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"Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending."
~ Neil Simon
In an interview with National Public Radio Neil Simon, asked about his childhood in New York City, said his father left the family and came back, eight different times.
The interviewer asked, "Was it strange to have him coming and going like that?'
And Simon answered, "It was awful because I felt my life was sort of on a yo-yo.... My mother never knew when he was coming back.
And the whole world lit up when he came back because it meant not only that we'd not have to fear for the rent because he didn't leave any money for us. We didn't have to worry about food...."
He added that his mother "...was very loving and very encouraging in terms of my brother and I doing the writing. My brother ...would read the monologues that we would write at first to my mother. And she would just laugh all the way through. And my brother said, do you understand what they mean?
And she said, no, I don't.
And he said, well, why are you laughing? She says, well, it pleases me to please you. I mean, it was such a wonderful thing for her to do. It didn't encourage us as writers, but it encouraged us that we had a terrific mother."
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Looking at a list of Neil Simon's works -- you could drown: he was quite prolific.
Theatre
Come Blow Your Horn 1961
Little Me 1962
Barefoot in the Park 1963
The Odd Couple 1965
Sweet Charity 1966
The Star-Spangled Girl 1966
Plaza Suite 1968
Promises, Promises 1968
Last of the Red Hot Lovers 1969
The Gingerbread Lady 1970
The Prisoner of Second Avenue 1971
The Sunshine Boys 1972
The Good Doctor 1973
God's Favorite 1974
California Suite 1976
Chapter Two 1977
They're Playing Our Song 1979
I Ought to Be in Pictures 1980
Fools 1981
Brighton Beach Memoirs 1983
Biloxi Blues 1985
Broadway Bound 1986
Rumors 1988
Lost in Yonkers 1991
Jake's Women 1992
The Goodbye Girl 1993
Laughter on the 23rd Floor 1993
London Suite 1995
Proposals 19979
The Dinner Party 2000
45 Seconds from Broadway 2001
Rose's Dilemma 2003
Screenplays
After the Fox 1966
Barefoot in the Park 1967
The Odd Couple 1968
Sweet Charity 1969
The Out-of-Towners 1970
Plaza Suite 1971
Last of the Red Hot Lovers 1972
The Heartbreak Kid 1972
The Prisoner of Second Avenue 1975
The Sunshine Boys 1975
Murder by Death 1976
The Goodbye Girl 1977
The Cheap Detective 1978
California Suite 1978
Chapter Two 1979
Seems Like Old Times 1980
Only When I Laugh 1981
I Ought to Be in Pictures 1982
Max Dugan Returns 1983
The Lonely Guy 1984
The Slugger's Wife 1985
Brighton Beach Memoirs 1986
Biloxi Blues 1988
The Marrying Man 1991
Lost in Yonkers 1993
The Odd Couple II 1998
Television
The Garry Moore Show 1950
Your Show of Shows 1950-54
Caesar's Hour 1954-57
Stanley 1956
The Phil Silvers Show 1958-59
Movies made for television
The Good Doctor 1978
Plaza Suite 1987
Broadway Bound 1992
The Sunshine Boys 1996
Jake's Women 1996
London Suite 1996
Laughter on the 23rd Floor 2001
The Goodbye Girl 2004
Books
Rewrites: A Memoir 1996
The Play Goes On: A Memoir 1999
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I like to read lists like this and see which titles are most alluring, and which ones I would have tried to just come up with a different title....
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[in an authoritative voice, each syllable enunciated with clear precision] --
On November 13, Felix Ungar was asked to remove himself from his place of residence.
That request came from his wife.
Deep down, he knew she was right, but he also knew that someday, he would return to her.
With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his childhood friend, Oscar Madison. Sometime earlier, Madison's wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return.
Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?" ... [cue: MUSIC]
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Deaths of famous people sometimes come in threes.
Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul; 76
John McCain, U.S. Senator; 81
Neil Simon, playwright; 91
---------------------- Neil Simon -- like Johnny Carson, and Richard Nixon -- was one of the names that hovered over American life when I was in grade school. Like wallpaper, school, chores, and elevator music, they were just there. You have some awareness of them even if you don't know their work very well. (Although by 1970, we were all pretty familiar with Nixon's work....)
The smash hit Broadway plays with which Neil Simon established his prominent place in the cultural landscape:
Barefoot in the Park (1963)
and
The Odd Couple (1965).
Simon had started out writing for Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows in television's early days, along with Woody Allen (Annie Hall), Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles), Carl Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show), and others.
------------------------------------------
The Odd Couple was --
a play in 1965
a movie in 1968 (nominated / Academy Award)
a TV series, 1970 - 1975.
I never saw the movie, and no one took me to see the play in New York, on Broadway. (Things seemed far away and un-get-to-able, then, with no You Tube...) But I watched the TV show sometimes because my parents did; it was "on."
I loved the music and visuals of the opening credits. Neil Simon's name appeared onscreen -- on the opening credits, or at the start of the first scene.
His name was iconic and firmly fixed over the 1960s and 1970s, and his writing, popularity, and influence continued in subsequent decades.
Barefoot In The Park
The Odd Couple
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"...Deep England is never attainable -- it moves away the closer you get to it; and like a will-o'-the-wisp it shines most brightly above the most treacherous swamps. Now, most particularly, wise travellers in these lands would do well to question its allure."
This passage is from Melissa Harrison's new book, All Among the Barley, quoted in a Guardian-UK reader comment.
("Deep England"? According to the Free Encyclopedia online:
"Deep England" refers to an idealized view of a rural, Southern England. The term is neutral, though it reflects what English cultural conservatives would wish to conserve. The term, which alludes to la France profonde,
has been attributed to both Patrick Wright and Angus Calder. The concept of Deep England may imply an explicit opposition to modernism and industrialization; and may be connected to a ruralist viewpoint typified by the writer H.J. Massingham. Major artists whose work is associated with Deep England include: the writer Thomas Hardy, the painter John Constable, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the poets Rupert Brooke and Sir John Betjeman....)
(La France profonde? According to the online Free Dictionary:
La France Profonde is a phrase used in French political and social commentary to mean rural, small-town France, as opposed to Paris and other large cities.)
---------------------- "Like the end of the rainbow or a will-o'-the-wisp, Deep England is never attainable -- it moves away the closer you get to it; and like a will-o'-the-wisp it shines most brightly above the most treacherous swamps. Now, most particularly, wise travellers in these lands would do well to question its allure."
Profound; deep -- the French way of saying it, and the English way of saying it. Meaning: out in the country.
People have a way, sometimes, of idealizing someplace where they are not. And that paragraph above, the first time you read it, it feels like the author is "talking up" Deep England.
"shines"
"brightly" ...
...Then read it again, and you see that it's saying, You may feel drawn to the "allure" of Deep England, but it's actually saying beware that allure.... Question it.
push -- pull
yes -- no
Want to go there? Or would it be better to stay away?
On which side of the fence is the grass greener?
Or is there just AstroTurf, and no fence at all??!
-------------------- Type in on Google "la France profonde" and you get some headlines:
"Losing La France Profonde"
^^ The American Conservative
"France profonde: Rural idyll or backwater hell?"
^^ The local.fr
"The deadly side of la France profonde"
^^ Telegraph.co.uk
(Starts to sound like Deliverance....[WHY DIDN'T THOSE PEOPLE JUST STAY HOME AND TAKE BANJO LESSONS????!!!!)
The Harrison paragraph is also interesting to compare to the passage near the end of The Great Gatsby:
Deep England is never attainable -- it moves away the closer you get to it...
Gatsby believed in the green light...
He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.
Like the end of the rainbow or a will-o'-the-wisp, Deep England is never attainable....
...I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock....
In Melissa Harrison's paragraph, it's people's yearning for something that maybe isn't really there at all; in Gatsby, it's a man's yearning for something he sort of had in the past, but it remains in the past even though he dreamed he could make it present again.
--------------------------- And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes -- a fresh, green breast of the new world.
Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.
He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning --
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
{The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald}
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On You Tube, type in
drift away, dobie gray
and Play...
Day after day I'm more confused
Yet I look for the light through the pouring rain
You know that's a game that I hate to lose
And I'm feelin' the strain --
Ain't it a shame --
Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
Beginning to think that I'm wastin' time
I don't understand the things I do
The world outside looks so unkind
And I'm countin' on you --
To carry me through --
Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
Yeah, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
And when my mind is free
You know a melody can move me
And when I'm feelin' blue
The guitar's comin' through to soothe me
Thanks for the joy that you've given me
I want you to know I believe in your song
And rhythm and rhyme and harmony
You've helped me along
Makin' me strong --
Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
Give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
Hey, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
Na na na, won't you, won't you take me
Oh, take me
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"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
~ Matthew 10:16
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hacking voter databases
Michael Cohen
Paul Manafort
U.S. Representative Duncan Hunter of California
U.S. Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma
too many "rallies"
not enough infrastructure projects and jobs
So. Many. Thoughts. ...
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Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty on 8 counts; one commentator pointed out that Mr. Cohen's wife is involved in his business, and he is keen to protect his family from consequences and fall-out. It was said -- People who get involved with Donald Trump wind up with problems. It made me think of that part in
The Great Gatsby where where it says:
--------------------- [excerpt] ------------- I couldn't forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made....
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The late great Aretha Franklin had a song, "Chain Of Fools" --
For five long years
I thought you were my man
But I found out
I'm just a link in your chain...
I thought of that because President Trump has a lawyer: Michael Cohen; Michael Cohen has a lawyer: Lanny Davis... Like, what is this, a "Chain Of Lawyers"?
Mr. Davis told the world today that his client Mr. Cohen "believes President Trump is a danger to the country."
___________________ With Watergate, it was a while before people could see that it went "all the way to the top."
Michael Cohen seems to have skipped that checker right across the board (tap - tap - TAP) when he was asked, Why did you do it? & he replied, Because Donald Trump told me to.
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"Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further."
~ U.S. President Donald Trump, August 1, 2018
"One year of Watergate is enough."
~ U.S. President Richard Nixon, January 30, 1974
____________________________
(stop investigating!
stop reporting stuff!
Putin says he didn't do it!)
1973
--------------- [excerpt] -------------- On December 28, General Alexander Haig, the White House Chief of Staff, reached Katharine Graham by telephone in a Washington restaurant. He was calling from San Clemente to discuss two of the reporters' stories on the Post's front page that morning.
The first said that Operation Candor, the name given the campaign by the President to defend himself, had been shut down, and that two of the President's most trusted advisers, who had steadfastly maintained his innocence, were no longer convinced of it.
The second story said that the President's lawyers had been supplying attorneys for H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman with copies of documents and other evidence that the White House was submitting to the special prosecutor's office.
Haig characterized the stories as "scurrilous," accused the Post of "disservice" to the nation, and appealed to Mrs. Graham to stop publishing such accounts.
Haig himself, the reporters soon learned, had come to doubt the wisdom of the President's course. For more than six months he and Henry Kissinger had been urging the President to cut his ties with the three former aides who had been the closest to him and were now the primary targets of the special prosecutor's investigation -- Haldeman, Ehrlichman
and Colson.
Instead, the President had built his legal defense in concert with the three, and had continued to meet with them and talk with them on the telephone. During the summer of 1973, Kissinger had tried to persuade the President to disavow his former aides publicly and to accept a measure of responsibility for Watergate. The suggestion had been angrily rejected by Ron Ziegler.
"Contrition is bullshit," he had responded to the presidential speechwriter who brought him Kissinger's recommendation. ---------------------
[All The President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. 1974; Simon & Schuster.]
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I still think -- and I never hear anyone addressing this issue (maybe they're studiously trying to avoid it?) -- the main reason Donald Trump got elected is because our decision-making class (Congress, the White House, and Big Business, not necessarily in that order) made the choice to dump the entire cost of globalization on American blue collar workers.
A shared sacrifice by all Americans, across the economic, geographic, and social continuums, would surely have been less controversial, and less punitive to one group of people. Also it would have been a better "team-building" move for our society.
Instead our Decision-makers "stuck it to" the American workers and people are mad.
One way to put it would be, They sent the whole "bill," for Globalization, to the working people, figuring we would never call them on it and stand up for ourselves because we'd be too busy bickering amongst ourselves, which the Decision-Makers seem actively to encourage us to do. ("Obama! Racism! Feminism! Wwwaaaaaahhhh!")
The question is, Do we fall for it?
______________________________
A good thing for Pres. Trump to do would be stop having his noisy little parties or rallies or whatever he calls them, and use the time he saves from that to organize an infrastructure project and hire people to do the necessary jobs. Do what President Kennedy said: "Get this country moving again!"
JFK in South Dakota, 1962
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan: the "Rust Belt" -- "Opioid Alley" -- whatever they're calling it these days, the places where the jobs were taken from to give to other countries -- that's the place to start. Those are the people who put this president's votage (is that a word?) over the top in the 2016 election, and he needs to start the project there and then branch out.
-30-
a poem by Boris Pasternak:
Storm, Momentary, Forever
Then summer said goodbye
to the station. Lifting its cap,
the thunder took souvenirs,
hundreds of shots on the fly.
The lilac went black. And that
instant, gathering whole armfuls
of lightning, the far clearing lit
the white station-master's shack.
And when the whole roof ran
with a fierce torrent of malice,
and, like charcoal onto a sketch,
the rain crashed down on the fence,
consciousness started to flash,
here, it seems, flooding in play
even the corners of mind
where it's always bright as day.
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All of these songs and more can be listened to, blessedly, on You Tube: the Queen's rendition of the Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" expands the rock-and-roll universe... There is a nine-minute version.
Peace.
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