A Blog of My Own

In a city divided pro and con on whether we wanted the 2016 Olympics (disruption and financial ruin were two of the objections), I was, on balance, pro. And I believed that if Chicago won the games, many who had been on the con side would catch Olympic fever in short order. There were probably Chicagoans who objected to our World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 for some of the same reasons, but most of them came around.

So when Chicago got cut from the get-go in yesterday’s International Olympic Committee vote, I felt bitter. I felt, “Jeez, okay, you can’t win them all, but getting eliminated in the first round?!??” In a city that has learned to associate sports with disappointment, this felt not just like not-winning but like a real kick in the teeth. But a friend gave me a “game theory” explanation of the process that helped raise my civic self-esteem a bit.

It’s not that the members of the IOC regarded Chicago as the most laughable choice. In fact, very much the opposite. They regarded Chicago as the most serious threat to a Rio victory. If you were an IOC voting member who preferred Rio over Chicago, therefore, it was incumbent on you to cast your vote in the first round for any city but Chicago. If it were to come down to two cities left in contention, Chicago versus Rio, you, the voting IOC member, might not know how your fellow voters would go. So, even if out of the four cities in the first round Chicago was a close second choice for you, but Rio was your first choice, you needed to cast your vote for one of the weaker cities (Madrid or Tokyo) to keep them in the race. You would know that Rio would certainly beat either of those in the later rounds, but a Chicago that was still in the hunt in the later rounds might end up beating Rio. Essentially, the voting members of the IOC behaved like (sneaky, but rational) contestants on The Weakest Link or Survivor, or like Republicans who cross party lines to vote in Democratic primaries in order to boost a Democrat they think their candidate can beat. They voted not to remove the true weakest link, but to remove (in their view) the strongest competitor.

So it wasn’t quite the diss that it felt like. In fact, it was evidence of a grudging respect. That’s what I’m telling myself this morning. And yes, I think I actually believe it.

A new, major film biography of Frank Sinatra is on the way, to be directed by Martin Scorsese. Accounts vary.

The Hollywood Reporter says this:

The deal comes after years of negotiations with Frank Sinatra Enterprises, a joint venture of the crooner’s estate and Warner Music Group. Internal politics of the estate, where family members had to form a consensus as to how to tell the story and, more importantly, just how much of the story to tell — was a hurdle that had to be overcome.

While Variety says this:

The process of acquiring the late entertainer’s life and particularly music rights was “very complicated, as you can imagine,” Schulman said, because of the multiple parties involved. “The responsibility we are taking on to tell his story — that would cause anyone to be very careful about who they grant these rights to,” she added. “Everyone knows that Marty Scorsese is a final-cut director. So there had to be a lot of trust that he would tell this story in a way that didn’t destroy (Sinatra’s) memory.”

These quotes give two different impressions of how hamstrung Scorsese is going to be. The first quote indicates the family is having a lot of input into the storytelling. The second quote indicates the family is trusting Scorsese to tell the story his way. We shall see.

Family input may be no bad thing. The Sinatra children, Nancy, Frank Jr. and Tina, and their mother Nancy, as well Frank’s last wife Barbara, have insight into the real man that no one else would have. So if their input takes the form of “you really must include this, ” instead of “you can’t show this,” it will make for a greater film. But that quote from The Hollywood Reporter about the family forming consensus on “just how much of the story to tell” doesn’t give one optimism that their input will be more about inclusion than exclusion.

Then again, as a Sinatra idolator, I think a movie that glorifies him may be just what I want to see. I’m really not sure how interested I will be in a “warts and all” portrayal.

A tricky proposition.

A danger in terms of reviewers’ perception of the movie is that all this advance publicity about the family’s involvement will cause reviewers to receive the movie as a whitewash, no matter what the film’s actual qualities.

I have high hopes for the movie, but cautious ones. Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic was a huge lumbering thing that never got off the ground. The young Scorsese could have done an amazing job with Sinatra’s story, but I’m not sure about the old Scorsese. Maybe this is the film that will return him to form. If any subject could, it’s this one, which is right in the wheelhouse of the director who made Mean Streets, Raging Bull and New York, New York as a young man.

I don’t know who should play Sinatra, but I’m not crazy about the strong suggestion in the Variety article that it will be Leonardo DiCaprio. I know the singing in the movie will be Frank’s, but DiCaprio’s speaking voice seems too light to match up with Frank’s when the singing starts.

All caveats to one side, though, this seems like a movie that must be made now. Scorsese (an ideal choice in many ways) won’t be alive forever, the Sinatra family (whose input I hope will improve the film) won’t be alive forever, and we won’t be alive forever.

(Photos courtesy of an invaluable resource — the LIFE photo archive hosted by Google.)

In this scary day and age when one walks into long-popular restaurants to find them 20% full, setting off sirens of doom in the head (and when one hears about businesses of all types which have weathered everything, including the Great Depression, now giving up the ghost), we should make note of places that are still, despite the odds, packing them in instead of packing it in. Last night after a movie at the local indieplex (Sunshine Cleaning — good flick, and one of the rare films these days not starring Kate Winslet), we crossed the street to a restaurant in Chicago called La Creperie. French, good wine and cheese, pates, escargot, and, of course, crepes. We went to this place frequently in the seventies, and have again become semi-regulars after a taking a two-and-a-half decade hiatus. It is absolutely unchanged since its opening in 1972. When we arrived, around 8:30, both the front and back rooms were filled to capacity, except for one table that happened to be a two-top, so luckily we could be seated right away. The restaurant remained full of happy wine-drinking, snail-eating patrons the whole time we were there, and when we left between 9:30 and 10, it was busier than before — now it was standing room only, with a crowd at the bar and small vestibule waiting for tables.

The snails were wonderful, fresh-tasting, bathing in garlicky goodness. The crepes were good as always. The wine was lovely. The continued success of La Creperie may have a lot to do with the fact that a twosome can dine in reasonable sophistication, have a cup of bisque, some snails or a salad after that, entrees, and a couple of glasses of good wine — and still get out of there for under a C-note, tax and 20% tip included.

Another reason might be it’s still owned and run by the couple who opened it in 72, when crepes were all the thing. (Can anyone say “Magic Pan”?) She’s from Joliet, he’s from France. Their story can be found by scrolling down a little here.

The stock market can’t go down, and nobody releases any unemployment figures, and not a single company declares bankruptcy.

I love weekends.

My wife is a devotee of the work of American poet Eugene Field (1850-1895). One of the nation’s first newspaper columnists (for the Chicago Daily News), he is often referred to as “The Poet of Children,” because he wrote the hardy perennial “Wynken, Blynken and Nod.” But he deserves to be known for more than that, and in fact, he railed against the sobriquet in his own time.

Back in July of last year, I quoted one of my favorite poems by the humorist Roy Blount, Jr., “Song to Pie.” On this Independence Day 2008, nothing could be more appropriate than to reproduce Eugene Field’s ode to that defiantly American culinary classic, “Apple-Pie and Cheese”:

Full many a sinful notion
Conceived of foreign powers
Has come across the ocean
To harm this land of ours;
And heresies called fashions
Have modesty effaced,
And baleful, morbid passions
Corrupt our native taste.
O tempora! O mores!
What profanations these
That seek to dim the glories
Of apple-pie and cheese!

I’m glad my education
Enables me to stand
Against the vile temptation
Held out on every hand;
Eschewing all the tittles
With vanity replete,
I’m loyal to the victuals
Our grandsires used to eat!
I’m glad I’ve got three willing boys
To hang around and tease
Their mother for the filling joys
Of apple-pie and cheese!

Your flavored creams and ices
And your dainty angel-food
Are mighty fine devices
To regale the dainty dude;
Your terrapin and oysters,
With wine to wash ‘em down,
Are just the thing for roisters
When painting of the town;
No flippant, sugared notion
Shall my appetite appease,
Or bate my soul’s devotion
To apple-pie and cheese!

The pie my Julia makes me
(God bless her Yankee ways!)
On memory’s pinions takes me
To dear Green Mountain days;
And seems like I see Mother
Lean on the window-sill,
A-handin’ me and brother
What she knows ‘ll keep us still;
And these feelings are so grateful,
Says I, “Julia, if you please,
I’ll take another plateful
Of that apple-pie and cheese!”

And cheese! No alien it, sir,
That’s brought across the sea,–
No Dutch antique, nor Switzer,
Nor glutinous de Brie;
There’s nothing I abhor so
As mawmets of this ilk–
Give me the harmless morceau
That’s made of true-blue milk!
No matter what conditions
Dyspeptic come to feaze,
The best of all physicians
Is apple-pie and cheese!

Though ribalds may decry ‘em,
For these twin boons we stand,
Partaking thrice per diem
Of their fulness out of hand;
No enervating fashion
Shall cheat us of our right
To gratify our passion
With a mouthful at a bite!
We’ll cut it square or bias,
Or any way we please,
And faith shall justify us
When we carve our pie and cheese!

De gustibus, ‘t is stated,
Non disputandum est.
Which meaneth, when translated,
That all is for the best.
So let the foolish choose ‘em
The vapid sweets of sin,
I will not disabuse ‘em
Of the heresy they’re in;
But I, when I undress me
Each night, upon my knees
Will ask the Lord to bless me
With apple-pie and cheese!

Remember Jane Asher? Paul McCartney’s bird in the sixties? Well, besides continuing a career as an actress, Jane is in the cake business. In a cute little enclave of small shops on Cale Street, a couple of blocks from Kings Road in Chelsea, you’ll find Jane Asher’s cake shop. As we did.

She even has a packaged cake mix.

The Beatles “In My Life” walking tour offered by London Walks (highly recommended) takes you by the house on Wimpole Street that Jane lived in with her family in the sixties. (It’s on the very same block as Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s house.) Paul lived there with Jane and the Ashers, and had the dream one night that resulted in “Yesterday.” (When he woke up, he drove everyone in the household crazy for days, asking them if the tune he was humming was already familiar to them from somewhere else. He couldn’t quite believe that this tune that came to him in a dream was not one that already existed. When everyone confirmed for him that it was, in fact, original, he set lyrics to it, and it became (it’s been speculated) the most covered song of all time.

Here’s a video which shows Jane is still a bit of all right. (At the end, she talks about her cakes.)

Mostly, when walking down the street, I tend unthinkingly to say, “There’s a young woman…there’s a child…there’s an old lady…there’s a teen…there’s a fortysomething guy,” etc. But lately—and I don’t know why this is—I’m sometimes seeing differently. Now I’m realizing that no one is fixed in time, that every person I see on the street is aging before my eyes. It happens slowly, so that we can’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not so. The four-year old toddler is 30 seconds closer to death than he was when I first saw him. That twenty-three year old girl is 10 seconds closer to being an old lady than when she started crossing the street. Every part of that traffic cop’s body is rotting right now. Death doesn’t happen only at the end; aging is continuous, and the fact that we’d need time-lapse photography for our eyes to see the aging process that happens in every second is no reason to deny it. The three-year old tyke, the seventh grader, the recently retired business dude, the ninety-year old crone—we are all in this together.

I am older than when I started writing this blog post. You are older than when you started reading it.

Let’s make the most of whatever time we’ve got left.

The new 42¢ Frank Sinatra postage stamp comes out next Tuesday, May 13. The following day is the tenth anniversary of his death.

I’m undecided. Should I buy 1000 of these stamps? Or 10,000?

While deciding, I think I’ll listen to Frank’s recording of “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” with the Count Basie Band, from the 1962 desert-island disc Sinatra-Basie.

Here’s a li’l taste of it right here. If you can listen to that and not want to buy the record, you ain’t breathin’, Jack.

If you are in the New York area, get yourself to the Waldorf-Astoria tonight or tomorrow night, because those are your last two nights to catch Daryl Sherman in the cocktail lounge that overlooks the lobby before her 14-year reign ends there.

Daryl sings, and accompanies herself on the Steinway that once belonged to Cole Porter, who was a resident of the hotel.

Stephen Holden has a wonderful appreciation of Daryl in today’s New York Times. Rather than go on and on myself about her, I’ll refer you to that piece.

I’ll only add that I was lucky to catch Daryl at the Waldorf again two Sundays ago. Actually, lucky isn’t the word—blessed would be more like it, but that sounds too much like going overboard (even though it isn’t).

Just one highlight that evening was Daryl’s performance of a song with music by Bill Evans, words added by Roger Schore, called “In April.” Heartbreakingly gorgeous. It was Evans’ tune “For Nanette,” retitled when Schore supplied the lyric. I had never heard it before. I don’t think Daryl has recorded it.

Another highlight was Daryl’s acceding to my request to do Vernon Duke-Ira Gershwin’s “Island in the West Indies,” a number I first heard her perform at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington during the Great Songbirds Convergence of 2001. This is a combination of song and performer that is as good as music gets, and if you think that is overstatement, well, then, you haven’t heard her do it.

In the event you don’t catch Daryl’s act at the Waldorf these last two nights, you owe it to yourself to check her out on CD. There are several available from Amazon, as well as eMusic and iTunes.

Adam Bernstein writes a good obituary of TV producer and director Dwight Hemion in today’s Washington Post.

In the 60s and 70s, it seemed that if a TV musical special displayed intelligence, respect for the viewer, superb musical values, and beautiful visual values, it was almost guaranteed to have the names of Hemion and his partner Gary Smith attached to it. Sometimes he achieved his results through a deceptive simplicity. His Sinatra: A Man and His Music special and its sequel, Sinatra: A Man and His Music Part II, dared to present Sinatra against a white sweep, singing with the band on camera behind him, conducted by Nelson Riddle or Gordon Jenkins. You could hear Hemion saying to you, “Nothing could be better than this.”

Here’s a complete list of Hemion’s credits. He was nominated for 47 Emmys–more than any person in television history, in any category.

A clip from Color Me Barbra (the second Streisand special) at YouTube gives you a taste of his work. If you have the patience to sit through Barbra’s two minute introduction (not directed by Hemion)—and I can understand if you don’t—she gives you a glimpse into Hemion’s process. If you’d prefer to skip that, just advance to around 2:16. The clip is non-embeddable, which means I can’t present it to you within this post, but if you click here, you can see it.

Be someplace where you won’t mind if goosebumps start sprouting and tears start falling…