Broadening My Lexicon essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM Milwaukee

Press play to listen to my essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM's Lake Effect program on May 13, 2011.

A Tale of Two Movies: A Lousy Winner and a Fabulous Loser

I had the great misfortune last weekend of watching what has got to be among the worst Best Picture Oscar winners ever: Chariots of Fire, 1981’s victor in a field of forgettable movies (Raiders of the Lost Ark notwithstanding).  Ask my family to trust me again with a movie selection and you’ll likely start a fist-fight. 

I’ve been trying to get the five of us to watch films none of us have seen before, and it seemed reasonable that a PG Oscar winner with a hummable theme might fit the bill.  After all, we all saw The King’s Speech at a theater a few months ago with great success (albeit with a bit of restlessness from my son), so I know that my kids are able to handle a movie that doesn’t offer explosions, wizards or fart jokes.  And my first attempt to expand our horizons, 1973’s Paper Moon, while not a resounding success, was deemed enjoyable enough to allow me another crack at picking a movie.  Unfortunately, not only does Chariots of Fire not have explosions, wizards or fart jokes, it also doesn’t have Tatum O’Neil and lacks what I deem to be essential in filmmaking: a reason to be filmed. 

My daughter’s summation of 1981’s Oscar winner: “It wasn’t about anything.  Nothing happened.  There wasn’t even a main character, really.”  Well, there kind of was a main character, but why we should care about him is beyond me.  The guy has to overcome anti-Semitism, which you would think might offer just a hint of interest for a Jewish family, but…um…no, actually.  And the synthesized music clashes with a period piece that takes place in the 1920s, and not in a cool, ironic “Moulin Rouge” sort of way, but in a “man, this music is just plain awful” sort of way. 

Lousy film.  If I’m being generous, I give it a two-stars on a four star scale, four on a scale of one to ten.

On the flipside, I had the pleasure of re-watching a film that didn’t even make the Best Picture category in 1989: Do the Right Thing (and no, I didn’t watch this one with the kids).  Viewing it for the first time in twenty years, I was amazed at how this movie still cuts to the core of race relations.  When the film was originally released, some reviewers were critical of the tumultuous ending and the motives behind it, and at the time I was probably among those who agreed with these criticisms.  Viewing it again, however, made me appreciate how deftly Spike Lee illuminated multiple sides of racial divide, exposing prejudices and failings of all people while humanizing the characters with witty and biting dialogue. 

The biggest flaw in this film is the same as it ever was: Radio Raheem, whose death incites a riot, isn’t shown to be a fully fleshed out character, but rather a cardboard cutout of a man.  We don’t particularly care when he dies because we’re not given a reason TO care about him.  But never mind.  When Kim Basinger announced at the Oscar ceremony in 1990, “The best film of the year is not even nominated and it's Do the Right Thing.” she was spot-on.

So add Do the Right Thing to the ever-growing list of notorious Oscar snubs.  And is Chariots of Fire the worst Best Picture winner ever?  Well, I still haven’t seen Gladiator, so it’s hard to say.  But I’ve read that Spike Lee likes to refer to 1989’s winner, Driving Miss Daisy, as Driving Miss Motherf***ing Daisy.

So I guess we know what Mr. Lee’s vote is.

A Giant Sucking Sound? What will become of Rock and Roll?

In 1992, presidential candidate Ross Perot warned Americans about the “giant sucking sound” of U.S. jobs fleeing to Mexico if NAFTA passed.  It did, and – for reasons probably having nothing to do with NAFTA – the U.S. went on to have eight years of rapid growth.   Maybe this example of exceeded expectations is reason enough to be slightly optimistic about what will happen to rock and roll once the current wave of aging rockers crashes into a shore of social security, nursing homes and…cemeteries. 

But one could be forgiven for having a slightly bleak outlook.

Just one look at the Chicago area concerts this summer gives reason for concern.  Consider the following acts:

Jimmy Buffet , Paul Simon, Rush, Styx, Bob Segar, Peter Gabriel, Steely Dan, Robert Plant and Journey.

The average age of those acts – not including Styx’s and Journey’s young replacements – is about 61.  Paul Simon will be turning 70 this year.  Jimmy Buffett?  65.  And then there are other aging bands coming to the area: Foghat, Asia, Yes, Nightranger, Motley Crue – the list goes on and on.

In ten years, when all of these acts are gone, what will fill the void?  Sure, there are plenty of popular young musicians on tour this year: Kate Perry, Taylor Swift, R Kelly, Rihanna, Josh Groban, Carrie Underwood…but you have to wonder whether in twenty years people will be willing to shell out wads of cash to see – say – an aging Lady Gaga.

And this really isn’t a knock on today’s artists; there are plenty of bands today that excite me.  But times have changed, and the age of long-lasting rockers with huge followings could be over, replaced instead by musicians who are compartmentalized by geography or niche genres. 

Gone are the days of the nurtured band who’s allowed to grow and audience over time, gaining allegiance and hard-core fans who can name the deep tracks.  Record companies can’t afford to do this anymore, and we as listeners have adjusted the way we listen to music, withholding the devotion, patience and money that music careers so often require. 

Purchasing a song on iTunes for 89 cents doesn’t really ensure a long career or even a follow-up album.  Have you heard anything recently from Daniel Powter?  Do you even know who he is?  Billboard Magazine named Powter the last decade’s top one-hit wonder.  “Bad Day” might have been a huge hit five years ago for Powter, but he couldn’t sell out an arena today, partly because few people actually purchased his album; they purchased his song, and a song does not an arena band make. 

Of course, there have always been one-hit wonders, and one can hope that the Foo Fighters, Kid Rock, The Counting Crows, Kings of Leon, Dave Matthews Band can hang in there for a while and hold down the fort while other acts build an audience.   I’ve no doubt that new performers will rise to the challenge. 

But it could be a couple of ugly years.

Short Story and Poem Published

My short story, "Nosebleed," was just published in the Fall 2010 edition of The Prairie Light Review, a publication of the College of DuPage that considers submissions from residents of DuPage County, Illinois.  This is a story I'm particularly proud of.  Read it here.

My poem, "Step In Time" was also selected for the 2010 Fall edition of The Prairie Light Review.  Click here to read.

The Latest Biography on Mickey Mantle

Author Jane Leavy’s latest biography has a preposterous title, but that doesn’t take away from its achievements.  The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the end of America’s Childhood is an expertly researched and well-written tale about a sports icon whose legacy might be as exaggerated as the book’s implication that somehow Mickey Mantle paralled the end of America’s innocence. 

This whole idea that America’s purity was soiled in the 60s and 70s has been exploited countless times, but bittersweet nostalgia still sells books to a generation that believes America’s best years have passed.  Depending on which book you read, America lost its innocence with the assassination of JFK, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnam War, Watergate, or the “me” decade of the 80s.  All of these notions are overblown, but at least within the realm of reason.

But Mickey Mantle?  That’s a bit of a stretch. 

The title notwithstanding, Jane Leavy’s book is hardly a trip down nostalgia lane, but rather a look at where reality and legend intersect and diverge. 

During his best years, from 1952 to 1964, Mantle was among the greatest baseball players ever, rivaling New York’s other center field stars, Willie Mays and Duke Snyder (not to mention another outfielder, Henry Aaron, the most underappreciated player of them all).  Mantle won the Triple Crown in 1956, earned the top spot in three MVP contests, and appeared in twelve World Series, winning seven of them.  The injuries he endured were numerous and devastating, starting with his rookie season in 1951, when he tore his knee in game 2 of the World Series so badly that he would never play without pain again.  Some of the stories surrounding Mantle’s baseball career are so grandiose, so epic in proportion, it would take a Hollywood movie to properly capture them, and in some sense they were in Barry Levinson’s The Natural, albeit through the fictitious Roy Hobbs.  But Mantle really did drive a ball off a the façade of Yankee Stadium  – twice, some 510 feet had the balls travelled unimpeded – and he really did play with blood seeping through his jersey in the ’61 World Series.  Roy Hobbs had nothing on this guy.

Throughout the 387 page book, Leavy interweaves a personal encounter she had with Mickey Mantle in 1983, and this very effective tactic (borrowed from Doug Write’s play, I Am My Own Wife) helps to illuminate not only the various traits of one of the greatest ballplayers to play the game, but also how the public’s perception of the Mick changed over time.  As is so often the case with sports figures, Mantle’s off-the-field activities undermined the heroic status he garnered from so many star-struck fans in the 50s and 60s (Tiger Woods, anyone?).  Starting prior to his retirement in 1968, and especially in the twenty years that followed, Mantle’s life degenerated into one long binge of drinking, philandering and selling himself with no less shame than Orson Welles did during his final years.  As a result, the public became more aware of Mantle’s humanity, for better or for worse, and it’s this realization the Leavy attempts to link to the end of America’s childhood, a broad attempt that falls short.  But as a personal journey of disillusionment, it works beautifully.

Mickey Mantle’s greatest achievement may have been his sobriety for the last eighteen months of his life, perhaps the first grown-up decision he’d ever truly made, and no doubt the most difficult.  Appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1994 to talk about his alcoholism was more important than any of his 536 home runs.  This turn around, along with the revelation of Mantle’s own sexual abuse as a child and the portrayal of his stern and discontented father, help end Mantle’s story on notes of empathy and redemption.  Mantle was no human being to emulate, but he was human through and through.