Who Asked Me?

I watched The Deer Hunter the other night – for the first time, really. I’d seen it on Showtime when I was a kid, back when uncut films playing on pay television were a novelty. I realized, revisiting it, that I’d never watched it through to completion. It was a conversation about George Dzundza, of all things, that brought the DVD to my house. Tom Myers sent it via Fed Ex from California, following a late evening chat about original Law and Order cast members one hot, mid-July evening on my Brooklyn roof. Not sure how the topic came up – probably had to do either with staring at the blue-green glow of lower Manhattan from an almost aerial vantage or simply because it’s fun to try and say “Dzundza” after having had a few beers. Whichever the case, Tom was all over it, his knowledge of film and actors being near encyclopedic. “George Dzundza,” he noted. “He was in The Deer Hunter.”

Robert DeNiro is in the film too, along with Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep and John Cazale. Tom included a note saying that they “don’t make films like this anymore” which would have been cliched if not pointedly true. It’s three hours for one thing; an instant hurdle in trying to pass a movie through the studio system. And it takes its time to develop, including a wedding scene that seems to run almost in real time from formal vows to drunken reception. I found myself becoming impatient, perhaps a result of Internet Age conditioning. And yet as the film progressed, and even several days after watching it, the manner and nuances of the characters established during this sequence came back to validate their subsequent actions. It was almost true to life, like recounting a long, shared trail with seasoned friends and commenting on the stuff you might have seen coming. It’s odd to note that, as I get older, many of the things I retain longest seemed unremarkable upon initial occurrence.

Deer Hunter is an imperfect film, implausible in parts and difficult to accept in an historical context. But the performances make most of this irrelevant. DeNiro gained sixty pounds to play the older Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull and drove a cab in New York City to prepare for Taxi Driver, but it was Deer Hunter that he called the most physically and emotionally demanding project of his career. He got in-role by socializing with local steelworkers in their Pennsylvania homes and drinking with them in the bars. Watching the film you get the sense you probably would’ve wanted to steer clear of him for several months after the production. This was not the same guy cranking out Meet The Fockers sequels today. Cazale was near the end of his life during the filming, sick with cancer and in a relationship with Streep. She threatened to quit upon learning the producers wanted to drop him because of his illness. There’s a rawness of emotion pervading Deer Hunter that would seem difficult to create from nothing.

Michael Cimino directed the film, a reputedly difficult character himself who was obviously at the top of his game. With rare exception, Hollywood is reluctant to put loose-canon geniuses at the reigns anymore. There is no modern-day equivalent to Deer Hunter, and it’s indeed true that they don’t make them like this anymore. Maybe it’s a good thing that they don’t even try.

I got nothing. Not literally, of course; I’m not so oblivious as to discredit family, friends, or my general good fortune. But sometimes it’s reflexive – the first thing that pops into your head when trying to think of something to write or offer something to say. I got nothing. “I’ve” would be the correct form, of course, but this only emphasizes my point.

“Read anything good lately?” I was asked this at a dinner party over the weekend by a tall guy with glasses in a white cotton shirt. It was Summer 2011’s hottest day thus far, which, ironically, is saying something, and I’d been hovering over a corner air conditioner on the fifth floor of a Manhattan apartment, picking at a small portion of lamb and rice on my plastic plate. He looked a little like a towering, Cuban, Steven Soderbergh with Paul Lynde inflection. One of those guys who possesses the kind of on-command exuberance I’m decidedly lacking, but only miss on rare occasion at dinner parties. I told him I was reading a book about the Mitchell Brothers, and that the last thing I could remember reading before this was Crime and Punishment. My mind wasn’t focused on the words coming out of my mouth, but rather on the probability of having to explain who the Mitchells were, followed by a passably thoughtful analysis of what Dostoevsky was getting at. I got nothing .. I got nothing.

The Mitchell explanation led to a brief exchange on the definition of redeeming social value, and we both agreed that Dostoevsky had something. He’d been reading a five hundred page book on the CIA and was much better at selling it than I would have been. Outside of the length and subject, I can’t remember a thing he said. Not because I’m a dismissive, disinterested sort, but rather because I’m not good at channeling my brain and compartmentalizing neurotic rumination. I did a better job earlier in the evening, listening to a pretty, Asian, Dartmouth grad deal one liners on how the first Japanese farmer discovered Kobe beef. Among humor’s many advantages is the option to throw in a well-timed “that’s what she said” as suitable alternative to paying attention.

On the way home I discussed this phenomenon of having nothing with a close friend who agreed I was on to something. The problem, we concurred, was that while social obligation dictates getting out to the occasional dinner party and mixing it up with new people, there is no true motivation to get to know anyone. “That’s what the first grade is for,” she said. “You’re thrown in to a room with a bunch of kids you don’t know, and you’re too little to know anyone besides your parents, so it’s sink or swim.” It continues in this fashion, she explained, until you’re about thirty, at which time you have no need to make new friends unless you move somewhere new or lose all your existing ones in some kind of mass tragedy. I’m sure there are exceptions to her theory, but it made me feel slightly better about my social shortcomings.

I met Tom Myers, who visited me in Brooklyn a few weeks back, well before my thirtieth birthday, thereby excusing me from having to justify the connection. I was home from college, playing on an employee softball team for my dad’s company. I arrived late and rocketed the first ball I threw over Tom’s head while warming up. He reserved external judgement while chasing it down, which may have been an early sign that we’d get along, and I got things under control by my second toss. Tom was visiting Brooklyn as a stopover on his way to Vermont and a reunion with more old friends. It wasn’t exactly a pleasure trip – they were paying respects to the widow of another old buddy. We bar be cued a Newport steak, hung out on my roof, did some socializing, and got dinner in the city one night. I probably rambled a bit more than usual when he was here, likely the result of lacking people who really go back in my current existence. I’m sure he would have gladly taken “I got nothing” by the end of his stay, but it was a good few days.

Merv Griffin, Burt Ward and Janet Leigh all share my birthday – as do Nancy Reagan, George W. Bush and Sly Stallone. Ned Beatty, Fred Dryer and the Dalai Lama were also born on July 6th, as were 50 Cent, Willie Randolph and Peter Singer. That last guy is an Australian philosopher about whom I know nothing, but I figure he can wax philosophic about kangaroos, beer, and Vegemite, which comes in handy. I’m not entirely displeased with this list of folks and would settle for an amalgamation of their various qualities. If you could combine Bush with the Dalai Lama, for instance, you’d have a revered holy man who could hold his own conversing with Nolan Ryan. I just watched a biography program on Merv Griffin the other night. He hit it big in 1950 with the song I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts. What Merv was getting at with that tune is debatable, but he never looked back. Nor has 50 Cent who has sold 15 million rap albums while somehow managing to keep it real. He’s also patently refused to add an “s” to the non-numerical part of his name, which I think is good. If you combined 50 with Ned Beatty, you’d have a pleasant-faced, southern character actor who sure as shit wouldn’t stand for what those crackers did to him in Deliverance. When I look at my fellow birthday-sharers, I see myself staring back.

I don’t list my birthday on my Facebook profile. Among the many things I find distasteful about the site is how it reminds you when one of your “friends” has a birthday. This makes remembering someone’s birthday or receiving well-wishes on yours about as special as spotting a Denny’s on a long road trip. Six-hundred and seventy-three happy birthdays followed by the recipient inanely thanking “all those who remembered.” Yeah, they remembered. Remembered to check their email or go to their Facebook page. They remembered like Jiffy Lube, Jet Blue, or any other business or retailer requiring a birth date and email address does. I preferred the pre-Facebook system of prioritizing which birthdays you remembered. Typically it was those of family members, close personal relationships, or someone you wanted to fill one of these positions. Of course the old system meant forgetting a lot of birthdays, but I had no problem with this either. People hung up on their own birthdays either fall into the category of wanting everyone to remember or everyone to forget, and in either case qualify as pains in the ass.

As the previous paragraph undeniably proves, white guys who have enough birthdays eventually evolve in to Andy Rooney. You rarely see it coming; one minute you’re celebrating your ninth birthday by going to see Blazing Saddles with your mother, brother and Doug Boxer, and the next you’re decades older, grumpily bemoaning the impersonal emergence of social networks and wondering why nobody got you the Letha Weapons love doll you secretly hope for every year. But as my buddy John Spears used to observe “it only goes in one direction and is better than the alternative.” Which I suppose is true, but could also be said of north-bound traffic on the 405 freeway. Harry Callahan once noted “opinions are like a**holes – everybody’s got one,” and in the end (no pun intended) the same can be applied even more accurately to birthdays. If I’ve accomplished anything on mine this year it’s been combining both (opinion and birthday) exhaustively and without purpose. Thankfully, tomorrow’s just another day.

I was having a coffee with my buddy Denis at the Stewart Tower Dairy Farm a few weeks back. Stewart Tower is located off the A9 between Perth and Dunkeld, not far from Ardoch and Airntully. The place is supposed to have some of the best ice cream in Scotland, but we weren’t having any that day as it was blowing a gale. “Blowing a gale” might be putting it kindly – it was the sort of weather that results in lost toupees being found six towns over. On the way in to the place we happened upon an older woman who’d recovered an earring she’d dropped just outside the entrance. “Ach, I wis a’feard I’d lost it,” she told us, before launching in to a five-minute story about how she received the gift as a child from a kindly aunty. I didn’t follow most of it, as I was too busy concentrating on how she was staying afoot amid the hurricane force winds. They’re a hearty people, the Scottish.

Denis guided me to the farm shortly after I and the parents arrived in Scotland, as practice for my driving the rental car. I got used to it in fairly short order, despite the misplaced steering wheel and wrong-lane oncoming traffic. That stuff is all do or die straight out of the barrel; it’s the four-lane roundabouts and dual to single carriageways that take some getting used to. All considered, I did an admirable job with the carriageway adjustment, avoiding becoming one of the several fatality statistics logged each year. The roundabouts are a bit trickier, and if you find yourself stuck in the wrong lane or unsure of your exit, it’s best to resign to surrender and going in circles until the tank empties .. not unlike Charlie on the MTA. For a country not known for its loose grip on their wallet straps and with gas at ten bucks a gallon, you’d think they’d invent a more petrol-friendly exiting system. But it’s when you’re on foot in Scotland that things get even more interesting.

Denis is fond of quoting my use of the word “scary” to describe some of the goings-on around the High Street in Perth after the sun sets. It was with some curiosity and apprehension that I observed the cavorting packs of under-aged Scottish youths, shit-faced and obnoxiously loud to a lad and lass, when I lived there for a short while in 2004. I’d seen plenty of drunken scenes in America, but something about the red-faced, street-urinating males and puking, fifteen year-old girls dressed like tarted-up Halloween prostitutes separated these kids from the pack. Yeah, they drink plenty in Scotland – but they also seem to handle it poorly, if that’s the word for it. There’s something disturbingly provincial about the whole scene.

It was a Sunday night during this last trip that we exited Denis’s flat by St John’s Kirk, me grasping Mom’s hand to better sturdy her on the cobblestone and Dad and Denis to our left. The only notable activity was a wedding party breaking up at the Ring O’ Bells pub, rapidly receding to the background behind us. “You see, Rick,” Denis noted, “not much gallivanting going on tonight ..” With that a group of three young guys emerged, staggering from the pub and bellowing off-key Scottish football songs. “OY!” one of them yelled loudly, spotting us on a direct line about two blocks away. “YE AULD BASTARDS!!” He proceeded to pull his pants and underwear down to his ankles, his unit tucked away above knobby knees and between pale white legs. “LOOKIT! I’m a WOMAN!!” His mates laughed uproariously and offered a hearty back-slap as they helped him right his trousers.

A few nights later I stole away with Denis for a brief respite from chauffeuring the parents and to take in some post-dinner music at the Taybank pub in Dunkeld. A casual group of pluckers and strummers with acoustic instruments played a variety of traditional Scottish and American folk tunes – some Johnny Cash songs among them. I helped a guy with a guitar find his place again with Shel Silverstein’s lyrics to A Boy Named Sue. A stunningly beautiful young girl with nut-brown hair and perfect skin suited for a face soap advert pulled a graceful bow over fiddle strings. A stone’s throw outside, the River Tay ran deep and black in the night, a full Scottish moon reflecting shards of glittering white upon its surface. So yeah, there’s that stuff too ..

I ran in to my mailman two days ago, on the precipice of this brutal heat wave now fully enveloping Brooklyn. You get to know your mailman here whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, always in or always out. “Those the parents?” he asked with a wry grin, having seen me tuck them in to a cab on their way to JFK. I figured he must have had some too ..

It was an interesting few weeks with the folks, both at home (for me) and abroad. “Some day this will make a great book” – you hear people say that all the time, in the midst of both crises and celebrations. But the truth is those books never get written. Instead it’s some derivation, either more or less spectacular than the original but always different. Coming close with words is a feat in itself, reserved for those few capable – the skills to pay the bills, as the Beastie Boys say. Life is for those living it, and only they will ever know.

I will relate this small anecdote, however. I was sitting in my apartment with my dad, discussing the place’s relative charms and flaws, having lived here four years now. I noted that it’s put together in funky form; the covers on the electrical outlets are all slightly askew. “I remember,” he said “putting the cover plate on a plug outlet once while my father watched.” My dad is handy with tools and woodwork, but his old man was an engineer beyond reproach whose skills were the origins of a family business lasting three generations. “I was trying to make the damn thing perfectly straight,” Dad went on, “while my father looked over my shoulder. ‘Leave it a little crooked’, he said, ‘it’ll look like a professional did it ..’ ”

I’ve heard most of his stories at least three thousand times, but had no recollection of that one. I thought it was pretty good, and if my sense for people is still intact, I think my mailman would like it too.