Head On Back to Tennessee (Williams)

Lately, people have been talking about their binges of watching Breaking Bad. I’ve never seen a minute of it. Instead, here’s my binge-lite story.

I recently saw Blue Jasmine and liked Woody Allen’s reworking of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Having seen the play at least twice, I could pick up on the references. Last night I went back to the cultural output of Williams himself with The Night of the Iguana, directed by John Huston, with Ava Gardner and teen hottie Sue Lyon melting the DVD with fine support from Richard Burton.

This marked yet another checkmark on my list of Tennessee Williams’ plays and movies I’ve seen. Over the last six months, I’ve done my own slow-mo binge watching of his films and found them all riveting. I didn’t set out to do this; the works just crept up on me like a sinuous southern vine wrapping itself around my Netflix list and, with a drawl and flirtatious glance, beckoning me to abandon myself.

The addiction must have begun in my early years, as so many addictions do, when I saw a high school or college production of The Glass Menagerie. I’ll pay it the highest compliment I can for a literary work: I remembered part of it almost verbatim, the lines that say,

“The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass.”

The current Williams kick began about six months ago when I pulled Suddenly, Last Summer off the shelf of my local library, mostly because I was going through an Elizabeth Taylor movie binge. While I didn’t know what to expect, I was familiar with the iconic beach photo of La Liz, with her wind-tossed hair and tight one-piece swimsuit.

What a treat awaited me! The film’s over-the-top Southern atmosphere (always appealing to me) with high-voltage performances by Taylor and Katherine Hepburn, haunted by the mysterious death of Hepburn’s son on a European vacation, drew me in. Mental illness, asylums, lust-crazed patients, the final confrontation that explains everything and plenty of shrieking and emoting by Taylor made the movie appealing.

I checked out other movies as some buzzer went off in my head in response to external stimuli. When Scarlett Johansson played Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway, I decided to see the original film with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. This was one of those plays and movies I had always heard about but never seen. The title and general outline are so much a part of American culture that I had a sense of deja vue—like I had seen it, but I really hadn’t. And as I did see it, I felt I wasn’t seeing what I expected. Taylor delivered all the voluptuousness I expected, but the undercurrent of childlessness deeply moved me, as her yearnings collided with her husband’s drinking and unspoken feelings about a friend’s suicide.

Night of the Iguana took the basic elements of regret, alcohol, confusion, male dissolution and repressed female yearnings in a Mexican setting, with Richard Burton the fallen minister leading a tour group from a Texas Baptist college on a tour of Mexico. He’s got a troubling penchant for young women, and Carroll Baker steps smartly into the role to show that you don’t have to be unclothed to be steamy.

She soon leaves the stage as Ava Gardner’s Maxine, a hotel proprietor, takes the stage. I had never seen Ava Gardner in a movie before, and let’s say she made a big impression with her tousled hair, forward style and glimpses of longing and vulnerability. She plays off another female character, Deborah Kerr, as a hotel guest. I had to chuckle at the scene where Gardner romps in the Mexican surf with two shirtless Mexican houseboys at her hotel – the scene reminded me of Kerr’s aquatic embrace with Burt Lancaster in the Hawaiian surf 11 years earlier in From Here to Eternity.

Iguana rolls to an explosive end (typical for Williams material) with Burton trussed up in a hammock as he roars through his alcohol addiction. The romantic hopes and tangles sort themselves out and the movie concludes with a tentatively hopeful note.

I’m already looking forward to the next entries in my Williamsfest s drawn from this best-of list – Baby Doll, Summer and Smoke, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. I may not score many points in the pop-culture department, but I know what I like when I see it. Call it the writing, the late 50s-early 60s acting style, the Southern settings – whatever it is, I’m ready to curl up with some more Williams. And based on what I’ve seen, I’m going to spin off into more of Liz Taylor and Ava Gardner.

The Jong Show, Lust Made Flesh

Author Erica Jong is now marking the 40th anniversary of the publication of Fear of Flying. She has sold 27 million copies of it. She can probably be published anywhere she wants, on any topic. She's been a media celebrity since the Nixon era and she's working on a new book called, daringly enough, Fear of Dying (it's not a sequel). She's written 22 books, is 71 years old and looks and sounds great and she likes to write and talk about sex.

When I learned she would be speaking at the Westport Public Library last week, I knew I had to drop everything to get there to hear her. After all these decades of quietly, politely lusting after her, our moment of spiritual communion had arrived.

Actually, I didn't pine for her so much as for the concept of her. Erica the lusty (those early pictures of her!), Erica the educated, Erica the Jewish -- she fit into the image of women that fascinate me. I wasn't a groupie, wasn't a big reader of her non-Fear of Flying works, she just hovered in my imagination more so than, say, Mary Higgins Clark. And the fact that Jong and I live in adjoining towns means that we share even the same physical space--if she likes to go to the Stop & Shop in Westport, CT, that is.

After a slowww commute home from Manhattan, I raced to the library and found the meeting room jammed. I squeezed in and leaned against the back wall, camera and notebook in hand.

"It's an amazing event that Fear of Flying is 40," she said in a wry tone. "I wish I was 40." The sales went far beyond any possible expectation. She aimed for sales of 3,500 given the literary nature of the book. Instead, it found an audience and now three new editions are in the works, along with the digitization of her back list and decades-long discussions about a movie version (big-name actresses like Goldie Hawn and Barbra Streisand have aged into their golden years waiting for the role to materialize).

She gave the audience, mostly middle-aged and above suburban women, a shiver of naughty delight by reading passage of Fear of Flying about the world-historical concept of the zipless fuck. She read,

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.

"Nowadays they call these things 'hookups.' Are they better for today's girls? I don't think so," she mused.

Whatever Fear of Flying accomplished, it did not herald an ongoing surge of sexual delight. Forty years on, she says with dismay, she's hearing from young women that "the sex out there is not that great," what with men so exhausted and disoriented by computer sex that, come the opportunity to engage with a real-life woman, they just can't perform. Yes, impotence casts its fierce and flaccid shadow across the land.

I was surprised by the amount of time Jong and the audience spent slagging 50 Shades of Grey (soon to be a major motion picture, which Fear of Flying has yet to achieve). She called it "unreadable" and repetitious, badly in need of a copy editor. Not only the writing but the characters came under her harsh commentary. The main character, the young and sullied innocent Anastasia, disappointed Jong with her eager acquisition of stuff, a long, long slide from the enlightened women of the early 1970s, when Fear of Flying raised hopes that "we were new kinds of women" and nobody would have sex for money.

(Jong's comments echo a past theme of hers. In 2011, she edited the anthology Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex, which in one online ad compared itself favorably to 50 Shades, as if the two were in some kind of psychic, feminine competition.)

Time flies, and flying (a reference in part to Jong's literal fear of flying) will soon share space with dying in Fear of Dying. The book, 10 years in the works, is about a 60ish actress, Vanessa Wunderman, who can't get good parts and has to deal with the ageing process, made more painful because of her beauty. Death surrounds her, even her dog, a "Jewdle," or Jewish poodle. Still, "sex and death dance well together."

Asked by an elderly wag who yelled from the back of the room, "Is there sex after death?", Jong quipped, "I hope so. It's supposed to be the ultimate sex."

At 71, Jong knows about mortality, involving lives lived long and deeply. Her mother lived to be 101, and her father into his 90s -- she noted that the day after the Westport presentation was the yahrtzeit, or Jewish anniversary, of her father's passing.

Jong made her politics very clear through the evening. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the Tea Party, even the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg -- all the personifications of pure evil. Scandinavian democracies and progressive politics -- all good! I wanted to ask her if she had any political views that deviated even one iota from the standard progressive thinking, but I kept quiet. I didn't want to wreck our special time together with a dumb statement (I'm a master of that, you know) and, anyway, I didn't want to be mauled by the suburban matrons who clearly agreed with everything Jong said. She delivered her message and answered questions with grace and energy and the polish you'd expect from a veteran of decades of readings, interviews and appearances.

I'll check out some of her other books and see how they sound now that I've seen the author in the flesh. Maybe I'll pick up some good writerly ideas.

I should be so blessed at 71 as Jong is.

Listening in on Manly Men, at the Gym

I've belonged to the New York Sports Club since 1996, except for a four-year stretch in the early 2000s. I've always enjoyed the chain, which provides a very consistent experience -- I've used probably 10 locations in New York State and Connecticut since I joined, and I liked all of them.
Being the observer of human behavior that I am, I always keep my ears open for snippets of conversation. Locker rooms are good for that, better in Connecticut than in New York. On the other hand, the weightlifting areas at the New York clubs excel at providing manly conversations, since so many muscular studs are busy flexing their pecs and abs there at lunch.

Case in point, from the Rockefeller Center gym I now visit on weekdays. I was in the weight area downstairs, doing arm curls and other moves with modest weights, 10 lbs., enough to keep toned but not rupture anything. I was the exception. Two men were down there slinging the 105-lb. hand weights (that's 105 pounds in each hand). They looked suitably bulked up.

One man next to me told another, "They lifted 31,000 lbs."

"You mean, 3,100 pounds?" asked his friend.

To clarify, they asked one of the men.

"Yeah, we lifted 31,000 pounds together. It took about two hours," he said modestly. They must have kept a running total of weights x repetitions x men.

The two observers were in awe of this manly accomplishment. 31,000 pounds!

One said in amazement, "Not even A-Rod could do that!"

Hearty male laughter followed. And that's my tale from the sweaty inner sanctums of the New York Sports Club for today.

The Jewish Name Game

Ace feature writer Lenore Skenazy kindly quoted me in an article in the new issue of the Forward titled, "When a Name Screams 'I'm Jewish!'" I finally made it into the fabled Forward, which has printed my acerbic letters on stories before, but this is the first time I cracked its editorial pages. Skenazy writes,

But then there are those who wouldn’t give up the identifying moniker for anything. “I enjoy having a Jewish last name because it much better identifies me as a Jew than does my first name,” said Van Wallach, a proposal writer at an accounting firm. His dad was crazy about racecars, so he was named for a British car from the 1950s, the Vanwall. (His brother Cooper was also named for a car.) “If I was a girl,” Wallach added, “I would have been Jaguar.”

The part of the article that amused me the most were the quotes from one woman (I won't say which) whom I had met on Jdate in the mid-2000s. We haven't had any contact in years, but if I can dig up her email address I'll drop her a line and say, "Hey, we'll always be connected through Lenore's Jewish-names article in the Forward. Small world, isn't it?"

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/181152/when-a-name-screams-im-jewish/?p=all#ixzz2aOclvETC

The Bobby Pickles Podcast

Podcaster extraordinaire and t-shirt design maven Robert Piccirillo, a/k/a Bobby Pickles, interviewed me on the steps of the New York Public Library recently for his podcast program. This marked the first interview I've done in a public setting and it went well. Bobby had the questions, the technology and the knack for connecting that makes for a fun give-and-take.  Give it a listen -- it's one of the best (and unlike my last interviewers, some radio shock jocks, no Holocaust jokes!).
Who the heck is Bobby Pickles? I'll let him explain:

Robert Piccirillo, better known by his nom de plum, Bobby Pickles, is a professional podcaster/tee shirt peddler. Pickles began his rise to prominence in 2013 when he appeared on the TLC reality series "America's Worst Tattoos". Bobby is Co-Founder and CEO of FAT ENZO, a brand of satirical graphic tee shirts depicting people of history, literature and pop culture, which he peddles at Union Square in New York City. He is the host of The Bobby Pickles Podcast, which can be downloaded for free on iTunes. And he has a BA in English from the University of Florida.

So give my interview a listen, check out his other programs, and if you want to be really fashion forward, buy some of his t-shirts. Support Staten Island entrepreneurship.

An Imagined Meeting of Two Very Old Men, and One Forever 29

One of my favorite mental exercises is arranging meetings among people who were in proximity at some point in their lives, people who would have compelling conversations. Here is one example of three men who covered some of the same life territory. Who are they?

Louis Zamperini. One of the greatest books I’ve ever read was Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. It tells the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner from Southern California who was shot down over the Pacific in World War II and survived seven weeks at sea, only to be captured and tortured by the Japanese for two years. Masterfully researched and written, Unbroken renewed my faith in the power of the written word. Zamperini is still alive at the ripe age of 96.

Scotty Bowers. This morning I finished a rather different book, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, by Scotty Bowers. Published last year, Bowers’ book slides through his early years on an Illinois farm, a move to Chicago during the Depression, enlisting in the Marines and combat on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, and his post-war move to Los Angeles as a gas-station attendant, hustler, bartender and no-fee arranger of sexual liaisons for the rich, powerful and famous. Bowers is still alive at the ripe age of 89, soon turning 90.

John Basilone. I learned the story of John Basilone through watching the HBO mini-series “The Pacific,” about the Marines in World War II, told through the experiences of several actual soldiers. Basilone won the Medal of Honor for his actions on Guadalcanal, holding off 3,000 Japanese troops with a squad of 15 men. Only two survived, along with Basilone. He toured the U.S. selling war bonds, married a member of the Marines Women’s Reserve. He requested a return to combat and after several tries was granted that request. He was killed on the first day of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Also killed on Iwo Jima: Bowers’ brother Don.

I knew about Zamperini and Basilone, but I needed Bowers to spark the imaginary discussion of two very old men and one who is forever 29. Bowers’ book, which had a thundering wave of publicity and a counterwave of questions about his veracity and lack of self-insight, interested me for reasons different from those who wanted to dish the dirt on secretly closeted celebrities and royalty. What I found most compelling was the early section on his wartime experiences. He glides over them, with some real tears shed for his brother and others killed, then gets back to the serious business of sex.

Bowers rides through life on the surface, bouncing along on waves with seemingly no harm done by anything in life. But combat in the Pacific is a very different experience from sex in the mansions of Hollywood. How did the war change him, what did he experience? Could his path have crossed with that of John Basilone, as they both fought on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima?

Bowers wrote with maddening lack of detail about Guadalcanal,

We Marines shared a camaraderie that is unique in America’s fighting forces. We went through so much together that watertight bonds were formed. We thought of each other as brothers, and those deaths affected us all on a very personal level . . . I was fortunate to still be alive and unhurt. I was one of the lucky ones.”

For all his sexual libertinism, Bowers was a confirmed teetotaler, never touching a drop. Zamperini, however, back in Southern California after the war and drifting, became a serious alcoholic. Unbroken details the terrible impact of alcoholism on his relationships and marriage. A turning point came when he attended a crusade held by evangelist Billy Graham in late 1949 and became a dedicated Christian who walked away from the drinking. The conversion led to a career as an inspirational speaker and manager of a camp for troubled youth. He still lives in Hollywood, and can’t be far from Bowers on Kew Drive in Los Angeles. So for almost 70 years, Zamperini and Bowers have practically been neighbors, the Christian and the hustler, two men who did their duty and then pursued very different paths in life. What would they talk about? Their health, maybe, their experiences in the 1940s. From reading about them, I doubt either has regrets in life.

They would provide good company to John Basilone, winner of the Medal of Honor, who left a safe position stateside and a loving wife to be with the Marines in Iwo Jima, including brothers Don and Scotty Bowers. He will be forever 29. Perhaps a day in the company of men in their 90s would be enjoyable, three old soldiers sitting in the sunshine above the California hills, putting aside any differences to share their bonds and respect. While Zamperini and Basilone might have some qualms about Bowers’ career decisions, I could see them agreeing with Bowers’ reflection on the troop ship home in April 1945. Let’s give him the last word:

During the entire voyage I could think of little else but the desire to play as hard as I could. Needless to say, that included getting as much sex as possible. I wanted to do anything and everything I could to put the horrors and miseries of battle behind me. Like just about every other soul on board that ship I needed to purge myself of all that had happened. Every single of us was impatient to go ashore. Life took on a new dimension, becoming more precious than ever. The war had taught me an incalculably valuable lesson. After I had seen all those young guys stacked up dead or blown to pieces in that vicious conflict I realized that one of the most important things of all was to stay alive and to rejoice in the gift of every single day.

Whatever Bowers did in the rest of his life, those thoughts show a human touch that could connect him to his fellow soldiers, enjoying the sun.

Gov. Rick Perry, Live and Civilized

You can take the reporter out of journalism, but you can't take the reporter out of the boy, or something like that. This evening I donned my camera and notepad and trekked to the Ferguson Library in Stamford, CT, to hear Texas Governor Rick Perry speak as part of his economic development swing through the Northeast. Tax- and regulation-plagued Connecticut businesses (especially the ancient gun trade) are prime targets for Perry's appeal, so I wanted to hear him.

Perry visited Stamford with another agenda. He spoke as part of a series on "Civility in America," with his topic being civility on the campaign trail. He reflected on his 2012 run for the Republican nomination for President, but also slipped in some tangy reminders of Texas' success at attracting businesses and creating jobs.

"I thought I'd take a break from poaching all your jobs to talk about civility," he said.
Perry pointed to the 24-hour news cycle, technology and the permanent campaign for higher office as factors behind the "coarsening" of public discourse, but said, "civility is a choice." Asked about how a candidate can reinforce a message of civility in his campaign, Perry said the candidate's conduct in public and private, with a "pleasant, decent and civil approach." He pointed to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as presidents with that approach. Democratic politicians that impress him include Gov. Jerry Brown of California, Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Connecticut's own Gov. Dannel Malloy and California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom.

On the GOP side, Perry mentioned Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, adding that Scott "very competitive" in representing Florida's interests.

Warming to his theme of states and economic development, Perry said that governors' key role is to "create a climate" where businesses will want to invest. He favors competition among states for business, and would like to see more power devolving to states for decision making.

"I'm here to help stimulate a conversation about policies to make Connecticut and the United States more successfully economically," said Perry.

He also touched on Texas education topics, including the $10,000 college degree and -- bringing back my memories of junior high school—the year that seventh graders in the Lone Star State spending studying Texas history. I remember it well and it must have stayed with me, because here I am writing about Texas 40 years later.

Throwing in the Towel

I'm throwing in the towel. Literally. I've had enough. In fact, last night my son and I threw in the towels and took baskets of wet laundry to a Norwalk laundromat to dry the clothes. After over 3 years of steady service for the two apartments in my building (me and the downstairs neighbors), the LG dryer is giving up the ghost. For weeks the dry function has performed worse and worse. I tinkered with the settings to try the manual setting and that worked for a while, but no longer.

I remember how we managed wet laundry growing up in Texas 50 years ago -- a clothesline and clothes pins! The heat and dry air did just fine. But in Connecticut, that approach doesn't work so well, especially without a backyard with plenty of sunshine access.

In a fit of creative, multi-track problem solving, my son and I went to the laundromat. To our pleasure 32 minutes of drying in two machines (a quarter for eight minutes) did the trick. I had forgot the simple pleasure of fresh, dry laundry. At the same time, I called a well-regarded local repair service to pay a house call and try to find the problem—most likely a faulty sensor. The LG spins fine, it just doesn't generate heat. If it can be fixed, great, if not, then it's back to the laundromat we go.

I'd like a simple clothesline, but that'll have to wait for global warming to accelerate.

Mom, the War Years

In going through old family photos recently, I found a a profile about my late mother that looks like it appeared in the late 1940s in the McAllen Monitor or Mission Times, both papers in far South Texas, where my mother grew up. Here's this look at the family history:

She Talks Army, Navy Lingo

Shirley Lissner admits she isn't bi-lingual. But she can converse in the languages of two services—the Army and Navy.

For Shirley, now with the Mission Citrus Growers Union, is a veteran of both branches—an experience few men and far fewer women can lay claim to.

Firs she joined the WAACS. After that service was incorporated into the Regular Army, she resigned, then enlisted in the Navy's WAVES a year later.

Shirley, a native of San Antonio, came here with her family in 1926. Previously they'd lived in Gonzales, "but I still can't speak Spanish," she complained.

Joining the WAACS, says Shirley, seemed an interesting thing to do back in 1942, so she signed up and was sent to Nacogdoches, Texas, for basic training.

"Later, at Camp Polk, La., I got mixed up with a company going overseas," Shirley laughed, "and when I found out where we were going I got out in a hurry. You had a choice then."

The Brooklyn Port of Embarkation was Shirley's next base. She worked there as a cryptographer operating, encoding and decoding messages.

"Forget everything you know; they told me when I left there," Shirley commented. "I can't tell you much about my work because I did just that—forgot it."

Eight months after arriving in Brooklyn, or in 1943, the WACS went into the Regular Army, so Shirley left them. "I'd been through the first sergeants school at Des Moines but they discharged me as a Pfc anyway," quipped Shirley.

During the next year Shirley worked at Moore Field as a teletype operator. Then—"it was the uniform, I guess," Shirley said -- she enlisted in the WAVES in October, 1944.

Now quite experienced in communications, she was assigned to the Navy's communications office in Washington, D.C.

"Our office was down the hall from the then Secretary of the Navy, [James] Forrestal," Shirley remembered. "I was there six months before I started saluting him; I didn't know who he was."

Discharged in March, 1946, Shirley fared better in rank with her second service, having been made a T 3/C."And I liked navy blue better than O.D., too," she commented.

Shirley worked in San Antonio a year before returning here, where she's a secretary with the Mission Citrus Growers Union.

She isn't entertaining any ideas just now about any more enlistments. But . . . if another war comes . .  there's always the Air Force, Shirley's thoughts might be as she speculatively scans the sky!

This Is Not a Picture of Jesus. It May Not Even Be a Picture.

ACLU and the Freedom From Religion Foundation are all aflutter about an alleged painting of Jesus hanging in Jackson Middle School in Ohio. The painting was donated by students and has been quietly corrupting secular values since 1947, according to this story.

The constitutional arguments and response from the Liberty Institute, defending the school district, are predictable. What would not be predictable would be my suggestion for a response from the school district.

The argument would be: This is not a picture of Jesus. It is a picture of President Obama. After all, Obama's a calm, forward-looking, confidence-inspiring person who inspires messianic hopes among some acolytes, such as Newsweek and Foreign Policy.  Or it could be a picture of Jesús, a hardworking undocumented proletarian, struggling to survive in the fascist hellhole that is Amerikkka. It could be a chair. This could be a painting of ANYTHING. That's the beauty of post-modernist theory.

The argument would be based on the firm, tested concepts of post-modernist literary theory. Essentially, art of any kind is simply a starting "text" that the subjective individual interprets according to his own frameworks as colored by race, gender, economic inequality or assorted victimological modalities. Objectivity does not exist -- it's a myth of western rational imperialist hegemonistic oppression. But don't take my word for it! This explains the issue nicely, and here's a key excerpt:

Postmodernism takes the relativistic position that there is no absolute truth or objective reality, that what we experience as reality is a social construct (solely constructed by individual human minds), that it consists only of our interpretations of what the world means to us individually, and that individual responses to a given cultural product comprise the whole reality of that product.

Since individual responses tend to differ from one another and change over time, postmodernist thought is skeptical of explanations that claim to be valid for all human groups, cultures, or times. Instead, it encourages the exploration and comparison of individuals' subjective responses to a given poem, painting, or other cultural product. It examines the role that language, power, and motivation play in the formation of ideas and beliefs.

This sets up a clear defense for the school, if it wants to take a bracingly non-traditional approach and set aside generations of assumed meaning for the painting. Simply argue this is not actually a picture of Jesus, but a text/representation open to multiple, conflicting meanings based on the frames employed by the subjective viewer. Surely the ACLU and Freed From Religion Foundation understand the critical role of free enquiry and the value of post-modernism.