going where the weather suits my clothes

 

--------------------- [excerpt from Chronicles, by Bob Dylan] ---------------

        ...What I did was come across the country from the Midwest in a four-door sedan, '57 Impala - straight out of Chicago clearing the hell out of there - racing all the way through the smoky towns, winding roads, green fields covered with snow onward, eastbound through the state lines, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, a twenty-four-hour ride, dozing most of the way in the backseat, making small talk.  My mind fixed on hidden interests . . . eventually riding over the George Washington Bridge.

        The big car came to a full stop on the other side and let me out.  I slammed the door shut behind me, waved good-bye, stepped out onto the hard snow.  The biting wind hit me in the face.  At last I was here, in New York City, a city like a web too intricate to understand and I wasn't going to try.

        I was there to find singers, the ones I'd heard on record - Dave Van Ronk, Peggy Seeger, Ed McCurdy, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Josh White, The New Lost City Ramblers, Reverend Gary Davis and a bunch of others - most of all to find Woody Guthrie.  New York City, the city that would come to shape my destiny....

        When I arrived it was dead-on winter.  The cold was brutal and every artery of the city was snowpacked, but I'd started out from the frostbitten North Country, a little corner of the earth where the dark frozen woods and icy roads didn't faze me.  I could transcend the limitations.  It wasn't money or love that I was looking for.  

        I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot.  My mind was strong like a trap and I didn't need any guarantee of validity.  I didn't know a single soul in this dark freezing metropolis but that was all about to change - and quick.

        The Cafe Wha? was a club on MacDougal Street in the heart of Greenwich Village.  The place was a subterranean cavern, liquorless, ill lit, low ceiling, like a wide dining hall with chairs and tables - opened at noon, closed at four in the morning.  Somebody had told me to go there and ask for a singer named Freddy Neil who ran the daytime show at the Wha?. ---------------------------------------------- [end / excerpt]

---------------------------------------------------------------

Fred Neil wrote the song "Everybody's Talkin'" which was recorded by Harry Nilsson, and became a hit in 1969.

I'm going where the sun keeps shinin' -

Through the pourin' rain

Goin' where the weather suits my clothes...

On You Tube, video titled:

Everybody's Talkin' (1989 Remastered)

uploader / channel:  Harry Nilsson

        -  play and enjoy  -

       

Greenwich Village in 1961

-30-

must be the company...

 

When I was seventeen, I went on a trip that was called "the U.N. Trip."  Sponsored and organized by the Methodist Church, it was so that high school students could learn about the United Nations - and other parts of history and current events, too.

        For example, on the way from the Midwest to New York City (by bus), we stopped and saw Gettysburg, and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

        The group included high school students from all over the state - a boy named Arnie, two girls in my group named Dawn, and Rhonda, and one kid from a big town near where I lived, who wanted to have a career as a minister - and many more.

        When we got to New York City, it was just fantastic.  We went a lot of places, and did a lot of things.  It was fun, and interesting, and you got really tired, because you were going, all the time.

One night, we saw a show at the very famous Radio City Music Hall.  

As we were coming out of the theater, into the lobby, I knew I was going to yawn, and put up my hand to cover my mouth, of course - but people can still see if you are yawning - and this man wearing a uniform (maybe he was an usher, or some other type of employee at the theater) just chanced to see me cover my yawn, and he said, with a sort of jaunty insouciance, "Must be the company, can't be the hour!"

He said it as if it were an old, well-known expression.

And with that Manhattan accent -

        "Must be da company, can't be dee ow-ah!"

-30-

East Coast reviewers in a "hick town"

 In yesterday's post here, I noticed the NY Times writer noted the comments of "East Coast reviewers."

LOL - what about reviews in the newspapers in Minneapolis?  Missoula?  Des Moines?  Bismarck? - - dammit, what about television show reviews in the Akron Beacon Journal??  Huh?  How about those?!

        He only cared about reviews by writers on the East Coast.

This touches on a phenomenon where some people see residents of New York City as being actually quite provincial and myopic, like only seeing things from their own narrow point of view, when we might expect them to be very open-minded, sophisticated, and liberal, because they live in a city that is vibrant and rich with cultural opportunities and experiences.

        Someone once said, "New York is the biggest hick town in America" - I googled this quotation - it comes up, but doesn't assign it to any personal source - like no one knows who said it first.

Woody Allen is one example - and this isn't a criticism, only an observation - he has said, himself, he doesn't like to "leave the city" because why would he? - it has everything you want and need.

        In the '70s when I arrived in Boston to go to college, I noticed in several students' dorm rooms there would be a poster on the wall depicting New York City as the center of America.

Googling that, I got the picture below.  Very unclear to look at, but we can get the idea. ...

-30-

second thoughts

 

        In the May 25, 1971, New York Times, George Gent wrote:

------------------------- "All in the Family," which stars Carroll O'Connor as Archie and Jean Stapleton as his long suffering wife, opened to a mixed critical reception, 

    ...with some of the East Coast reviewers dismissing the program as unfunny and as a potential contributor to the bigotry it was allegedly spoofing.  

        Many of these same critics later had second thoughts.

-30-

meet me at the cemetery, baby

 

        Listening to a video on You Tube about a charismatic preacher, where he groomed and had affairs with a number of young girls in his various congregations....

The narrative mentions that, with one of his girlfriends, he would meet her in several different locations, sometimes the local cemetery.

 

These cults.

They always end in some hang-wringing craziness.  

Do people never learn?

Well, maybe the answer is, there are always new people coming along who haven't heard about the last 75 "train-wrecks" of this type, and they want to participate in some spirituality, and they get sucked in.

-30-

...but not for dancing

 Rob Reiner had an interesting career in films and television - as a director, and an actor.

Usually a person in "the business" is one or the other; Rob Reiner's body of work was kind of unique, in that way.

Before he directed any movies, he played roles as an actor in several TV-series on a one-time basis, and then in the hit show All In The Family, as one of the regular characters, seen there every week.

We can experience his acting on there by watching a You Tube video titled

The Bunkers and The Swingers

uploader / channel:  All In The Family

        Rue McClanahan appears in this episode - if you have watched "The Golden Girls" (in the '80s) you will remember her as Blanche Devereaux.

        Isabel Sanford is in it, too.  She is the one who finally has to tell Edith, "Those people are here to change partners, but - not for dancing. ..."

-30-

at that moment, I knew

 

        Another of the interviews with older married couples in the Rob Reiner film, When Harry Met Sally... shows these people talking - 

wife:  Uh, he - was the head counselor at the boys' camp, and I was the head counselor at the girls' camp.  And - they had a social, one night, and he walked across the room.

        I thought he was coming to talk to my friend, Maxine.  -  'Cause people were always crossing rooms to talk to Maxine.

        But he was coming to talk to me.

        And he said --

husband:  I'm Ben Small.  Of the Coney Island Smalls.  

wife:  At that moment, I knew. 

I knew, the way you know about a good melon.

-30-