A Little Sweetness

Two things happened recently that, while unrelated, reminded me of the surprising sweetness of life that comes up when you least expect it.

Last week at work a student came by my office to sign off on some paperwork to go to the State Board of Nursing, so she can take her boards and earn her nursing license. She was a lovely young woman, poised and well-spoken and what I think is now called "queen size". She certainly looked as though she would be a wonderful nurse, the kind of calm, sweet presence you'd like to have at your bedside if you were hospitalized.

So she double-checked some of the personal information that goes to the State Board and completed an online survey about her experience in nursing school and, as she left, she thanked me and I wished her luck. Then she stopped in the doorway and took from her purse one of those little pamphlets from the Jehovah's Witnesses, "Jesus Christ: Who Is He?" and handed it to me and said something like "Just for you to take a look at..." Then she was gone.

It had been a week or so of hard work, it being the end of the quarter with a lot of paperwork and other plates to keep spinning, and I had been feeling overwhelmed and a little panicky, wondering if I'd been performing up to snuff. All of which serves to bring me down. And then this beautiful young woman comes by and brings with her a sweet, calming presence, a beautiful smile...and a pamphlet.

The front of the pamphlet features a picture of Jesus, I presume, in a coarsely spun robe, sandals and a short, curly haircut. Unlike the typical long-haired Jesus artists usually portray. He's sitting on a rock, speaking, his hands in front of him, gesturing. He looks a little like Mandy Patinkin in "Yentl".

And I opened the pamphlet and glanced through it and was able to take a little comfort from it. I wasn't converted, I wasn't struck with a bolt of lightning -- I think it was the memory of Sunday school when I was a kid and the feeling of security I got from the stories about Jesus. It was a nice feeling, comforting somehow. And though it's been almost two weeks now, I'm still thinking about that student and thinking how lucky her future patients will be.

The other thing was just something that happened on the way home from the market tonight. We got to a stoplight just outside of town and could see, across the highway intersection in the high school parking lot, a carnival. One of those traveling carnivals with the rides that can be folded up and hauled away -- a merry-go-round, a Tilt-a-Whirl-- as well as games of chance and stands selling cotton candy and candy apples. It was just dusk and the western sky was that pale blue-green color that follows the setting of the sun. The horizon was blushed with a dusty rose and the lights of the carnival rides sparkled and flashed against it in a way that made it all seem perfect, meant to be, but only for that moment. Parents with small children in tow were going in and coming out, exhausted and exhilarated. It was so beautiful and so simple and reminded me of similar carnivals I had been to as a kid. Nothing fancy, but thrilling nonetheless. Real. And a kind of calm settled on me and made me smile. Then the traffic light changed and we had to move on.

I love it when life surprises me that way, touches me and reminds me that it's all okay: this is just the way it was meant to be.

A Little Perspective

Pulitzer Prize-winner John McPhee once said the dramatic history of the Earth can be summed up in a single sentence: "The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone. "

Great News Blog

I hope you'll all take a look at Metro Mashup/the Blinq blog on philly.com, to which my friend Kevin Riordan contributes (along with a group of other journalists and writers). He also has a regular features column on the online version of the Philadelphia Inquirer. News, opinion, video and it's not just for Philly, people! Check it out...

Katy Perry Bravely Gets All Divulging About Healthcare

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."  G.B. Shaw


Katy Perry, who as I understand it is a pop recording star with masterworks like "Ur so Gay" and "I Kissed A Girl" to her credit, is totally brave. She was interviewed for the Special Summer Double Issue of Rolling Stone magazine and, in addition to assuring the world that she's for gay rights and that she's a gay rights activist ("I say that proudly") she boldly came out for free healthcare. “Anyway, not to get all politically divulging and introspective," she said, "but the fact that America doesn’t have free health care drives me f*cking absolutely crazy, and is so wrong.” Thanks for not getting all divulging, Katy.

     But, as they say on TV, that's not all! Perry went on: "I think we are largely in desperate need of revolutionary change in the way our mindset is. Our priority is fame, and people’s wellness is way low. I say this knowing full well that I’m a part of the problem. I’m playing the game, though I am trying to reroute."


(It's true, Katy. Every morning -- before I've even opened my eyes -- I send up a little prayer for more fame. "Please God, I pray, make me famous! And screw the wellness of the little people.")




     In spite of the fact that she knows she's part of the problem and is trying to "reroute", whatever the hell that means, forgive me if I don't for a moment think that Perry drives down to the intersection of Santa Monica Blvd. and Highland Avenue in Los Angeles every morning to give away some of her millions to the day laborers standing on the corner looking for work. My guess is, admitting she's part of the problem is enough work for one day and just how far do you expect her to go? 



     According to the Best Reviewer website, La Perry's net worth is around 15 million and she earns approximately $130 a minute. (The Since you arrived on this page at 3:46 p.m. Katy Perry earned ticker is mesmerizing!) And, forgive me again but anyone who thinks healthcare should be "free" needs to get a clue about what "free" means. Especially when it comes to governments. I mean, if that's the case, why shouldn't groceries be free, or shoes or tickets to Katy Perry concerts? Dammit, why do we have to pay for anything at all in this fame-obsessed nightmare we call America?


I guaran-damn-tee you that three hours in a dingy, antiseptic-smelling clinic somewhere, waiting for "free" healthcare would give Katy pause: "Mmmmm... maybe we could come up with a different system where I could pay if I want to and just the icky people would get the 'free' care...?"




     Maybe I'm being too tough on Katy. After all, she's had her share of trauma and heartache -- and from an early age: “I started praying for [breasts] when I was, like, 11,” she said. “And God answered that prayer above and beyond, by, like, 100 times, until I was like, 'Please stop, God, I can't see my feet anymore."

P.S. Fearing that I was being too harsh on someone of whom I have only a passing awareness, I listened to a bit of "Ur So Gay" on iTunes and discovered that the first two lines of "Ur So Gay" are: "I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf, while jacking off listening to Mozart."  Brilliant. Cole Porter is applauding in heaven. Even taking into account the fact that she's not addressing a gay person in the song; and even assuming the whole song is supposed to be "ironic" -- why would I take her seriously about anything?  No, I have no qualms about mocking Katy Perry.

Elaine May (oh, and Mike Nichols)

I think my sense of humor began forming many (many) years ago when I was still in school. Apart from Popeye and the usual assortment of late afternoon cartoons, which never really did much for me -- and although I grew to appreciate the anarchic cast of Warner Bros characters, Daffy Duck being my favorite ---there was really only “Rocky and Bullwinkle” which was a show as much for adults as for kids.

At night, though, there was a whole other world of humor, the like of which we’ll probably never see again. I loved Jack Benny, as much for the subtle gay vibe he gave off as for the dry-as-dust, deadpan delivery. There was also Ernie Kovacs whose brand of humor was surreal and, well, weird. One of his standard set pieces was a group called the Nairobi Trio: three grown men in gorilla suits who played musical instruments and moved like the animatronic characters at a Disney theme park. It wasn’t riotous, laugh-out-loud, knee-slapping comedy. It was Andy Kaufman long before Andy Kaufman – if you remember Andy Kaufman. You can probably look it up on YouTube.

There was also the Steve Allen Show, the original “Tonight Show” from New York where, in addition to the guests who came out to chat, there was a cast of regulars who played the same characters in hilarious skits, week after week. It’s probably where “Saturday Night Live” got the idea, and Carol Burnett, among others. The cast included Louis Nye and a skinny little guy with a nonstop, nervous tick named Don Knotts, and another oddball named Dayton Allen who presaged Seinfeld’s Kramer in a way. Steve Allen loved his cast and as they worked you could hear him laughing helplessly off-camera, a raucous, high-pitched, infectious laugh as they did their stuff. I met Steve Allen years later in Los Angeles. Don’t get excited, I was cater waitering at a big, swanky event in Beverly Hills and Mr. Allen had a cold, so at his wife’s request I made sure he had a cup of hot tea in front of him at all times. He tipped me five dollars.

Around this time there was a humorist named Jack Douglas who, with his wife Reiko, would appear on the Jack Paar Show (which I also loved). Douglas was a writer and raconteur and wit who published a number of books of humorous essays, anticipating Woody Allen’s writing at about the time Woody was an up-and-coming Greenwich Village comic. The books had titles like “My Brother Was an Only Child”, and essays with titles like “Stella Dallas: The Story of a Blind Olive and Its Seeing Eye Pimiento”. I loved the non sequitir, surreal quality of stuff like that.

I also listened to Jean Shepard on the radio as I fell asleep at night. Shepard was the storyteller who wrote, among other things, “A Christmas Story” which eventually became the Christmas movie classic. Shepard had no guests, no particular format that I can remember. He would just come on the air and start telling stories in that wonderful, slightly sandpapery voice that also had in it a little smoke and a smile. I’m sure he improvised every word and the stories were funny and sweet and always seemed to be about a great deal more than their plots. I guess, to a degree, that’s what Garrison Keillor does, so you see there’s nothing new under the sun. (I’ll be having a contest to see who can find the most clichés in this month’s postings.) And Shepard seemed a good deal more genuine than Keillor does, at least to me.

And of course there was “You Bet Your Life” with Groucho Marx, whose use of the English language, coupled with that sly delivery and the animated eyebrows, was as much of an influence on me as anything I was taught in school.

The point, I guess, is that what I found funny most of my peers probably didn’t. This was humor based on words, wordplay, puns, using the language in ways that no one else had thought of. That’s all poetry is, really: someone writing about all our lives in a very personal way. And I loved it and began to think like Steve Allen and Jack Douglas, and to hone my delivery to match Jack Benny’s.

Nichols and May by Richard Avedon

There was also, about this time, a comedy duo named Nichols and May – for Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Yes, Mike Nichols, movie director and husband to Diane Sawyer, was once an actor and a comic. He and his partner, the very dry, deadpan Elaine May, wrote and performed routines about disaffected, neurotic, usually urban oddballs. He was always very well-groomed, his short blond hair slicked back, in a dark suit and narrow tie. She was always decked out in a simple shirtwaist dress, had the 60's bouffant hair and was really sexy, in that Manhattan-in-the-60's, offbeat way I can't quite put my finger on. (Occasionally during their routines they smoked cigarettes!) They appeared in clubs in the Village and on TV shows like the Tonight Show and on Jack Paar, and gained their greatest fame on Broadway in “An Evening with Nichols and May” and I loved them. (Check out "The $65 Funeral here.)

Their humor was subtle, sophisticated, and they didn’t speak down to their audience.  They called it quits as a duo in 1961 and Nichols, as noted, went on to a major career as a director on Broadway, helping to make Neil Simon a household name; and in Hollywood. His freshman effort was “The Graduate” and his resume also includes “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, “Postcards from the Edge”, “Silkwood” and “The Birdcage” among many others.

Likewise, Elaine May began writing and directing, and established herself as a major player in the theater and in films. As a scenarist she’s continued to work with Nichols on many of his movies -- including the aforementioned “Birdcage” – (which I consider an unfunny, heavyhanded mess, filled with stereotypes of all kinds and watchable only for the understated performance of the inestimable Diane Wiest, and for glimpses of Hank Azaria’s inestimable upper body). May often serves as one of those uncredited “doctors” who steps in to save floundering film scripts, which leads one to wonder why she couldn’t doctor her own script for “Ishtar”, reputedly one of the worst movies ever made.

But I was in the shower the other night and for some reason a line from one of her movies popped into my head: “I just hate you so much…” She utters it in a film she made in 1990 with Marlo Thomas called “In the Spirit”. It tells the story of a woman (May) whose husband is transferred from Beverly Hills to New York and who hires Thomas, a flaky New Age type (is there any other kind?) to redecorate her apartment. Soon enough they’re on the run from a crazed killer and there’s a prostitute involved, played by May’s daughter, Jeannie Berlin; another prostitute played by Melanie Griffith (long before she started with the collagen in the lips thing); as well as Olympia Dukakis and Peter Falk. There’s something just so oddball and fun about it... you can imagine May and Thomas sitting around having a nosh from Zabar’s, saying “Oh, we should make a movie... about this crazy woman and this other crazy New Age woman who are total opposites...and there's a murder and prostitutes!” It’s just another one of those wonderful movies you’ve probably never seen. Or, in this case, never even heard of.

Kona's Dream

A little footage, taken on my iPhone, from our visit to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Have the volume up a little...it's nice.

Now, This Is How You Sell Underwear!

The quality's not great but you'll get the point...