction, a deadly marketing error.) He already sells hats, shirts, books, CDs, and other tchatchkas on his website, and his record sales over 40 years mean he's not hurting financially. The product just makes no sense; as a man I wouldn't wear the stuff, and if I gave the female fragrance to a Significant Other I'd probably get the bottle cracked over my head (note to self: need to write about the harrowing Mother's Day Tiffany's silver challah knife episode).

Sorry, Charlie: I'm not buying it, literally or figuratively. Now if there were a Santana home hair-weave kit . . .

Loathsome Marketing, First in a Series

As a demographic unit, I'm a tasty morsel for financial marketers. Born in the center of the baby boom (1957), white collar, single, urban, nicely cash-flowed, investment oriented, and educated, I'm a "good catch," as somebody recently said in another context.

So the American Express spin-off, Ameriprise Financial, had people like me in mind for its new advertising campaign now being flogged on TV and Metro-North trains. These ads tout Ameriprise's financial planning for a generation as "unique" as mine. You may have seen the ads with a VW hippie van morphing into something more modern. Train ads show 15 or so iconic images of the 1960s and 1970s carefully balanced between the social categories we referred to at Mission High School in Texas as the "dopers" and the "ropers."

So, you'll see peace symbols and Cub Scouts, long-haired hippie freaks and cheerleaders, groovy types and squares, images that make me want to tune in to VH1 more than they inspire me to ponder my financial needs.

For this baby-boomer, alas, Ameriprise is establishing a negative brand image. I cringe to see the calculated cultural shorthand that supposedly speaks to my generation, whatever that is. The opening music on the Ameriprise website, "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" by Crazy Elephant, only compounds the problem by showing a total lack of creativity. What could be easier than to dust off 60s music to support a marketing message for baby boomers? I don't learn anything about Ameriprise (not that I'm curious, anyway) but I got a heavy load of 60s shtick. I can only hope Crazy Elephant makes a fortune off the licensing fee -- sticking it to the Man, if you will.

If Ameriprise wanted to grab my attention, its marketing must take risks. Let's start with life insurance. I've got SBLI term insurance with my son as the beneficiary for the day when I'm gathered unto my fathers (later rather than sooner, but living in NYC you never know). So, in all honesty, life insurance is all about dying. With that cheerful thought in mind, I suggest Ameriprise frame its insurance pitch with the song "Don't Fear the Reaper" by the Blue Oyster Cult. That would cut through the clutter and get directly to the point of insurance. I would be mightily impressed. Better yet, have the members of the Blue Oyster Cult talk about their insurance choices.

The same thinking goes for retirement investments. Don't show me gauzy images of silver-haired men and women out boating or dancing at their country club. Talk about survival in a world very unlike the world of our parents, a stable world where my mother worked for 21 straight years at exactly the same job as a secretary at the insurance agency of Conway, Dooley & Martin. What could be more appropriate for retirement planning than Gloria Gaynor belting, "I will survive!" in all her disco majesty? My tagline suggestion for Ameriprise: "You survived Nehru jackets, puka beads, Jimmy Carter, punk rock, and Enron. Now, get ready to survive . . . retirement." Now that's what I call marketing.

I doubt Ameriprise will move in this direction. Probably the baby-boomer narcissism pitch will fizzle out into something even more pedestrian. Then again, perhaps Ameriprise will get desperate and won't fear the reaper.

Full disclosure: By this point you're thinking, "OK, Mr. Mission2Moscow, you think you're so smart, what's your approach to financial planning?" Good question, quick answers: The two biggest influences on my actions have been:

1. Columnist Jonathan Clements of the Wall Street Journal, who strongly supports the use of index funds, which I use for the bulk of my retirement savings

2. Financial expert Andrew Tobias always makes sense to me, with his ruthlessly practical advice. He is a big fan of SBLI.

Don't Mourn; Organize (My Thoughts)

This blog has been sporadic for several months, a place to post links to articles in the Princeton Alumni Weekly and essays I was writing for Texas-based website "The Back Word." Over the summer the Back Word went down the drain, and I've spent several months mourning the loss of a forum for essays I loved writing.

Today I posted the text of those essays here, as a way to organize my thoughts. I'm tired of mourning, for the Back Word and other matters that I'll write about one of these days. If I want to write, I'll write here and let the "getting rich and famous" part come later. This being the first day of the month, let the new approach begin today, with an observation on the Village Halloween Parade I attended last night.

How to Have a Truly Transgressive Halloween Parade

I've lived in and around New York for 25 years, but had never ventured downtown to this drag-queen driven festival of fun known as the Village Halloween Parade. In this new mode of experimentation, I walked from my cushy office high over swanky Park Avenue to 6th Avenue and 21st Street, at the conclusion of the parade, to see what the fuss was about.

I did what all good New Yorkers do when a big event takes place; I stood around waiting and waiting. Finally the parade reached its north end. I'm glad I stayed around. Some highlights:

* The poignant New Orleans kick-off, with a band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."

* Two men dressed as the Pope doing a ring-around-the-rosy dance, then kissing

* Various S&M themes, usually a woman whacking a man (that's the PC way to show things, isn't it?)

*At least three groups dressed as "The Gates," the enormously popular exhibit from February that festooned Central Park with thousands of, well, gates, with orange fabric flapping in the cold Gotham breeze

The parade had surprisingly few people dressed as President Bush, sparing it from becoming a dreary political event. I saw more people dressed as priests and nuns.

Which brings up a thought: For all the daring, outrageous, transgressive New Yorkers in the parade, couldn't anybody work up the nerve to dress as an Islamic imam, perhaps running amok with a guillotine? Or as break-dancing burka-clad women? That's topical. The opportunities to be naughty are huge, and surely sophisticated New Yorkers would get the joke. Well, except for the folks found on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and other places normally under FBI surveillance. Unlike Catholics who must put up with a lot of hilarity aimed at their faith, the Islamists are a little touchy and may not react with the live-and-let-live attitude so prized in tolerant societies. They, you know, kill people who cross them (definitely they don't like anything involving crosses).

Perhaps next year some Halloween Parade denizens will decide to not play it safe and show a truly transgressive spirit. But I'm not holding my breath.