#85 Paul Newman--pt. 2

To continue from last post. Before his real shot at stardom in Somebody Up There..., the actor was picked for his debut in the lush, formula-laden, god-and-sandals epic, The Silver Chalice. (And need I point out: the perfect kind of picture to watch in the exotic, palace-like surroundings of the Avalon Theater.) Most all of these, noted last time, were conflationary clones of Samson and Delilah meets The Robe--lots of action and slave-girl skin with a little sappy romantic "mush" and soppy (for the grown-ups) spirituality, from which us guys disgustedly averted our eyes.

The stars of TSC? NOT Paul Newman or even the wonderful Pier Angeli. No: the painted-pagan witch-goddess Virginia Mayo and the creepy Jack Palance as the sinister Simon Magus. SHE (and her dancing girls--invariably in these movies bare-foot-anklet-and-sequined-bikinis-with-transparent-veil-clad pin-ups) seduced us right down to the inside our pants; then HE scared them off. All this and Natalie Wood, too. I'll admit that the only scene I remember from a half-century ago with absolute clarity is when Christ-rival-manque' Palance, raving madly (and reminding me now of Frederick Forest's great "Blue Duck" character in Lonesome Dove trying to prove that Indians could "fly" by crashing fatally through the second-story jailhouse window), attempts to prove his divinity by jumping from a mile-high tower. Splat. Like the movie's box-office receipts. But great camp, looking back.

Newman had no such competition in his sophomore effort two years later. Though Steve McQueen debuted in it uncredited, and Sal Mineo had a small part, the movie-rendering of Rocky Graziano's autobiography was all Paul's, if you discount the beguiling Pier Angeli, matched up with him again by popular demand, no doubt. (Mandatory cosmic-convergence-trivia-diversion: James Dean originally picked for the part of Rocky Barbella...killed famously in car crash...replaced by method-actor-Dean-Brando-type = NEWMAN...Pier Angeli's ex-fiance' Dean the "only man I ever loved"...shortly before her suicide in 1971, age 40.) The plot? Think Rocky Balboa (ring-scenes and make-up, too), Stallone's rip-off of every fight-film ever made, and over and over again at that.

But for chacterization, look to the angst-ridden, failure-prone boxers in DeNiro's Raging Bull, or in the prototype, Brando's On the Waterfront (1954). The latter's blockbuster success, I'm sure, is what gave Newman his coattail-effect second chance by the studios. And unlike the one in TSC, his performance here was memorable for me, maybe because at thirteen I could understand the mature--face it: testosterone-centric-- themes that I couldn't quite "get" in OTW two years earlier. It's as if Newman explicated Brando for me. The actor could have in fact played Brando for the rest of his career, and been quite successful at it. But even here in SUTLM he brings that quintessential Newman touch, the Sly Rogue, the Mischievious Rebel, to the part of the not-quite-punch-drunk-yet boxer. Aided by the script (and the real-life story), the actor uses that intelligent blue-eyed glint to lend verisimilitude to the preposterous roller-coaster narrative. While getting beaten up most of the time, Rocky is really putting the con on the gangs, and then the gangsters and the boxing establishment, until his ultimate triumph. (It's interesting that in real life too, Graziano had a fairly successful post-pugilist career as a comic actor. I remember him as Marta Raye's quondam fiance' on her 50s TV variety show.)

It all came together (including his incredible, forever-marriage to his co-star, Joanne Woodward) for the actor two years later in The Long Hot Summer (his character's name explains it all--Ben Quick--even though I hated the movie about as much as I did that other Southern Gothic yuck-fest, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, though Newman's acting stood out like a "Brick" in that one. [Apologies to ghosts of Faulkner and Tennessee Williams])--and EXPLODED in The Hustler (1961), his defining role. And this may be unfair to him, but I think he played variations on "Fast Eddie" Felson for the remainder of his career...at least in his better performances (fill in the blanks, starting with Butch Cassidy). He even had to repeat the role in Color of Money to win the Oscar! So what? No actor has been more watchable, if indeed predictable. And did I mention he was also a pretty good human being? No need to. The enduring "shelf-life" of his filmic achievements may be exceeded only by his "Newman's Own" products and the good works they've spawned. Pace.
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#84 Monday Mourning----Paul Newman

Yes, I'm back in the Avalon Theater again [When will he stop?!]. Because... that's where I saw the great Paul Newman's first two films--The Silver Chalice (1954), and Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)--each of which, in wildly divergent ways, played a role in making him a star. I believe.

But first, I got to know the actor on TV, before and around the time of his movie debut. When he appeared on The Avalon's wide screen as Basil the chalice-maker, I recognized him from starring roles (I don't think he never had a bit part) in several of MY favorite mystery/horror shows of TV's early and mid-fifties: Tales of Tomorrow, The Web, and Suspense. But my parents, culture-grubbers that they were, made me sit through some of those "Golden-Age-of-Television" (mostly they weren't) live-action-drama shows like Playhouse 90 and US Steel Hour. Of course I'm glad they did, because that's where I saw Newman sharpening his acting chops (I presume he was, because I wasn't THAT discerning a viewer then--just people and faces). He was co-lead in Bang the Drum Slowly (later the movie with Moriarty and DeNiro), and played one of his two Billy the Kids: first in the TV Philco Playhouse "Death of..." and later in Arthur Penn's quirky directorial debut "The Left-Handed Gun" (1958--saw this one only recently), where he was truly arriving at his lovable-rebel persona. (Not a very good film, though, and did you know--I can't resist--that some of Penn's literally "sinister" symbolism is compromised now that it's been lately proved that Billy wasn't left-handed after all?--his famous gun-toting photo was reversed in processing.)

He wasn't quite there yet with a "Paul Newman" role in his motion-picture debut, The Silver Chalice. I took my quarter to the Avalon to see yet another wall-to-wall biblical epic (this was the era of The Robe, Quo Vadis, Demetrious and the Gladiators, David and Bathsheba [Susan Hayward randily indeed in her "bath"], Samson and Delilah, Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, etc.--saw 'em all and more) because...they were there, and because, besides Westerns, they were the action-movies cum skin-flicks of their day, much to the delectation of us peri-adolescent boys. This particular matinee was TSC, and I fell in love... not with Paul Newman, but with his co-star Pier Angeli (I was already in love with Natalie Wood, who played one of her usual juvenile roles in this picture), who to my mooney delight would co-star with him again two years later in SUTLM, which was to make him an A-list actor. She was great in TSC; he wasn't--or so I'm told. I wasn't paying that much attention (hey, I was 11), except that he seemed to fill the role assigned to him OK. But in fact, I have learned, Newman himself took out full-page ads the very day after its release to apologize for his performance in the motion picture! Public-spirited already, he was. I guess he learned what kind of role best suited him--certainly NOT the fraught, effete, and dreamy-eyed artiste he played in TSC. Rather, he chooses at least one-half of his future film-persona in his very next role as the boxer "Rocky" Barbella (Stallone plagiarized) in SUTLM: that of the irrepressible REBEL. I was a more sophisticated viewer of 13, and this time he sure did capture my attention, my lust for Pier Angeli notwithstanding. More to come.
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#83 Saturday Matinee--the Debate

Well, it came off, after all. It wasn't very good show-biz though, what with Jim Lehrer's attempts at stage direction: nagging shrilly throughout "Can you address that directly to Mr. Obama?"..."Could you turn to face him on that one?"..."Would you please (I'm trying to) mix it up a little bit here?" Mawkish and undignified. That's one of manifold reasons NOT to watch the live proceedings--sufficient to check excerpts and reviews. (Or best, DVR the thing.) But someone insisted, so I was exposed to all the raggedy edges of what is not, nor ever has been, a debate in the classical sense at all. Did you hear anything like "RESOLVED: A timetable for troop-withdrawal would end in disaster" followed by point-by-point argument (and then rebuttal on the other side: "No it wouldn't and here's why")? Or, RESOLVED: cutting taxes and spending would rescue the economy...and then rebuttal and so on? No. In fact you heard literally a bunch of these from the moderator: "What do you think about that, Senator?" and "What's your response to that?"...back and forth and back again. This inevitably led to to the garbled interruptions and over-talking that loses the audience and the POINT AT ISSUE as well...and fatally. Finally, in Oxford Union tradition perhaps, the audience should have walked their vote, yay or nay, through opposite exits to be counted. The networks did a little bit of this in studio with a gaggle of "Undecideds" after the fact, but....

As to winner and/or loser--the ISSUES won, and they were on Obama's side. I'm trying to be non-partisan as I can here, and I'll prove it by declaring the debate a TIE...in terms of, I don't know, call it emotional/empathetic dynamics. McCain succeeded in keeping Obama off-guard with his cranky-old-scold demeanor and feisty, schoolmarm-to-upstart-pupil approach, but he lost points for smug sarcasm. Even when on the listening end: watch him do the smirk-and-giggle shtick on split-screen shots. Al Gore lost a couple of his debates with Bush eight long years ago with the "sighing and eye-rolling" routine (can you blame him?--he was debating an idiot), which is equally off-putting for an audience. On the other hand, in the face of that, Obama scored mightily by just being COOL--that will be remembered over and above what was actually being said. At the same time, he lost some points by just being cool, and not getting on the old man HEATEDLY once or twice more than he did (which was really not-at-all to speak of). For example, how about repeating the following 12 or 15 times molto forte: "Listen to me, dammit--Surge-Schmurge...we shouldn't have been in this damn war that you John McCain voted for in the first damn place!!"? Profanity deleted, of course, but insinuated.

No matter. The issues won for Obama. The winning was in the broaching. "OK," says the moderator, "were gonna open up with the ECONOMY." Swish...from the 3-point line off-stage for Obama. "Now we're gonna shift over to THE WAR IN IRAQ." Swish...3 more points. And so on. It was a little disappointing that Obama didn't deliver the "slam-dunk" last night, but with the abysmal Bush/Cheney legacy to shoot against...he can't lose.
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#82 The Bailout--the "Dismal Science" Gets Dismaler

No...I don't like it none.

First of all, as a Progressive Libertarian (or Libertarian Democrat or Left Libertarian or Quasi-Anarcho-Syndicalist maybe--I'll define some of this stuff sooner or later, I promise, dismally boring though it may be)--I'm enough on the Liberal side of the aisle (universal health-care, yes) to be all in favor of REGULATING financial institutions down to a fare-thee-well. This is simply a form of licencing, of policing entities that could pose a DANGER (fraud) to the public welfare--well within the parameters of governmental authority that we pay our taxes for. But OWNERSHIP? Nah...a little too Marxianish for me. Totally different color horse. Further, the bailout is touted as just a LOAN of sorts, wherefrom a profit might even be made "down the road." But really, we're BUYING--mortgages, notes, other assets and debits--which are subject to market vagaries like everything else. A pig in a poke.

Secondly, Who's getting the money? Not the most deserving, I'm afraid. CEO's and stockholders of these failed institutions are getting paid for failure. As if they haven't already been paid enough! To make the point, let's just look at some of those folks who got us in trouble in the first place, but got out before TSHTF and came up smelling...you know. Here are some infuriating examples provided by the AP: CEO of Merrill-Lynch, $66M severance package one year before failure and takeover by Bank Of America; CEO of Wachovia, $5M golden parachute; CEO of Citigroup, $16M parting gift. Most recently and outrageously?--biggest-bank-failure-ever WaMu CEO gets bye-bye pay of $18M for three weeks' work! These guys should have been simply FIRED, or maybe just taken around back and fired AT.

That said, it looks like some sort of rescue measure will pass the Congress. So...as long as they're gonna print some more money anyway--print some for me and mine while they're at it.
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#81 Obama/McCain Not-Debate Debate--A Limerick

May the thunder and lightning of your day, O Thunor/Thor, be sorely loosed upon the miscreant John McCain for his craven withdrawal from the first Presidential Debate at Ole Miss. Also this:

Mississippi Yearning

It's the latest in crass McCainery,

No matter his tries at explainery.

(No: Mass Debater;

Yes: Masturbater.)

We know it to be sheer chicanery.

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#80 Political Economy--Bob Barr

That's the old name (and university degree--my old Dean had one) that blanketed just about everything from before-they-were-named Sociology, Anthropology, International Relations to... yes, money and government. A catch-all with gravitas, which I like.

Anyway, my Second Son said today that he was thinking of voting for the official Libertarian candidate Bob Barr (say his name fast: Do you hear something vaguely Elephantine?) for President. Not so fast. Take an example from the great Norse god Tiu, for whom THIS DAY is named: he fought the dreaded Fenris Wolf to a draw, but lost a hand in the struggle. The lesson should be perfectly clear. Don't pull that lever for Bob Barr. That goes for all you Myriad Readers, even though it would happily syphon votes from McCain/Palin, much to my delight. It's the principle of the thing. He's a neocon Republican through and through...OR at best/worst a faux Libertarian. And I say he brings shame upon us true-bluers.

But first, he's a hypocrite. Congressman Bob Barr was first to call for Clinton's impeachment when Lewinsky-gate became public, decrying the "moral bankruptcy" of the Presidency while (like Newt Gingrich) he was cheating on his second wife with his third. It was OK with Barr for that wife to get an abortion, while at the same time he was fervently pushing anti-choice legislation. Now, here in no particular order are some other very un-Libertarian stances he's taken:

--staunch supporter of "War on Drugs," even to prohibiting medical marijuana use
--voted for war in Iraq
--voted for Bush/Cheney Patriot Act
--led the charge against same-sex marriage, authoring the federal "Defense" of Marriage Act
--sponsored Pentagon ban on practise of Wiccan religion on military bases
--advocates licking whipped-cream off female body-parts (did it at a fund-raiser, early 90s)

I don't care if Barr has repudiated some of these (maybe not the last)--How in the world can you trust him? It doesn't help any that he is a former CIA agent. Is he really a Democratic MOLE infiltrating the Libertarians to draw votes from McCain? Given his chameleon past, I can almost believe it. So he apologizes for all of that--is that his Platform? Come on...the only thing he's been steadfastly Libertarian about is GUNS, and I could take or leave that as being about zero conseqentiality. (When I'm in power I would, for civilians, LICENSE them down to a squirrel-rifle.) He's at bottom a tight-assed Republican in ill-fitting Libertarian costume. The G.O.P booted him out, so he seeks the spotlight anywhere he can, and changes his spots whenever necessary to remain in it. A politician/narcissist. And he reminds me of TV's "little old winemaker" of times past. The only good thing about Bob Barr? (say it again fast)--he hates George W. Bush.
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#79 "Wee Folks"...The Movie--pt. 2

Picking up from Saturday's post: Caryn Lazar Amster's heart-touching memoir, The Pied Piper of South Shore: Toys and Tragedy in Chicago has all the elements of a good, even great movie. Character, action, even narrative structure could be taken mostly whole cloth to the screen by a good director and careful casting. Again, I think Mandy/"Manny" Patinkin would be ideal for the lead role, especially given his very personal connection with the story. He's aged appropriately since Inigo Montoya in "Princess Bride" (and since his second-best, in my opinion, award-winning Broadway role in Steven Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George" as painter George Seurat, along with another favorite of mine, Bernadette Peters. In fact, I'm putting the Showtime film version on my Netflix queue right now...but I do go on)--and could communicate very effectively the kind, avuncular personality that I imagine the real Manny Lazar must have been.

But Mandy and his costars would need more dialog than is provided in the book, though it's there, albeit in latent form. You can see that in a thematically wonderful scene (truth being always stranger than fiction)--laden with that astounding cosmic convergence that we seem to meet with all the time. Following the "main event" in the opening chapter, as we recall, the author flashes us all the way back to (both) family's roots in Russia; takes us through a kind of mini-chronicle of the trials of the modern-day Jewish Diaspora (a page-turner all the way); and at one point brings us up to the young Manny's first view of The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor:

After two long weeks, the City of New York approached the Port of New York. As he peered through the ship's rail, eight-year-old Manny Lazarus caught sight of Lady Liberty. Who, he wondered, was this? Was it the statue of some famous military leader? [INTERCUT CLOSE-UP OF PEDESTAL/PLAQUE/POEM/NAME HERE] Not until much later did my father that a New York Jewish woman of privilege, one with the same name as his family, had written a poem about the Statue of Liberty in 1883. "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus ["Give me your tired, your poor..."] had been engraved on a plaque at the base of the great lady as if to welcome this newest Lazarus family to their new world. [emphasis and addenda mine]

How's that for built-in dramatic irony?! We are let in (visually in the would-be movie) on the the little secret that the great lady holds, and we already know another tragic one, the murder in Act I, unknown to the happy family on The City of New York. There's a bit more irony to come in a minute, but first: you can see the latent dialog in the scene above. In the movie, Manny would simply ask out loud what he was thinking. Perhaps to his father, or a curmudgeonly perfect stranger...whoever. Now the very next scene in the book could be a real cinematic treat. Here the family is going through the notorious Ellis Island routine, and have come to the business of getting the family surname "correctly" recorded:

The name of each person on the ship's manifest had to be found and transferred to the inspector's record book. In a moment of confusion or power, the inspector changed our family name from Lazarus to Lazar. Dad always said of the experience, "When we came to America, they made us drop the 'US.'"

And more bureaucratic indignities were to follow, of course, but this could have been the unkindest cut--the desecration of the family name, and, inferentially, of the tradition represented by another Lazarus a scene two before. And the the audience is aware, even if the actors are not. That's the definition of dramatic irony. In addition, some trenchant tragi-comic dialog could come out of this scene. Let's make Herr Inspector petty, peremptory, AND stupid (in his capacity he should have, after all, made the connection with Emma Lazarus across the way on Liberty Island)--and the confused verbal exchanges can ensue. For the sparkling screenplay, we'll get David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, State and Main), who--get this--grew up on the South Shore!

Finally, the film adaptation, like the book, would have very satisfying "take-away value," as I like to call it, somewhat simplistically I guess. These are the lessons learned, the themes pondered, after leaving the theater. You've got a bunch of them here. One such strand would be covered in my would-be title, "Wee Folks." (In the tradition maybe of Todd Field's excellent "Little Children" 2006) Figuratively and indeed sociologically speaking, the shooter Thomas Gunn (seventeen for his first murder) and his gangland buddies are wee folks...bad ones--stunted and shrunken beings psychologically: brain-deprived and heart-starved souls in need of the kind of nurturing environment exemplified in the Lazar family, and by extension symbolized in the happy-happy spirit of TOYS. Buying, giving, sharing, cherishing--the whole megilla, if you will. They didn't have any of that, literally or otherwise. And to end on a mundane but topical note: GANGS and their depredations upon a peaceful society pose a clear and present danger TODAY. Take my word for it, right here in Raleigh--seemingly so far away in space and time from the "Toys and Tragedy in Chicago."
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#78 Sunday Sundries

Worst of the Week

• Has to be the $700 Billion Bailout. Is Bush/Cheney a Socialist? A Pinko-Commie-Symp? My goodness, I guess so. We're now gonna share the wealth with the wealthy. And then get billed later anyway. The neo-con Republican de-regulators are gonna re-regulate--too late. Economics is the so-called "dismal science," and it now seems to be headquartered near the Great Dismal Swamp. Washington should regulate, yes, to guard against FRAUD (this, and FORCE, are the only two things in their varied manifestations that we should pay the Government to protect us from, thank you very much)--otherwise, let the free-market do its job.
  

• Neglect of more important issues on the campaign trail--namely WAR in Middle East and the HEALTH CARE crisis. Presidents can't do much about the Economy, anyway, despite their great power since FDR--but even there, with all HIS tinkering, it was really, most agree, WWII that got us out of that really, really big Depression that some of you MRs have heard about. (But don't think THIS war will do like WWII: the former is strictly a "gearing-down" war from its beginning--though lasting now waaay too long--a war of depletion of ready reserves; whereas WWII was a "gearing-up" war, providing huge economic stimulus to an already sick economy. This one is simply draining us dry.) The only sure thing, statistically speaking, is that Democrats in the White House bring on some sort of mystical "era of good feeling" about the Economy after a Republican administration has somehow screwed it up. And then the Economy picks up again. So please Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain (even though YOU, sir, are exactly on the wrong side)--let's get back to debating the issues, these most dire issues, that you can actually do something about.

• USA lost to Spain in Davis Cup tennis. We were defending champs. It's a great luxury in this life to be able to get a little bit SAD about something utterly inconsequential.
  

Best of the Week

• Sarah Palin's approval ratings are dropping. On the other hand, according to a recent Baylor (Baptist) University poll, 55% of Americans believe in Guardian Angels. No, not the Curtis Sliwa variety. Make whatever connections you like.
• Eldest son's birthday.
• At least a couple of good things to say this week, compared to last, though still a stretch.
  

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#77 Saturday Matinee--"Wee Folks"... the Movie

Starring Mandy Patinkin as Emanuel "Manny" Lazar. Why not? He wrote the Foreword to the book, and I gave an imaginary GIFT yesterday--why not make up a movie? There is some method to this madness: I believe The Pied Piper of South Shore: Toys and Tragedy in Chicago (2005) by "Mr Wee Folks'" daughter, Caryn Lazar Amster (see earlier posts), is worthy of it. And so do many others, she tells me, who may have read it with more than a nostalgic eye. And I promised her a "review" from my bully blogospherical pulpit, so what better way than to translate a very readable book, by the way, into the medium of film. Maybe not, but here goes anyway, with apologies in advance to the author.

• The three-part narrative of the memoir--kudos for self-written--lends itself to cinematic treatment. We we're talking about flashbacking the other day: well here, coincidentally, we've got another Before the Devil Knows You're Dead in the making. (Maybe the 83-year-old Sidney Lumet can hang on a little longer to direct!) We begin with the "Big-Heist-Gone-Wrong" event, then all the history that goes before, then the flash-forward to The Trial. (Lumet's 12 Angry Men or The Verdict again.) No need to tamper with this ready-made dramatic structure, thank you.
  
• Character and action are of course REAL and thus also ready-made, but far from the Everyday. In fact, they are EXTRAORDINARY. Sufficient to quote from the back cover: When a gang assassin gunned down Manny Lazar, he died in the place he loved best: the Wee Folks toy store he and his wife, Belle, had run for a quarter-century....It is the story of this beloved retailer's death... But it's also a story of two children of immigrants, their American dream, and their richly diverse neighborhood, each falling prey to the brutality of gangs. The shooter's name was Thomas Gunn. Could a filmmaker ask for a larger-than-life cast of characters or a more gut-wrenching, tear-jerking story? Not.
  
• Scene-setting would be easy too. The broader views of the people, their daily lives in the neighborhoods, and so on, are clearly and carefully drawn. But the author can also reconstruct the ferocious particulars in almost forensic detail. E.g.--The young man panicked, fired five shots, and tried to rush out of the store. Unfamiliar with its layout, he first ran up an aisle that dead-ended at one of the large plate-glass display windows, covered, as usual, with the nose-prints of wishful children. [Like those of my little sister and me in earlier days] Realizing he was trapped and terrified to launch himself through the thick glass, he frantically sought another way out....Two peach-colored display islands welded together stood between the gunman and the double glass entry doors. The islands stood five feet tall and, being made of steel, could withstand great weight. He attempted to vault over them but lacked the room for a running start [nice detail]. With the superhuman strength of intense fear, he began pulling the welded units apart, the metal slicing through his jacket into the flesh of his arms....merchandise scattering every which way. Mainly Barbies. And meanwhile poor Belle was cowering under the counter not knowing what was happening. Whew...what a skilled director could make out of that! And if it were a Sidney Lumet, he could also easily stage the courtroom-drama aftermath in Act III, right out of the riveting transcript-testimony.
• All that's needed is dialog for the first two acts. I'll volunteer. It shouldn't be hard. The narrative speaks silent volumes already. Take this scene---No...let me continue with a Part 2 later.

N.B.-- an autographed copy of The Book is available (60 left of first printing) for $19.95 plus $5.00 shipping from: caryn120@comcast.net OR toll-free 866-507-4737. Proceeds go to a charitable organization.
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#76 Friday Funnies--the "Plinth" [update]

Arrrrr.... But belay that. Nineteen September is "Talk Like a Pirate Day" and, tomorrow the 20th, my eldest son's birthday.

• The former is celebrated annually by sea-raiding corsairs along the Moroccan coast, I think, and by folks who have, through carefully-deferred dental maintenance over the last ten years, lost a front tooth...like me. "Shiver me timbers" sounds so much more authentic with the acoustic hint of a whistle. The tooth had become decadent no doubt, like its owner, but it was a stealth attack--piratical if you will--the evidence of marauding Tartar-beings becoming known only after the fact (i.e.= in the palm of my hand). Admittedly: after using said frontal dentation as nature intended in time of need...as pliers. The tooth actually split laterally in half, the front part leaving behind its stumpy counterpart--and forensic clues to the crime. So like a true buccaneer, this Blogman needs to SAVE UP for a "peg-tooth"--a prosthetic...no, make that cosmeticappliance of some sort, just to make him more presentable in the marketplace. Or lacking that: a pirate costume and a stuffed parrot.

• Birthdays are celebrated annually too, I understand. But tomorrow I inaugurate a new tradition in the gift-giving department, which I'll share with my MRs. For their birthday presents, all my sons and whoever else from now on will receive a "thought-gift"--after all, isn't it "not the gift, but the thought that counts"? So let's just take that to its reductio ad absurdum and make the damn thing TOTALLY IMAGINARY. Hey, it'll never wear out. And size and cost...no object. So I'll be giving my son a PLINTH--defined as a pedestal-like slab of stone, usually squared, beneath a column or pier; OR, in wood-joinery a flat member at the bottom of an architrave, dado, baseboard, or the like. That should explain it. Love the word. Borrowed from L. plinthus > Gr. plinthos = "stone"--but cognate in the language already (as often happens) from the Indo-European up through Germanic as our more familiar "flint." Rocky, not woody origins. My gift therefore will be a blue-speckledy granite slab 6' x 6' square and 3" high, to be viewed in the mind horizontally with a slight parallax, to get the full effect. Now this can exist purely in space, or it can be imagined in the back yard surrounded by rose bushes and a gaggle of mannequin pis statues--whatever. Such is the infinite UTILITY of the Thought-Gift.

• Which...I hereby dub generically a plinth, for all time. In honor of its maiden voyage. Thought-gift = Plinth. And you are free to use the term as such, royalty-free, whenever you feel the pinch of hard economic times, or of your own native parsimony. "Sorry, Mildred, I can only afford a Camel-Caravan to Shangri-La this year. Next year a Date with George Clooney or that Breast Augmentation you've always wanted...I promise."

But you know what?--you can give a Plinth to anybody, any time of the year, and all the year around. Make somebody happy with a Plinth today. Failing that, try to come up with a word that rhymes with it. I couldn't. Or just try to pronounce its plural: "plinthes." Takes a pirate, maybe.
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Update 9/21: Just thought of a rhyme that a pirate might enjoy: "absinthe"--the Green Fairy...to be quaffed while contemplating a Plinth.
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#75 Wednesday Words--Justice Brandeis and Sarah Palin

Here's a quote that I finally tracked down apropos of the GRAVE DANGER of someone like Sarah Palin ever getting even a little pinky finger involved in the government of our country--a fortiori and forfend the heart-beat-away HEAD OF STATE! Turns out to be from the distinguished jurist Louis D. Brandeis (though it sounds a lot like Marcus Aurelius):

• Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect LIBERTY when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to FREEDOM are naturally alert to repel invasion of their LIBERTY by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to LIBERTY lurk in insidious encroachment by men of ZEAL, well-meaning but without understanding. 1928. [emphasis mine]

Make that women of zeal, too, like the G.O.P. V.P. candidate. Instructively, Brandeis happened to be a Jew, whose ethnic ancestry bore the brunt of centuries of Christian discrimination and repression that still goes on. Just check with Mel Gibson. Haven't we had enough of the "God-told-me-to-do-it" mentality of Bush and echoed by Palin in her "task-from-God" speech about the war in Iraq to her cult-like church? I've covered enough of that in earlier posts, but like Bush/Cheney too, she'd like to peddle/meddle her "well-meaning" ZEAL right into our very lives. After all she's an evangelical...by definition a proselytizer/dogmatizer. Even from her scant position of power in Alaska, she has pushed for prayer back in public schools, creationism back in science classes, and for a continuation of "faith-based" abstinence-only sex-ed health classes. Look where that last one got her daughter. And she wanted to BAN "un-Christian" books from the Wasilla public library.

I consider the so-called Christian Right (once repudiated by McCain himself as "agents of intolerance"--how's that for cynical flip-flop) a clear and present danger to our personal and political freedoms. Hell, and I approved that word, the second-place candidate in the G.O.P. primaries for President, Pastor Mike Huckabee, wanted to amend the Constitution to more "conform with God's word." Scary. Theocracy stalks. And no doubt the wannabe VP supports the up-dated FISA (but now she'll have to be in favor of the even more radical Bush/McCain version that was luckily defused in the compromise amendment that--full-disclosure alert--Obama misguidedly voted for. See post 7/18)--which allows unwarranted eavesdropping on American citizens, not just foreigners, using the internet.

With that, we're back to Brandeis, believe it or not. For in his dissenting opinion (excerpt above) to Olmstead v. U.S., he was writing against a 5-4 decision in favor of unwarranted (telephone) wiretapping. (This decision was later overruled by the same Supreme Court, and stayed that way till the FISA update reared its ugly head.) How prophetic was that?
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#74 Monday Mourning--Manny Lazar and the South Shore

Or: Sunday's Worst and Best of the Week Reconsidered. The news last week (38 years late) was both bitter and sweet, no less so than ASTONISHING. I learned of the untimely and cosmically ironic/tragic end of Emanuel "Manny" Lazar, "Mr. Wee Folks," as the kids called him--murdered by a young black man (and gang-member) only a few years past wee-folk and potential-customer age (had he not been a newcomer) of the generous spirit he snuffed out in the victim's own eponymous toy store.

In her book, The Pied Piper of South Shore: Toys and Tragedy in Chicago (2005), his daughter (an unbeknownst-till-now schoolmate of mine at Horace Mann Elementary, two-years ahead and thus an eternity apart) Caryn Lazar Amster, mentions that in the immediate aftermath of the murder she could look out the front display window and see the usual "nose-prints" of the curious and now-anxious "wee folks" for maybe the very last time. Some years earlier, those nose-prints could easily have been those of my little sister and me. For, coincidentally, before I had even read the passage, my now-grown-up little sister reminded me by phone of how we used to wishfully "press our noses to the glass," when I'd "baby-sit" her through the neighborhood, and, by the way, always stop for a Green River fountain-drink at Lazar's Drug Store (a cousin) nearby.

And the memories keep flooding back, because, interestingly, when I thought about the great little-red-wagon event, it was pretty much in relation to the magical world of the Avalon Theater. These other memories have become refreshed only after the fact, so to speak. YES...it was in the Wee Folks Toys, Hobbies, Crafts, and Furniture shop that we got my Mysto Magic Set and the Mysto Chemistry Set that I mentioned in the Steve Martin post (8/8). YES...and my first Lionel electric train--these being, I've learned, the most popular products in the Lazar inventory. Mandy Patinkin, whose most famous film role has been Inigo "Prepare-To-Die" Montoya in the "Princess Bride" (how appropriate is that, I ask you)--got his start as one of the foremost collectors of Lionel trains in the country at Manny's store--in fact, he wrote the Foreword to the book.

So, even though I still can't quite conjure up a memory of his physical presence (remember, he was more like an apparition to me than anything else on that theater stage), Manny Lazar's influence on my formative years was considerable. As it was for so many other wee folks on Chicago's South Shore-- and ON the South Shore itself. From what I understand now, his murder became symbolic, the spirit was gone, and it seemed to hasten the demise of an already-declining area, which not long after surrendered to gangland hegemony and reverted to slums.

Ominously, Caryn nee' Lazar has never gone back. I also understand that these neighborhoods south of Hyde Park have gradually become "re-gentrified"--maybe as a result of Barack Obama's community-organizing efforts. I intend to return to some more of this memoirage later, but I wanted to ASAP--once I got the news--blogofficially pay my long-delayed respects and condolences to the family of the Pied Piper of the South Shore. Pax.
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