Friday, December 28, 2012

My Life as a Watch Man

Photos of me from 30 years ago show a young man dressed about as I am now — blue jeans, button-down cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The glasses changed from the aviator style to something more classical (less 1980s, that is) and I augmented the thinning hair with beards and goatees until I finally settled on my current look a decade ago. So while I've never been a fashionista,  a close observer would notice some attention to detail, within the rigid limits of straight male style.

Here's an example.

Coming home on the train yesterday, I noticed a man with a tie that caught my attention. Its swirls and blue-green tones looked exactly like something I would ear. He had a grizzled look, prep-school baseball cap turned backwards, probably a coach or aging jock, approximately my age. We stood by the door, both leaving at the same station. I decided to break through the thick silence among suburban male commuters and remarked, "I really like that tie," I told him, as a third man, whom I recognized from the regular slog to New York, looked on.

"Yeah, it's a Jerry Garcia tie," he said.

That explained the magnetic attraction — I have two Jerry Garcia ties, beloved gifts from my marriage, and they are essential to my personal style on those rare occasions when I wear a tie to the office.

"I've got two of them myself," I said. "I love the design." After at least 15 years of steady use, they still look great.

The man standing with us chimed in with a comment about the Grateful Dead. Suddenly, we three strangers had a bond to tie us together. The first man, Grizzled Jock, had met Garcia several times while a college student.

"He keeps making money even after he died," he mused.

The doors opened and we went our separate ways. The talk inspired a New Year's resolution — wear more ties. I have a lifetime collection, enough to keep me in fashion in the most formal of work environments. My closet includes two orange-and-black ties, purchased at the Princeton University Store, required wear for any alumni events I attend (as well as the occasional corporate event at the Harvard Club in New York). I've got plenty of plain blue, yellow and pink shirts perfectly ready to be worn with my black and dark-blue khakis and brightened with ties from J. Garcia and other purveyors of men's style, often with an Art Deco motif.

Besides ties, the urge for ornamentation exists primarily on my right wrist. I've always enjoyed watches. As a teen I gravitated to the trendiest 70s look with leather bands sporting multiple buckles. When I graduated from college, my father gave me an inscribed TAG Heuer watch with both digital and analog displays. It constantly broke down and multiple repairs couldn't keep it running. I soldiered along with forgettable watches until I experienced a time-keeping epiphany at a flea market on New York's Upper West Side in the late 1980s. A watch dealer displayed an incredible Art Deco watch with a rectangular face and a sleek gold-toned band. I had to have it and I bought it immediately. For decades it was THE classiest watch I had, the perfect detail for swanky nights on the town and serious job interviews. This was nicknamed the Deco watch.

My stable of watches grew over the years. Each purchase remains a sharply etched memory. As a student of Russian history, I jumped at the opportunity to buy Russian watches newly available in the West after Mikhail Gorbachev became the last General Secretary of the USSR. in September 1989, while on my honeymoon in Italy, I bought a Raketa watch with an intriguing design; it included an adjustable monthly calendar, beginning in 1981 and concluding in the inconceivably distant year of 1999. Its blue face and cyrillic lettering gave it an exotic air. This is the Honeymoon watch.

In the 1990s, I inherited a Greenwood watch — thick square crystal, chunky metal-link band, from my friend Rena Frank,. whom I had known since 1980 through Project Dorot, which connects the Jewish elderly with visiting volunteers. Before she died in 1994, Rena, a Berlin native who escaped to London in 1938 and then on to New York in 1952, gave me the watch, which belonged to her brother. The watch had deep meaning as it came from this treasured friendship, and its connection to a vanished European world.  I call it the Rena watch.



Over a decade later, at a display stand at the long-vanished International Pavilion at the corner of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, I celebrated the start of a new job by buying two more Russian watches. One had a dark-green face and the name "Kommandirsky," in script cyrillic letters. The other, truly awesome, piece was the Poljot brand (Russian for "Flight") watch. This had stopwatch functions and remains the thickest watch I'd ever seen, so massive and unyielding I nicknamed it the Soviet Bloc watch.

For years, these watches satisfied my fashion needs. They ranged from the understated and elegant Gruen and Greenwood to the show-stopping novelty of the three Russian watches. They became the signature of my personal style, to the extent a man can break out of the the dictates of officewear. I'm content to follow the khaki and button-down look. Indeed, I joke that I could pull clothes out of my closet blindfolded and they would inevitably go together. And if I happened to pull down a plain blue shirt, then any tie would also look good.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Around the World with Bob Marley

The past two days I had the pleasure of watching Marley, a 2 ½ hour documentary about Bob Marley. I was familiar with his music and influence, and his lamentable death at the age of 36 from melanoma. But I didn’t know the total history and this documentary covers everything so well and so thoroughly that I will listen to Marley’s music and look for his worldwide influence afresh now.

Marley brims with concert and interview footage of the man, interviews with his children, wives/lovers and band members, and even Jamaican political leader Edward Seaga. This article is an exhaustive look at the movie’s content. What did I learn? Well, everything:
  • His father, Norval Sinclair Marley, was white and born in Jamaica in 1885. Norval’s mother, Ellen Broomfield, was Syrian Jewish. Norval served in World War I and was not a factor in Marley’s life, although the Marley’s family businesses appear in a key scene in the documentary.
  • Marley lived in Wilmington, Delaware, where his mother had immigrated, and he worked on a Chrysler assembly line.
  • Marley’s shows primarily attracted white audiences in the U.S. One music promoter wanted him to be the opening act for the Commodores as the only way to draw a crowd.
  • Marley was an intense performer and never phoned in a gig, based on the footage. He was always on, always giving it his all.
  • Despite an estate valued at $30 million, Marley refused to write a will, owing to his Rastafarian beliefs. The movie lightly touches, in a humorous way, on Marley's lack of estate planning. In reality, families members have been waging bitter court fights over trademarks and business rights for the past 30 years, a tragic aftermath that would make a fascinating documentary on its own, the temporal flip side of love and peace.
Marley came close to being assassinated in 1976 during political turmoil in Jamaica. He was scheduled to play at the Smile Jamaica concert, and, despite some wounds, he did indeed play. The film captures all the electricity and emotion of the concert. I was particularly struck by Marley bringing on stage the two main political rivals in the country, Michael Manley and Edward Seaga, and he embraced both of them in a plea for unity and reconciliation. The moment showed Marley as a man who truly put his philosophy ahead of politics.

The scene made me think – could there be a U.S. performer or personality with the vision, message and respect who could make that kind of gesture? Who could bring political rivals together for a heart-felt moment? Bruce Springsteen comes to mind as a possibility. Oprah Winfrey? Both seem too politically obvious and not likely to embrace somebody they see as afflicted with GOP cooties. After much thinking, the one performer I can see uniting different schools of thought would be the Man in Black, Johnny Cash. His was a hard-bitten, compassionate message from a man who had seen the dark sides of life. He could appeal to anybody. But, unfortunately, he’s dead. Merle Haggard's got the world view and he's still alive, but I can't see him with national appeal. B.B. King? An icon of the blues, world respected, but not exactly a philosopher king.

The film included a striking bonus feature about the impact of Marley’s music worldwide. It’s one thing to say the music still lives, but it’s quite another to concretely show people using the music as the basis of social and political action. That’s what Marley does, brilliantly. Segments from Jamaica, Brazil, Japan, Tibet, India, Kenya and, most tellingly, Tunisia at the start of the Arab Spring, show the power of Marley to get people moving. The range of social situations is amazing, from the violence and poverty of Brazil to the sterile, uneasy prosperity of Japan. In the Tunisia segment, protesters daub song titles on walls and demand their civil rights and free speech with the colors of Jamaica prominent in demonstrations.

What prophet could ask for more?

Friday, November 09, 2012

Giants in Their Days, and Ours

A few weeks ago, I learned of the passing of James Miller of Mission, Texas, the father of my best friend growing up and an anchor of Mission’s civic life since the early 1950s. He was 93 years old.

This news came the day after I finished reading the book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, about the extraordinary life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who survived a Pacific Ocean plane crash and horrific treatment by the Japanese as a prisoner of war, and then a post-war descent into alcoholism. He not only survived but underwent a moral regeneration and continues to enjoy life daily – to keep up with him, just visit his website.

The book and the passing will forever link James Miller and Louis Zamperini in my mind. They grew up in the 1920s and 30s, served their nation ably, took what life dished out and bounced back up. I know other men like them, in their late 80s and early 90s now, who returned from the Pacific and Europe to build families and businesses, contribute to their communities, enjoy their grandchildren and appreciate every day of life.

They’re modest about what they do. One man I know, Eric Leiseroff, had the last bar mitzvah in Dresden, Germany in 1938, just before Kristalnacht. He and his mother left Germany on what might have been the last train out to Portugal in mid-June 1941, arriving in New York after the Germans invaded the USSR. Three years later, Leiseroff returned to Germany in the US Army, where his native German speaking skills made him a valuable intelligence GI. After V-E Day, he joined a team hunting down and interrogating members of the SS. After declining an offer to remain in Germany under cover as a spy, he returned to the US, found a job as a paper salesman that he held for 57 years and married. He and his wife just celebrated their 62nd anniversary.

“I had a boring life,” he says. And yet for members of my generation, an incredible one.

I last saw Mr. Miller and his wife Mrs. Miller (Esther by first name, but they were ALWAYS Mr. and Mrs. Miller to me) when I returned to Mission for my 35th high school reunion on June 2011. A trip to the Millers’ home always highlighted my journey to the past. I usually took a spin through Mr. Miller’s office, where pride of place went to a portrait of him as a Coast Guard officer in World War II. We’d drink tea, nibble on cookies, catch up on the news of the sprawling Miller family, of five children and enough grandchildren and great-grandchildren to populate a small village. My adventures in the Northeast always interested and amused the Millers. During one visit, I said, “I hope you don’t mind that I put a ‘Hillary for President 2008’ bumper sticker on your car,” I joked, and they responded with mock indignation. We’d take photos, say good-bye and I’d leave, always admiring the Texas sunlight filtering through the sturdy mesquite trees in the front yard.

For all their modesty, these are tough old guys, survivors of times and challenges I can barely imagine. No human should endure what Louis Zamperini did, years of abuse followed by years of self-destruction with liquor. How he survived and how he ultimately—and abruptly—conquered his demons was so mesmerizing that Unbroken renewed my often-flagging faith in the power of reading books. The older I get, the more I skate through books, struggling to emotionally connect with either novels or non-fiction. Especially in novels, I often can barely care about the characters. The characters don’t matter, the books’ style and trendiness count for more than coherence or basic readability (perhaps I should take more care in my reading selections). But Hillenbrand writes with total clarity. Every sentence makes sense; every sentence relentlessly propels the story ahead with Dickensian cliffhangers that dared me to not immediately read the next chapter.

Now I’ll try to put the reading lessons to work on a real writing project. I’m signed up November’s National Novel Writing Month event. I’m already way behind – easy rationalizations include weather, no power, other work commitments, need some more excuses? – but I’ve got ideas in my head and I just need to push them through my fingers. If Laura Hillenbrand, who suffers from a severe case of chronic fatigue syndrome, can writer an incredible book about Louis Zamperini, who beat everything that King Neptune and the Japanese Empire could throw at him and keeps chugging along in his mid-90s, then I can surely rouse myself to pound out some pages. These old guys knew how to keep going, maybe I can draw some inspiration from their examples.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

A Launch Party for "Narco Estado"

Tuen Voeten goes where angels fear to tred. Few willingly plunge into African war zones or the Mexican drug chaos except souls equipped with a camera and very steady nerves. Voeten, a Dutch photojournalist, follows the action and returns with portfolios that give witness to the terror and humanity found far from his European home.

I met Voeten at a launch event for his latest book, Narco Estado, held at Ye Olde Carlton Arms Hotel in New York. Published by Lannoo Publishers in Belgium, the book contains Voeten’s photos taken during 2009-2011, when drug killings rocketed in Ciudad Juarez, the site of many of the photos, along with the cities of Culiacan and Monterrey. I read daily about the situation in Mexico at Borderland Beat and Frontera List (where I learned of the launch event), and Voeten gives visual shape to the horrific stories. Bodies lie sprawled in cars, on streets, in fields, in buildings, neighbors silently watch the police on the scene, a man with a vision cares for the insane in a desert compound, prostitutes wait for customers on dark and empty streets. With a journalist’s care for documentation, Voeten provides details on the time, location and context of each photo. His website describes the book this way:
From 2009 till 2011, Voeten focused on the drug related violence that is destabilizing Mexico. He visited the epicenter of the violence, Ciudad Juarez, as well as other hot spots such as Culiacan and Michoacan. With introductory essays by El Paso based anthropologist Howard Campbell as well as Culiacan based writer Javier Valdez Cardenas, this hard hitting photobook tries to explains why the drug violence in Mexico can no longer be ignored as a fringe criminal problem, since it is eroding the very fundaments of our human civilization.
Narco Estado is the latest result of a career spent on the edges of civilization. Other projects include. What’s next, I asked him? For now, he’s finishing up his dissertation on Mexican drug violence at a university in Belgium.

The location for the launch party also added to the atmosphere. Over the decades I’ve visited many New York hotels, from the massive Marriott Marquis and Waldorf=Astoria to smaller, sleeker hotels like the W. But I’ve never set foot in a raffish place like the Carlton Arms. Indeed, I never knew it existed until I attended the Voeten event.

Located at non-trendy 160 E. 25th Street, the Carlton is easy to miss from street level; you ring an bell and ascend a flight of stairs to reach it. And then  . . . the place feels like the setting for a Graham Greene novel, or a throwback to New York in the 1930s. Art decorates the lobby and rooms, overstuffed chairs encourage lounging, the rumpled and effective staff completes the atmosphere. The place has art openings and other events and I’ll definitely keep my eyes open for whatever comes up next. It felt like my kind of place in the city of polished megaliths, the scampering marsupial among the mastodons of lodging.

Monday, October 01, 2012

Ritual and Violation Through the Ages

Here's something new at Times of Israel, touching on issues of ritual and Jewish practice covered in the book. It starts,
The new 9-ll attack in Libya and its aftermath sickened me with images of the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and reports of the violation of his body, dragged through the streets of Benghazi. Seeing the bloody handprints of Americans on a pillar reminded me of the photo from the 2000 lynching of two IDF reservists in Ramallah, as Aziz Salha waved his blood-drenched hands in triumph after the killings, which also involved the reservists’s bodies being dragged through the streets. 
Separated by almost 12 years but united by the barbarism of the perpetrators, these two acts coincide with thoughts I’ve had lately on death, the rituals of mourning and the deep anguish caused when those rituals are violated. 
With Yom Kippur passed, with its reflections on life and death, I’m struggling to find a narrative thread connecting horrific media images. They contrast violently with my traditional sense of treating the dead.
 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Heartbreakers

We’ve all been there: the first look, the initial teases, the memorable first date, the breathless anticipation, the shy touches and blushes . . . and then the shocking flame-out.

Male-female relationships? That’s kid’s play. No, I’m referring to the heartbreaking cycle I’ve endured with my unrequited passion for TV series I loved and lost.

I’m reflecting on that special kind of pain after NBC pounded me with previews for its new series Revolution throughout the Olympics. I even watched the extended preview with scenes of the U.S. after the collapse of the electrical power grid. The view of a weed-choked Wrigley Field in Chicago echoed the conclusion of Planet of the Apes. I saw a young cast led by a bow-and-arrow wielding heroine, sword play, and the quest to turn the power back on. Of course the preview hinted at a vast, shadowy conspiracy and the need to uncover what was really behind the calamity.

I could love this easily imagined scenario. My passion for conspiracy-minded TV is vast. I watched every episode of 24, which rewarded me with thrills and chills and Elisha Cuthbert for eight uneven but gripping seasons. I even posted essays on 24 fan sites, a pre-blogging kind of expression I’ve never done before or since. I also loved the first season of The Walking Dead when I could get it on video; I even read the very long graphic novel afterward. Years ago, I read Stephen King’s The Stand, which was haunting, and enjoyed the mini-series with Molly Ringwald. I became a fan of Firefly, a beloved and influential series that Fox bungled, long after its cancellation -- my son suggested that one for me.

But I wonder about Revolution. The tease caught my interest. Would this be the start of a beautiful relationship, or merely the latest in a dreary series of network equivalents of one-night stands? I’ve always been a sucker for sci-fi and apocalyptic TV and movies since I watched The Time Tunnel and Lost in Space in the 1960s. Raquel Welch’s Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years B.C. also captivated me, for more hormonal reasons.

In recent years, my devotion led to naught but regret as one sci-fi series after another dished out the wham-bam-thank-you-Van treatment.

My entertainment Walk of Shame started several years ago when I fell hard for FlashForward. The first episodes were brilliant. Everybody on the planet blacked out at the exact same moment, for the exact length of time, and had disturbing visions of their future. FBI agents, wracked by their own dreams, started to unravel what happened. Even as they did, the series itself fell apart. My sense was the writers couldn’t put together a coherent explanation for the blackout or its aftermath. Loose ends piled up, conspiracies became muddier. I missed some episodes, although I hung on to the end, which hinted at the next flash forward dream. Fox cancelled the series. America yawned.

Saddened, I kept hope for quality TV alive with The Event, with semi-immortal aliens captured by the U.S. government in Alaska. The series grew on me as it progressed. The aliens were riven by intrigue and disagreement about the path to take in deciding whether to cooperate or exterminate earthlings. Since aliens are often portrayed in Borg-like agreement on everything, I found this angle refreshing. The series picked up steam and direction as it moved along. The very last scene promised an explosive second season, perhaps on the lines of the movie Independence Day, but that season never happened. A long gap in the airings (curse you, Fox schedulers!), baffling personality changes in the aliens’ leader, and the usual bogus swamp of plot clutter—always involving a sweaty, treasonous Vice President, lurking in White House hallways whispering into his cell phone—sank the series. Viewers fled in droves. Canceled.

I’m feeling sheepish about my most recent ill-starred love. Goaded by relentless promos, I watched most of Fox’s Terra Nova. Go ahead and laugh; looking back, I have to ask, “What was I thinking?” The show threw an attractive multicultural cast in the time-travel blender, built a set that looked like a pre-historic Club Med resort, shook well – and created a mess. I kicked myself for wasting time even as I watched the episodes, hoping the show would coalesce. But it stayed stuck on stupid. Terra Nova had too few rampaging dinosaurs, NO exploding volcanoes and way too much idiotic teen romance.

The writers lacked the courage to truly explore the show’s premise. If you could go back in time to rebuild human society, what would it look like, and how would people interact? (Terra Nova opted for Dawson’s Creek with pterodactyls.) The concept of building a new society in the past is strong enough without gumming it up with Road Warrior-style opposition forces and yet another corporate conspiracy. The ending intrigued me—the settlement leaders discover a 17th century ship, hinting at past settlers from other eras—but by then millions of other viewers had broken up with Terra Nova and the relationship ended. Adios, dim-witted teens and brontosauruses. Raquel Welch did far more with far less with her fur bikini in One Million Years B.C.

Sometimes I recognize a loser and bail out before I’m too far in. I tried Kiefer Sutherland’s series, Touch, where he was the father of a silent, autistic boy with the power to bring people together through number patterns. Two episodes of cloying global goodness and an impending conspiracy had me reaching for the remote control. I just couldn’t handle an autistic savant.

So that brings me around to Revolution. This is from NBC rather than Fox, so the commercial breaks might be slightly shorter (less time to wash dishes, fold laundry, etc.) and the plotting more focused. I greatly enjoyed executive producer J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield, a story told completely through found footage from cell phones and camcorders of a monster wrecking New York. Abrams’ vision of a powerless America, including shapely women wielding medieval weapons, could lure me back to the TV singles bar one more time in my endless quest for love with a remote control.

Or if it bogs down in its own relentless seriousness and conspiracies, I can always do a Stargate marathon.

Monday, August 06, 2012

Tales of the Book Collector: Judaica

Here's a recent post from the Times of Israel. As it starts:

My enthusiasm for collecting books on Jewish themes soared on a recent vacation that included a stop in downtown Kerrville, Texas. Dropping by a used bookstore, I found a volume I’d never seen before in decades of visits to stores and tag sales. This encounter with the printed word supported my long-time belief: you never know when an appealing tome might pop up, like a doggie in the window, just begging to go home with you.

The very name of the store, Wolfmueller’s Books, sounded promising, fragrant with an antique Teutonic bookiness. Old Mr. Wolfmueller probably shared the Texas Hill Country’s deep German roots. I strolled in and first perused the highlighted section of books by local favorite son, Jewish musician, author and feisty gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman—another excellent signal that something Judaic lurked therein.

Saturday, July 07, 2012

Advice to the New Graduate

My son graduated from high school last month and is heading for a college with a strong science and engineering focus next month. The Significant Other and I took him to the local Panera Bread restaurant to celebrate. As we munched, I shared with Shmoikel the fatherly advice gained from my own experiences at Princeton University in 1976-1980, during the glorious Jimmy Carter years. I figured that fashion changes, but technology moves more gradually, and what worked for me in the 1970s would no doubt prove useful for Shmoikel in the 2010s.

"First, you'll need a good solid desk for your IBM Selectric," I opined. "They're excellent typewriters but they are on the heavy side, so you'll want sturdy support. I'm sure the university will have something designed for one of them. If you want to work on the plane ride up thereI know I need to book the flight on PeoplExpress for youyou can use a portable typewriter. I guess the new term for those is 'laptop.'"

"Sure thing, Dad," he said, writing notes on his tried-and-true tablet, which I got him for his birthday several years ago. This is the old-school, reliable tablet, the kind you write on with chalk. They're great for students on the go who need to take notes.

"You'll also want to be ready for your programming classes. You may find the punchcards complex in the beginning, but a bright guy like you will get the hang of it," I explained. "You've got good dexterity, just shuffle them and your 75 percent of the way there."

"I've heard about punchcardsthey're still cutting-edge, you think?" Shmoikel said, sounding dubious.

"Oh, definitely," I said.

"And don't forget your slide rule," added the Significant Other, who sent her kid to college several years ago and knows first-hand what's required on these Eastern college campuses.

We left Panera's confident that Shmoikel will be ready for whatever comes his way. He'll be registering to vote for the first time. As a great fan of civic involvement, this thrills me. I'm already prepping him for a repeat of the 1980 election, when a certain floundering Democrat ran against a certain confident Republican, with the Iranians causing problems. I'd like to say he should get on the right side of history like I did, but you know how kids are these days.

Monday, July 02, 2012

Some Empathy for Tom Cruise

Now that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are divorcing, Cruise will eventually be back on the market. I'm the last guy he needs dating advice from, given gorgeous co-stars and the long line of dating interests from the past.

What I can offer him is some empathy. We're both over 50 and he's just slightly taller than me, 5'7", which sounds pretty good given that I'm 5'5 1/2" on a charitable day. Height matters because Cruise is getting some pummeling these days as writers dredge up comments about his height in fleshing out stories about his marriages and even his films. I'll set the religious issues aside for now.

The quote that really made me gulp came from Mrs. Cruise No. 2, Nicole Kidman, the Amazon from Oz, who stuck the knife in when she was divorcing Cruise in 2001 after a decade of marriage. The quote showing up everywhere is this:
When David Letterman asked the Moulin Rouge star how she was handling her divorce from Cruise in 2001, the actress poked fun at her ex-husband's 5'7" stature. "I can wear heels now," she teased.
In good fun or not, the height difference and the comment take me back to my online dating days. Women and their high heels! That combination sank embryonic contacts before we even had a chance to meet. I heard that kind of comment several times -- you're too short, I like to wear heels, I need a taller man. At some point does that thinking become obvious as self-defeating, or does it remain a primal romantic sorting mechanism, in the eternal quest for the bigger, badder bringer of the DNA for the next generation? In your late 40s and 50s, I can't see the rugged DNA angle being much of an issue, but height-as-qualifier retains its allure, as I know from being on the short end of the measuring stick several times.

While Cruise hasn't had any trouble dating and mating women taller than him, the post-divorce comments about his height and other even more intimate issues, courtesy of Mrs. Cruise No. 1, Mimi Rogers, who called Cruise "celibate," have got to sting. Nobody likes to see their physical attributes or bedroom behavior slagged in the press. I imagine this all bounces off of Cruise, and won't deter him from finding the next 20-something Tall Girl to be Mrs. Cruise No. 4. Still, I hope, just talking guy to guy here, neither Holmes nor her eventual replacement pops off about the guy on these issues. If Tom Cruise isn't safe from that kind of talk, none of us are.

Sunday, May 06, 2012

The Forbidden Passages: Tales from the Editorial Spike

Journalists call it the “spike”—the decision to not publish a story for reasons of its truthfulness, incompleteness or other political sensitivity. I used the spike on thousands of words I could have included in my dating book. Even after years of polishing and considering materials, I had to decide what to include and what to delete up until the end. The book could have topped 250 pages had I opted to throw in every pearl of wisdom I’ve ever scribbled on dating topics, or topics completely unrelated to dating.

In some cases, I spiked episodes that I ultimately did not feel comfortable seeing the light of day (at least under my own name). They were just too personal, revealing more than necessary about the inner workings of intense relationships. I decided to leave in related but shorter or milder material that made a point without drawing blood. And in some cases, I think I’ll save the material for either a novel or another try at the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column. Something may be too personal for a book, but just right for Modern Love (as I’ve said at times in my life, I’m corruptible).

Still, no harm will come from a peek at what’s not there. So, here, free of most context, are snippets of what I call the Forbidden Passages—Tales from the Spike. Feel free to create your own imagined stories about them.
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She had said I was a pain in the ass for never calling, just doing IM. "That's not true!" I protested. "As soon as Helga gave me her phone number I called her." Ingrid was stunned by this—she never knew I had actually talked to Helga. I had behaved the same with Ingrid—when a woman gives me her phone number, I call.
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A 37 year-old Catholic lawyer of Lebanese background in Latin America, Judy immediately attracted passionate attention from men who loved her glamorous profile and pouting, voluptuous photograph, remarkably similar to Latin TV star Ninel Conde.

In fact, the woman in the picture was Ninel Conde. The profile was a fake, a lark invented by a friend to assemble all the stereotypical themes of a glamour-girl profile. Then the lie became a kind of truth. My friend turned to me, as co-writer, to help figure out what to do with the emotional mess that her sexy monster created.
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For months I chased Sandi even as her yes/no/maybe-so ambivalence made the pursuit as futile and maddening as Captain Ahab’s quest for Moby Dick. I knew this opportunity would end badly, but my back muscles strained and my hands and heart bled as I plunged my emotional oars into the churning, blood-chilling waters of romance with Sandi. . . . Then, Sandi flipped her cruel, mighty tail one final time and smashed my pathetic little whaleboat of love, ending contact between us.
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Vera says: Come to see me
Van says: That's a long haul, a big step. Will you be in the US at any time?
Vera says: No, I prefer you come  ladies first choice
Van says: I see. Too bad about all that water in the middle.
Vera says: Bye
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My favorite venues have been the Essensuality “erotic expression” salons and the monthly Wide Open Wednesday at the Museum of Sex, where performers gather in the Oral Fix Café for a rollicking, unpredictable time. I’ve had to go deep within to find my own performing style and material. From the start, I knew I had to connect to audiences with my words, not my looks; unlike some performers, I’ll never wow anybody by stripping down to my skivvies. What, I thought, could I possibly say compared to talented performers like Bikini Bondage Babe, Little Miss Orgy Organizer, Gay Phone Sex Dude and Brooklyn Transgender Birthday Gang Bang Guy?
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We were in our 40s and used my classic Corvette Stingray to get away from our kids. Better late than never!

Did I say “Corvette Stingray”? I meant my “Hyundai Elantra.” But it thinks it’s a Stingray.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Publication Day

"A Kosher Dating Odyssey" becomes properly available today. I've had friends already email me that Amazon has sent out the paperback version. I'm waiting to hear about the Kindle version. I've had some gratifying congratulatory calls, including from my friend referred to as Chloe the Oracle of Romance in the book. She's soon to get her copy. The references to her could be a great ice-breaker in her online dating activities.

I have no idea what coming days will bring, although at least one article is set to run about the book and I continue to alert editors about it. Who'll find it interesting as fodder for a review or just as a good read is anybody'd guess. The essays I'm doing in support of the book could turn in to excellent material for a revised edition down the road; one essay is evening inspiring me to write a short story for a contest being sponsored by the Texas Observer newspaper.

What comes next creatively? I have some ideas. I always have ideas. Execution remains the issue. To goose up the competitive spirit, I attended a panel presentation by three romance novel writers at the Ridgefield Public Library today. Hearing other writers always inspires me, and now that I have one real, honest-to-goodness book to my credit, I can keep thinking about what comes next. Surely this can't be the peak of my writing careerhave keyboard, will travel to distant lands and write about topics that have been bubbling in me for decades.

All I have to do is turn off the Internet and get back to banging out what's already in me, just waiting to burst outa little later than I expected in life, but the only present I have is right now.

Rolling With The Online Dating Punches

This essay appeared in what was then called JMag, the magazine of the dating site JDate, in conjunction with the publication of my book A Kosher Dating Odyssey
The profile intrigues me. The woman has everything I seek – the education, the cultural interests, the open smile with a hint of sauciness (lingering, intimate weekends), a passion for Judaism. I sense a connection. I write, she responds, we meet at a café midway between our suburban homes. Sitting outside on a spring evening, time simply stops as we both wonder if this could mean something. We kiss goodbye and then write to each other later that evening. We’ll meet again. Soon.
OK, that’s the fantasy. Here’s the reality. Same starting point, different direction:
The profile intrigues me. The woman has enough personality so I write to her. She writes back and we agree to meet. Sitting inside a Starbucks on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on a fall afternoon, I sense little connection. She’s tired from hard Halloween partying the night before and doesn’t want to get a drink. I settle for tea. After 15 minutes she says, “I don’t think this is a love match so I’m leaving.” And leave she does, as I sit there gaping. We’ll never meet again.
Such awkward moments are part of dating. You’re out there emotionally, revealing hopes and fears and your brightest smile. Do it long enough and you get a thick skin that still bleeds easily. Sure, you want to leap into the great romance of your life, but that electricity doesn’t always strike. More often, you’re drenched in a chill drizzle of encounters that range between wryly amusing (in retrospect) to heartbreaking. I detail some of them in my book A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist’s Quest for a Naughty & Nice Jewish Girl.
Weird moments typically happen on a first or second date when you’re sorting out early impressions. Consider my time with a woman I’ll call Spygirl. On the surface, we looked way promising. Like me, she was from Texas and we both worked in corporate communications – in fact, our employers were direct rivals. And that started the problem. We had one date that worked out well enough, then scheduled another, just for a coffee again. This time, Spygirl started asking, rather aggressively, for confidential documents from my company. Her tone struck me as bizarre. Was I her romance interest, or a patsy in a corporate espionage ring? I declined, of course, and Spygirl’s peculiar behavior pushed me to run for the exits.
Speaking of Texas, I once had an IM from an attractive woman involved in the arts in that state. She was a bit younger than me, and her smart ‘n’ sassy profile made my heart go pitty-pat. Alas… it turned out this woman was my second cousin and we’ve known each other since childhood. Our mothers were first cousins so, no dice there. File under “awkward, but funny.”
Then there was Sparkles, a fellow suburbanite. One Sunday evening at her house we were trying, reluctantly, to move the date to its conclusion. With the weekend kid hand-off looming, we struggled to get me out the door. Keep in mind that Sparkles was a curvy armload of a gal and I liked the feel of our farewell hugs. The seconds were ticking away, but we just couldn’t disengage as we stood next to my car.
And then the headlights hit us as her ex pulled into the driveway with the kids. I don’t know how much he saw of us – we quickly broke the clinch – but he certainly noticed my battered 1986 Saab in the narrow driveway. Without a pause he backed up so I could make my getaway. By the way, Sparkles’ ex and I had some professional connections (let’s leave this vague) so opportunities for office awkwardness could have reached astronomical levels. Maybe I should have introduced him to Spygirl so she could pester him for documents.
Fortunately, awkward encounters usually last just a few minutes. You meet an ex-flame entwined around her new guy, the doe-eyed IM charmer becomes a strident anti-American loon on the phone, the woman you meet bears absolutely no resemblance to her profile photos (been there, done all of that.) When these moments happened, I gleaned whatever lessons I could, dusted myself off and moved to the next contestant. Sometimes I seriously ached, but that’s the way the game goes.
However, awkwardness could stretch far beyond a phone call or coffee date. Instead, you have stumbled into a dating version of The Twilight Zone, full of shadows, menace, long pauses and no chance for escape. I’m talking about the most hopeful yet perilous phase of online dating: “The Visit.”
Traveling a few hours to another city for lunch is one thing; flying to another country for a week is quite another. I know from experience; meeting a woman in a country where you can’t even speak the language requires a leap of faith and a zen-like tolerance for potential disconnections. I made that leap into disconnection during a trip to meet a woman I’ll call Guapa. We burned hot in the beginning of our relationship, then cycled through periods of stone-cold silence and warmth. While she wanted me to visit, she also vowed to find me a local “girlfriend.” The longer I knew her, the less I knew her, if that makes sense, but I was intensely curious about Guapa. After a local opportunity tanked, I agreed to a week-long visit to a place I’ll call Pueblo PeligrosoDangerous Town.
Surprises began at the airport, where Guapa met me with her ex-husband. She lacked a car at the time, so the ex agreed to be our chauffeur. At her place, Guapa laid down some ground rules, such as, I couldn’t take photos of her nor get any photos of us together. She was often distracted; I wondered why she even bothered to have me visit. File this under “awkward and ominous.”
She really did pawn me off on a local friend of hers. And guess what – we connected as the local girlfriend graciously showed me the charming side of Pueblo Peligroso. Among other things, we enjoyed a long lunch at an outdoor café across the street from the main cathedral, which we then toured. In all, a lovely, hand-holding day, with photos. While Guapa was a considerate hostess, we never found a comfortable rhythm and the trip ended our rocky three-year relationship. “Awkward” doesn’t begin to describe the visit. The local girlfriend and I remain in touch, although I have not returned to Pueblo Peligroso.
I like to think every awkward episode was a learning experience. After Guapa, I never took another long trip to meet a woman, for example. I became much more local in what I would consider. In a few years, I met a nearby woman I began dating steadily. I learned what works for me. Reaching that point required leaps into the unknown and plenty of strained moments. Be the encounter a Starbucks one-off or a risky week in another country, I had to find out for myself.

Saturday, April 07, 2012

Some Modest How-To Ideas on Dating

I cover a lot of ground in my book "A Kosher Dating Odyssey," but one topic I mostly avoid is how-to. By the time you're in your 40s and 50s, you don't need my advice on how to present yourself or appeal to men or women. Then again, why not some ideas from a guy who spent years out there knocking around and getting knocked around? I'm compiling a list of pithy, good-hearted guidance, initially for women. As ideas come to me, I'll add some for men out there who are working the websites and wondering how to make them work better. So:
  • I like self-confidence in a woman, especially on appearance issues. Of course, our bodies change as we age, and a woman's sense of satisfaction and self-acceptance is very appealing. Put your best foot forward and save the neuroses for your girlfriends.
  • When going out to dinner with a man, take plenty of time to find a restaurant you both like. Once there, select what you want to eat with a minimum of agonized consideration; long discussions about the pros and cons of different dining options exhaust and confuse men. We like to decide on what to eat and be done with it. Save the food fetishes and phobias for girls' night out.
  • If you had an enjoyable time with a man and think the feeling is mutual, surprise him with a hand-written thank-you note. Everybody likes to get real letters yet  nobody sends them. Break that pattern and surprise a man with your communications flair and elegant handwritingyou will make a BIG impression.
  • When using an online dating site, remember that men are intensely visual creatures. Use as many profile photos as possible, selecting those that focus on YOU in a favorable, put-together light. Let men's imagination wander and envision themselves with you via evening wear, business wear, fresh at-home ensembles. Avoid blurry cell-phone and webcam photos, photos with sunglasses (what are you hiding?), travel pictures that make you look tiny (men don't care that you visited the Eiffel Tower), or group photos with your arms draped around Uncle Fritz and Aunt Gerdl. Show that you care enough to get appealing photos.
  • Don't let strong political views overly color dating profiles, since that can turn off men who don't share those values. You may think "Republicans make me vomit!" and "Rush Limbaugh is a war criminal!" but saying so brands you as a political crank rather than a caring progressive. I found profiles with such intolerant views and they were a major turn-off. Men and women are more than their political views so it's better to agree to disagree rather than dismiss an otherwise compatible man just because he does not think exactly the way you do. (In my experience, liberal women are far more adamant and unyielding in their politics than conservative women.)
  • While on a date, you may see other friends. It's perfectly acceptable to stop and chat with them and introduce your date of the evening. Beware, however, if the conversation with the friend turns into a one-on-one discussion that leaves your date feeling ignored and isolated. This could especially sour an early date in a new relationship when people feel vulnerable and want to stay connected with the romantic potentiality. Save the deep discussion for later (post-date, when you'll want to dish about the date, anyway) and keep the focus on having an enjoyable time with the man/woman of the evening.
  • GUYS: This is for you. Based on conversations with women, such as my dear friend, mentioned in the book as Chloe the Oracle of Romance, show some common sense. Chivalry is still popular: Hold open doors, stand up when a lady enters the room, push a woman's chair in at a restaurant, observe good grooming at all times, be attentive to a woman's interests and questions. Don't drone on about your obsessions, be they sports, World of Warcraft, the "Saw" movies, your prostate, or anything else that could be a conversation-stopper. Keep the focus on getting to know your date and let her know about youbut not everything about you. Sure, you're interestingbut she is, too.
 

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Speaking in Several Tongues

Readers of the upcoming book, "A Kosher Dating Odyssey," may want to keep some dictionaries handy since I throw in words from several other languages. Sometimes a phrase from Hebrew or Spanish just sounds right. I write about this linguistic side of online datinghow a little learning can go a long wayin a post at the Times of Israel, where I'm also contributing these days. "Judaism is for (Language) Lovers" is my maiden voyage there:
Once I graduated from college and moved to New York, I started dating Jewish women and found many excelled at languages. They inspired a lifetime of studies that often overlapped with whatever was spoken by my love interest of the moment. If she spoke Hebrew or Russian or Portuguese or Dutch, then I wanted to speak it, too. For the past 30 years I’ve diligently cycled through languages, including several rounds of Hebrew. While I can’t speak anything but English, an ability to call a woman “motek” (“sweetie” in Hebrew) or close an email with “beijos e abraços” (“kisses and hugs” in Portuguese) sure can smooth the flow of a promising new romance.
 

Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Case of the Two Nancys -- A Shopping-Day Investigation

While I've never been much of a shopper, I will snap up old books, publications, posters and music when I see something I want. Yesterday was one of those days when I made some great purchases in two locations, linked, improbably, by the late actress Nancy Marchand. Or actress Nancy Marquand. Same actress or not? What started as a a fun post on an amazing coincidence became a puzzling tale of research and ambiguity.

I know Marchand from the series The Sopranos, of which I became a huge fan once it appeared on DVD. I compulsively watched the show and took notes that I turned it into an essay, "What I Learned About Love from Tony Soprano." A small part of the essay appears in "A Kosher Dating Odyssey." Marchand played Tony's conniving mother Livia, to great acclaim. Memories of the show returned when I dropped by the local Goodwill store yesterday afternoon and found "The Sopranos: A Family History," published in 2000 after show's second season. The book notes that Marchand died in 2000, during the filming of the second season. She died the day before her 72nd birthday.

Later in the day, I dropped by the Westport Public Library for its spring sale. There, I saw boxes of oldand I mean, back to the 1940s old Playbill theater programs. There must have been 200, and the sale had been on since 9 a.m. The more I pawed through the boxes, the more I thought, "I gotta scoop these up. When will I get this chance again?" Another theater buff asked about when the Playbills appeared and I showed her where most of them carried a date for the week they appeared, on an inside title page. She thanked me as we returned to our crazed quests to find programs of plays that resonated with us.

I left the library with 28 Playbills at 50 cents each, total cost, the equivalent of about three gallons of gas. Such a deal! I selected them in several categories. Some were classics, like South Pacific or West Side Story, and others might appeal to friends, like Lost in the Stars and Roland Petit's Les Ballets De Paris. Others had great kitsch appeal in their covers, like Gorilla Queen (off-Broadway) and others featured young versions of famous faces on Broadway, such as Alan Alda in The Owl and the Pussycat and Carol Burnett in Fade Out-Fade In.

And then I scanned one of the oldest Playbills, I Remember Mama from the week of March 4, 1946, by Rogers and Hammerstein. Starring in the role of Christine was Nancy Marquand. The program said,
Nancy Marquand (Christine) hails from Philadelphia's Main Line. While in high school she began preparing for the stage by studying with her great aunt, Julia West, who at one time had been a member of Lillian Russell's company. Her professional debut was with the Greenhills Theatre at Ocean City, where she remained as the company's ingenue for two years. Her first Broadway engagement was with "Kiss and Tell." Earlier this season she was seen in Owen Davis' "No Way Out."

Reading this, I assumed Marquand was Marchand with an earlier spelling, but the more I read about Marchand's career, the more I wondered. Bios all say she didn't reach Broadway until The Taming of the Shrew in 1951; I Remember Mama was five years earlier. When I looked for Nancy Marquand, the path quickly goes cold, as she's listed for only the plays given above and thennothing. The Marquand bio from 1946 describes an actress with more experience than Marchand could have had as a 17 year old then. Marquand came from Philadelphia, while Marchand studied at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech (later renamed Carnegie Mellon University). The photos don't quite look the same, as Marquand looks delicate; Marchand in her late 60s was tall and sternbut the photos were taken a half-century apart. Here's the 1946 photo: 


So my shopping passions collided with my Sam Spade instincts to lead me into the case of the Two Nancys, Marquand and Marchand.. I'd like to think they're the same Nancy, but my instinct says they're not. I now know everything about Nancy Marchand. But who was Nancy Marquand, and how did she vanish after such a promising start on the Great White Way? Does anybody remember (her role in) Mama?

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Continuing a 32-Year Conversation With Myself

I've always been a fan of what I call "found object journaling." While most of my journals use freshly purchased wirebound notebooks, I sometimes find and use notebooks discarded by others for my thoughts. Like a crab finding an abandoned shell, I move right in and make somebody else's notebook my literary home for a few months. These notebooks are often from school classes, tossed away as soon as a class ends. They're rare, but they exist.

My latest find is a real gem. I know, because it's my very last class notebook from Princeton University, "Spring '80" written on its yellow cover. After I graduated I held on to it as a record of my closing months at Old Nassau. I knew I had it, but never paid much attention to it until I finished up a volume and decided to use the 40 or so open pages in the massive 130-page, narrow-ruled notebook now. So the classes of the 22 year old me are mixing with the daily thoughts of the 54 year old me. I think of it as a single conversation with a 32-year gap in it.

My classes were the History and Philosophy of Science, English 313 on Literary Criticism (I would have been better off taken a plain old English course rather than one on the criticism of literature), and Religion 348 on Modern Judaism with Ellen Umansky, an excellent teacher who is now a professor of religious studies and the Director of the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

My notes from Umansky's class are riveting because the lectures and precepts marked my first rigorous, academic study of Judaism. Until that point, I had been completely self-taught as I meandered my way into some understanding of Judaism. Now, I had some badly needed guidance.
Writing in an impossibly compact handwriting I can't duplicate now, I jotted notes on the rise of the Jewish Enlightenment. Haskalah, maskilim, the Besht (Isaac Baal Shem Tov), mitnagdim, the Mussar movement, Moses Mendelssohnthey were all covered in just one lecture.

As the notebook rolls on, I can sense the solid organization and the enormous territory covered. A March 3 discussion covered "forerunners of Zionism," going all the way back to the destruction of the first Temple in 586 BCE and marching ahead to the 18th and 19th centuries. Leo Pinsker, Herzl, Peretz Smolenskin, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, Ahad Ha-Am:  the names keep rolling on and coming in between other lectures and classes featuring Coleridge, Hazlitt, Chaucer, Dryden, Johnson, Baudelaire and scientific equations that are completely incomprehensible to medid I actually understand them at one point?

The notebook marks my keen awareness of the closing of a tumultuous four years of college. I note the months and then days before my senior thesis was due on May 11, 1980. The inside cover has the phone numbers of publications to which I would apply for jobsthe New York Times, the Journal of Commerce, Fortune and Forbes. The inside cover also had the contact for an internship in the office of New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, where I indeed had an interview in Washington with his senior legislative assistant Chester Finn, Jr., now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution focusing on K-12 education issues. He was baffled about why a guy from Texas wanted to work in the office of a New York senator.

Even my doodles are full of meaning, from a drawing I called the "Laughing Centaur" to Grateful Dead song titles "St. Stephen" and "Dark Star" to wistful scribbles of the names Christie, Esther and Barbara (my mind was wandering to romantic daydreams that 30 years later I would turn into a book). There's even a thumbnail-sized sketch of Texas with dots indicating my home town of Mission, no doubt meant to show a classmate where I was from and where I really hoped I would not be immediately returning.

In May, I started the laborious handwritten process of composing "Modern Judaism paper (last one!)" that started with the line, "A hesitant mysticism pervades the Zionist thinking of Mordecai Kaplan and Ahad Ha-Am." That essay concluded my undergraduate education on a high note.

The future relentlessly barreled down on me in the spring of 1980. As challenging as Princeton had been, that future would be even more chaotic when I plunged into the real world of New York life and high-stakes business journalism just days after graduating. The very last page of the notebook has notes on "apartment survival techniques" and hints like "check Salvation Army, places for clothing, furniture" and the almost-poetic "if trouble get lawyer."

And now, 32 years later, I'm still doodling names in margins of notebooks, although I tend to do so in Hebrew and Russian. I still read about Judaism and build on what I learned in Religion 348, and I even attend the outstanding speaker series that Ellen Umansky organizes at Fairfield University. I still like the Grateful Dead and I'm not above picking up a good bargain at Salvation Army and Goodwill stores.

And I'm still writing in notebooks, although these days I prefer the wide-rule format -- they work much better for 50-something handwriting.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Photography on the Border

A theme that cycles through my book, especially the earlier chapters, is life on the border between Texas and Mexico. I very rarely went to Mexico, and for the tamest of reasons. But others went for untame reasons and I heard their conversations growing up. Drugs, cheap liquor and Boystownthe name of the red-light brothel zones.

The rawest reason jumped out at me during a recent visit to, of all places, the International Center of Photography in New York, one of my favorite museums. The exhibit that caught my eye, and took me right back to the banks of the Rio Grande, was a look at the contact sheets of the Magnum photo agency. Contact sheets are direct prints from negatives on to  photo paper, how photographers used to assess their work, finding the best and weeding out the rest.

One of the Magnum contact sheets came from photographs for a book called "Boystown: La Zona de Tolerancia," published in 2000 by Aperture in association with the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern and Mexican Photography at what was then Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State University-San Marcos.

I have that book.

I have it, moreover, through a surprising processan accident, a matter of a noontime trip to the Virgin Megastore in Times Square in 2004, before it closed. I worked in the Midtown and always enjoyed lunch breaks at the store, a sprawling multilevel cathedral of music, books and movies. The place had a bin for books that were damaged or unpopular. I glanced at the bin. The big-format book with the black spine and silver lettering that announced "Boystown" practically leaped into my hand. The spine was cracking, the edges were worn, but I didn't care; I would have paid triple the price of $4.99 for this amazing window into the life pulsing on the other side of the river, a world I heard about, but never even got close to experiencing -- not that I ever had a desire to visit the red-light districts of Mexico.

Eight years after getting the book, I saw one of the contact sheets at the ICP. The explanatory text filled in some of the gaps in the book, which kept its geographic details very vague. None of the essays give details about where on the border the photos of prostitutes with drunken gringo frat boys, aging ranch bosses and Mexican workers were taken. The black-and-white photos existed in a feverish neverland that existed somewhere but no place in particular. However, the text for the sheet identified the local as (if I recall correctly), Ciudad Camargo, across from Rio Grande City. The place immediately grounded itself just 30 miles from where I grew up, in Mission.

These days, I doubt too many lonely Anglo ranchers and drunken frat boys are yahooing it across the border for debauched fun as they did in the 1970s when these photos were taken by Mexican street photographers hustling for a buck. The places still exist, but I'm guess the clientele has radically changed. Still, the book captures a place in time, when I was taking notes and starting to write about what was going on around me, on the other side of the river.

Friday, January 20, 2012

"High Art," Odd Jewish (Sort of) Movie

Departing from my usual fare, I had Netflix send me High Art, a 1998 movie set in the drug-addled art-magazine world in New York. The cast had promise, with Ally Sheedy, Patricia Clarkson (struggling and failing to maintain a German accent) and Radha Mitchell. The photo-magazine setting also caught my interest, but the druggy characters and dark settings dampened my mood. Ally Sheedy as Lucy looked dreadfully gaunt as an alienated star photographer in emotional exileI hope that was just acting, not real life.

What added an odd angle to High Art was Sheedy's interaction with her mother, an upper-class German-Jew who rails against Sheedy's German girlfriend and drives a Mercedes. The strained mother-daughter relationship and the explicit Jewish angle (including a scene with Shabbat candles in the background) were so at odds with the blank backgrounds of the other characters that I had to wonder what was going on.

Did Holocaust traumas drive Lucy's drugging and withdrawal? What's the backstory on the German girlfriend and the mother's hectoring? Lucy carries the weight of history as well as addiction in her, and that added a fresh element to a romantic threesome movie set in the late Clinton era of New York. High Art is worth watching, but it's no feel-good date movie.

Monday, January 02, 2012

Thinking About Body Images and "Someday Melissa"

I typically scan the New York Times obituary page for lives well lived, but the December 21 edition with the tiny-type paid notices was wrenching with its sketches of too-soon loss. One very long notice was for Suzanne Hart, the advertising executive killed in an elevator accident a week earlier. By contrast, the memorial notice for Melissa Rose Avrin ran only 7 lines, plus a photo. It read,
Dec. 21, 1989-May 6, 2009. Your movie is a reality. It's changing lives around the world in the battle against Eating Disorders. Missing and loving you forever, Mom. www.somedaymelissa.com.
I followed the link and found that "Someday Melissa" is the name of a documentary made by Melissa's mother, Judy Avrin, as a response to Melissa's death at 19 from a heart attack related to her bulimia. It has already accepted at a film festival and screened at medical schools, universities and Jewish community centers. Someday Melissa includes journal entries from Melissa and interviews with family members, friends and medical and mental health professionals.It deserves wide viewing and discussion.

Melissa Avrin's wrenching and fatal bulimia resonates with me as the extreme expression of body-image issues. In my dating days in the 1980s, I met women with bulimia and the memories of their deep distress over appearance and other psychological issues still haunt me. I tried to be as supportive as possible, but I realized the matter was far beyond my influence, other than saying I accepted them for who and what they were. Whatever self-perceptions led them to behave this way had no basis in reality -- they were attractive and fit. But we're not talking about reality with any of this. I couldn't save anybody, and it took years before I realized that.

I touch on body image issues, both men's and women's, in my book, "A Kosher Dating Odyssey." I don't know if Jewish women are more prone to eating disorders than any other ethnic group, but they are perhaps more articulate in acknowledging and addressing them. I look at the film's website and I think of other women and their pain. The film already has had an impact, judging from the hundreds of comments posted on the site's guestbook about viewers' responses to it. I can only hope that Judy Avrin's response to her great loss leads to comfort and support for people who punish themselves when looking in the mirror and not seeing the God-given wonder they truly are.

Who Was Kate? Who Was Mary Kathryn?

The letter from 1968 I found the note in a stack of family letters. Dated July 15, 1968, the handwritten letter came from my father Mark’s...