Who Asked Me?

“Horses scream, the nightmares dream
 and the dead men all wear shoes” –  John Prine

“Once you’re down in Texas, Bob Wills is still the king” – Waylon

I figured I could do better than that. Not Prine or Waylon, of course, but what I wrote previously about New York. Someone once told me that I possess a particular form of bravery and will look some things dead-on that others won’t touch. If it’s true it exists in conjunction with an equally potent brand of avoidance; not cowardice exactly, but the kind of deal that makes you not want to walk out the door in the morning. Some days I just don’t want to see anybody and will indulge the option. Lately, though, the option hasn’t been there. I’m a cynic. It’s ingrained to the point where it doesn’t register internally. I said it recently — “I’m cynical about a lot of stuff” — and the other person burst out laughing. So be it. Here, however, are some things about which I am not cynical: New York City. It smells like garbage and subways in the summer and can possess a particularly bleak, cold and grey winter quality. But it’s too big to be vilified, classified or marginalized. America never stopped being great and you need look no further than where I am now .. for a few more days, anyway. To quote Letterman post 9-11 “If you didn’t believe it before — and it’s easy to see where you might have been skeptical — New York City is the greatest city in the world.”

Loss provides perspective. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Too many cooks .. well, you get the picture. “In order to win,” says the great and grumpy Van Morrison, “you must be prepared to lose sometimes .. and leave one or two cards showing.” So it is with New York. I’ve been coming and leaving since 2003 and within that context I’ve learned to appreciate the place. I’ve heard it since I arrived “it ain’t what it used to be” .. “Times Square is Disneyland” .. etc. New York City is immune to old money, new money, white kids, black kids, rich kids, Alec Baldwin, Williamsburg, Trump, DeBlasio and the Knicks. (And if you can be immune to the Knicks you’re doing OK.) Stand at its perimeter and feel the place buzz if you don’t believe it; pulsating like an old person refusing to die. It swallows, absorbs, embraces and spits out, but it isn’t going anywhere.

I’m no theologian .. this can be documented. But I’ve been talking to a Higher Power of late. Not sure if it’s God, the Universe, or the guys who designed and built the Golden Gate Bridge. (And for the record and with deference to New York’s many impressive overpasses, there is none like that bridge anywhere.) But it seems to me, if we’re to extract one usable instruction from most religions, it would be “it ain’t all about you.” Where they go from there gets a little shaky, but never mind that. Point being, no city emphasizes this idea more than New York. Here you will get your balls busted, regardless of how you choose to avoid or engage. Resist at your peril. Don’t be a sucker, but don’t be a stiff or a pussy either. There’s been a lot of buzz about that word lately, but in this context it refers to self absorption. A true New Yorker — and at thirteen years in, knowing I’ll never be one myself, I use the term sparingly — set me straight on this. “It isn’t all about you.” Never confuse self-absorption for sensitivity. New York embraces, is shaped and even hardened by the sensitive and is too big and bad to pretend otherwise. But it ain’t all about you.

And so the place again washes over and hits me with a fresh dose of reality. It’s there picking up the tab at a ten-dollar an oyster, overcrowded bistro down Court or sitting at the bar down Henry with a great plate of rigatoni and more than palatable glass of five-dollar red. Or sitting alone at a table in the back of Great Jones, remembering the first time I stopped in back in 2001 and observing that they still have Bob Wills vinyl 45 in the jukebox. It’s the Russian woman noting that she didn’t know she’d have a “big strong man” helping her load my $200 end-table sold for $40 into her Chrysler minivan. Or the beautiful brown-skinned Manhattan girl wheeling away my IKEA dresser as deftly attached to a dolly by her male companion. (“He was trained in European furniture repair ..”)  It’s there in Ismail my super, changing the “probably” to “will” in my noting the likelihood of return. Or seeing Springsteen at Giants Stadium before they tore the place down and Philip Seymour Hoffman performing “Death of a Salesman” before he shot himself up. It was in the Old Man, still in OK shape and between visiting melt-downs, marveling at the “energy” everywhere and noting “it’s a good hat” after scoring him a four-dollar beanie on a cold day in Central Park. And it’s there in every box I triple-tape and ship UPS ground from the packaging place across the street. In savoring just being here, again, for a while, while the apartment grows more spacious by the day.

I read and wrote essays when I arrived here and recall one by a young woman noting how difficult and isolating this city can be. It ended with the cheese falling off the top of her frozen pizza and to the floor as she pulled it from the toaster oven, alone in her Brooklyn studio. “I sat and cried for two hours that night and knew that was it .. I was done with New York City.” I got it, sure. But the top had fallen off my pizza long before I arrived. Better to walk a few blocks and stand in line with the other lonely souls waiting on a slice at two in the morning, noting that you can’t do this anywhere else. No, I’ll never be a “New Yorker.”  I know a few things about the place, though, and it’s inside of me. Tell me about your city and I’ll tell you about a few others .. we can chat on it all night. But there’s nowhere like here.

I grew up with a lot of conservatives. Well, I grew up with the kids of a lot of conservatives. This was by no means a reflection of the prevailing demographic; rather it was our small group of largely Italian friends and family who tended to spend Thanksgiving and New Year’s together. And even “Italian” is a stretch here. My mom is Scottish, my grandmother Irish, and the group extended outward to all neighbors. But the names on the predominant mailboxes were Italian. And these people were and still are among the warmest and most inclusive sorts I’ve ever known.

As kids we didn’t know from Italian or any other group simply by hearing a name. “Monaco” or “Picetti” or “Galli” only reflected a family, or the kid in question. We applied no more ethnic identity to them than we did “Greenman,” “Greenberg,” “Callahan,” “Ramirez,” or “Jones.” The name meant a face — this was the immediate association. (Granted there weren’t a lot of African American kids where I grew up, but had there been equal numbers I believe the same would have applied.)

Then we all got a bit older and distinctions crept in. One of the first for me was the after-school catechism classes that my Catholic friends attended. They’d make a left turn climbing up the hill to go to Mrs Costello’s house and learn about Jesus and his pals while I continued onward alone. “Catholic” became a distinction for me. It was something they were and I was not. I wasn’t alone in this regard and it wasn’t as though I was a single non-believer in a sea of followers. But I didn’t go to Hebrew school or temple either. We weren’t Catholic or Jewish or Protestant (though I used the last when asked as a catch-all.) We were nothing.

By the time high school rolled around the distinctions were more clear. There was an entire school for the Catholic kids where they had to wear uniforms and study theology. It was also where the kids who were already fucking up badly tended to be sent, whether they were Catholic or not and if their parents cared and had a bit of money. My public high school was more diverse in makeup from Catholic school, but still largely white, affluent and liberal given the demographic. It was a relatively large school though, so there were plenty of kids from more conservative families as well as a handful of blacks and other minorities. By the time we all graduated, lines had been clearly drawn. Yeah, we were mostly rich white kids by national standards, but we definitely distinguished between ethnicity, religion and politics.

I won’t go into my college experience .. I didn’t graduate until later, anyway. In between I quit and went to work for our family company. We ran a motion picture lab in San Francisco, a city so liberal it would later have an actual proposition on the ballot to name a sewage treatment facility after George W Bush. My father grew up in North Beach and is a third-generation San Franciscan. When he was a kid, what passed for “liberal” politics in the city would be considered conservative today. And he ran a (relatively) small business in a city that never made that easy. The people I worked with — young, interested in film, and having moved to San Francisco — were mostly liberal in outlook. The company itself had a long tradition of informality and was rich in varied personalities. Put another way, we employed a lot of nuts. This was not Dow Chemical nor Goldman Sachs. We threw parties and played softball together. Management and middle-management were respectfully mocked at times, but it was kept to a healthy level. Most people knew that the shit that flew at our company wouldn’t be tolerated elsewhere and this served largely as glue more than dissent. I made many good friends working there, several of whom I’ve kept to this day.

There’s been a lot of talk of bubble-breaking recently; a need to reach out beyond one’s prevailing circle to engage others who might have a slightly different world view. I’ve heard some speak to the difficulty of this .. “I don’t know these people .. how can I reach out if I never come across them? Do I have to get in my car and go find them?” But I don’t think it’s about the staunch liberal and the gun-toting conservative crossing state lines for a Kumbaya moment. You don’t have to look too far to find someone who thinks slightly differently than you do and you might not need to pierce your own bubble. Perhaps I’m over-simplifying or being naive in light of too much time or water under the bridge. It’s almost 2017 for god’s sake. But I can remember a time when a name just meant a kid’s face, and in that fact I still find hope.

No news is good news, and a cursory check of recent headlines would seem to back this. Kooks running amok. Some dude in France runs down eighty-plus revelers in his truck. Cops shooting people and people shooting cops. Turkey in turmoil. Britain divided. And two of the most unlikable candidates in U.S. presidential history. I’ve been avoiding both headlines and something called a “heat dome” which has settled over New York City by retreating to San Francisco. Here it is July-cool with frequent fog in the evenings and easily accessed dry summer heat just a short drive away. Yes, the city has changed but I still know a few folks. I took off to Tahoe for a bit as a birthday-gift and it was even nicer up there. This is the lesson learned: you can alter neither the world nor the headlines, so manage your own. Be very good to those closest to you and gentle with those beyond. And, whenever possible, avoid traveling on the weekends.

I ran into a bear up at Tahoe. “Ran into” might not be the most accurate way of putting it — he (going with gender-assumption here) clawed the screen off the open side window of the cabin while I lay sleeping on the couch just below. This sort of thing wakes you up in a hurry. He then stuck his head in the window, up on all fours against the side of the house. When he pulled back for a split second I reacted quickly and slammed the sliding window shut left to right. This was enough to frighten him off and I don’t think it was until that instance, seeing him moon-lit and scurrying away, that I put together what had happened. I did some research the next morning and discovered that maulings by black bears are very rare, unless you get between a mother and her cubs. But none of this matters when an animal of this size sticks its small-refrigerator-sized head inside your personal domicile and snorts a few times.

Prior to traveling to Tahoe I’d caught Mudcrutch at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Mudcrutch is Tom Petty’s reunited pre-Heartbreakers band and the cover of their second album shows two bears squaring off. Or perhaps it’s two guys in bear suits. In either case, this bear theme was carried over to the posters made for the event at the famed venue, and I’d brought mine up to Tahoe to put up on the cabin wall. So it all ties together .. album cover, poster, bear sticking head in window. Maybe he just wanted a closer look at the artwork. Mudcrutch is a solid band and Petty is a good songwriter. Some people tend to underrate Petty, likely because he’s had strong commercial success and he’s from the (American) south. I tend not to like these people, nor do I care for the type of music “they” generally prefer. (Think David Byrne in a big suit making choppy motions up and down his forearm.) But that’s OK and to each his own. Life is too short and you never know when a bear is going to stick his head in the window.

My system broke down upon returning to New York. I say “system” because I believe this is how it works, much like a car with a small, untreated mechanical concern eventually necessitating complete overhaul. Somebody told me the that I “think too much” recently, and while this is undoubtedly true, the opposite approach can kill one, too. Unless of course you’re blessed with the rare but fortunate condition of genuine stupidity .. but this is nothing to bank on. I sat next to a guy on the Jet Blue red-eye who hacked, open-mouthed, for the entire cross-country trip while not making a single effort to cover himself. Spittle flew everywhere. Eventually I draped my sweater over my head like some nutty, cross-country Arabian sheikh relegated to coach. I won’t mention my hacking co-traveler’s nationality, lest I label myself xenophobic racist on top of over-thinker. But let’s just say his mother never taught him to cover his mouth when he coughed, and whether this is a cultural or personal trait I don’t trust it. I stared daggers at one point when his droplets literally sprayed my TV screen from across the aisle but he simply stared back at me with a look that said “soon you will know this sickness, too.” All of which probably wouldn’t be relevant had my system not been vulnerable .. specifically my brain. I sincerely believe there are times when you literally can’t get sick, no matter what kind of germ incubator you’re trapped in and how many virulent, airborne particles you’re breathing in. But this wasn’t one of those times.

Merle Haggard died shortly before I left Northern California and Prince after I returned east and was in the throes of this brief illness. I wrote recently that there are “a lot of people dying of late,” but the reality is closer to an observation I made at a friend’s funeral when I wasn’t even thirty. “The older you get, the more dead people you know.” I brought up David Bowie with my niece while driving her to middle school when I was back in San Francisco and she (understandably) asked “who was he?” This is the true advantage of youth — not the effortless vigor or having your entire life in front of you — but the not being familiar with as many dead people. I can recall my grandmother being upset when Jack Benny died and making the comment “he was always thirty-nine.” I didn’t get the reference then, but I do now and am sad that Jack is no longer around. This is the converse of youth; with age you not only mourn the dead of your generation, you actually go back and acknowledge the passing of those from previous ones. Or I do anyway, but this likely speaks to the over-thinking thing and my niece will be too busy grieving Taylor Swift’s long and slow decline to ever give a shit about the Thin White Duke.

Getting back to Prince .. bummer. I sincerely believe that music can bridge gaps between those who share nothing else in common. Of course the reverse can be equally true and people can be driven even further apart by their divergence in musical taste. But Prince bridged more gaps than he widened. You needn’t be into his electronic funk, religious pontification nor symbol-for-name offshoots. Perhaps, like the young rockheads who yelled “fag” when he opened for the Stones at the L.A. Coliseum in ’81, you were never a fan of his sexually ambiguous, leather-bikini-brief-wearing style. (Although, unlike Bowie, “androgynous” wouldn’t be the first word I’d assign to the cat.) But if you ever played, attempted to play, or simply appreciated someone else who could play an instrument, Prince was hard to deny. This medley clip of the lad strapped only with a purple acoustic guitar is evidence enough. He was the exceedingly rare example of a narcissist who added more to the world than he subtracted. Five-foot-two and perennially in heels, the man knew he loomed large. Watch his 2007 Super Bowl halftime appearance for example of a guy with ice water in his veins who could still connect with an audience of a hundred million. Enough on the adulation. All his foibles, true or otherwise, being exploited in the wake of his death (an opiate addiction as result of his Jehovah’s Witness hip surgery aversion, etc.) only add to the remarkable reminder that he was like the rest of us; vulnerable to complete system break-down. But when it came to his music and how he put it out there — however and whatever it took to put it out there — he was unique and one bad man.

Lots of folks dying of late (or “passing” to use the often-invoked and sanitized metaphor suggesting life as a freeway with the dead going by us in their cars.) More specifically, lots of famous folks dying. This is usually what we mean when me make the observation, and celebrity has taken on this added dimension of making the rest of us pause for a moment to note that the clock is ticking after checking our Twitter feed. Garry Shandling was the latest, just yesterday. He registers significantly with me, not only because he wasn’t all that much older (sixty-six) but also because he created the greatest television show in history. I make no qualifications for that last statement and I’m a student of some pretty good ones, The Sopranos and The Phil Silvers Show among them. ‘The Larry Sanders Show’ was so good that you could extract the performances of Rip Torn and Jeffrey Tambor, run them as their own shows, and they would qualify for the top ten. Lesser minds misinterpret comedy solely as a vehicle to make us laugh but The Larry Sanders Show was much more than this. The laughs came because it was true and familiar and human; because it’s the only place to go with things before we start crying and look like a bunch of pussies. Which leads me to another great Garry Shandling line, while hosting the Emmys in 1999: “The Sopranos has a character named ‘Big Pussy.’ This, coincidentally, was my nickname in high school.” I was a fan of Shandling’s comedy but nothing came close to ‘Sanders’ for me. I must have expressed this to more than a few people, because I received a flood of texts yesterday alerting me to the news. If all I’ve done in this life is to turn a few more heads in the direction of that program, it wouldn’t be all for not.

Shifting non-sequitur gears here, I’d like to make an observation about those ‘funny’ ring-tones some people choose for their cell phones. I’m not talking about merely choosing a different ring, but the odd sound effects of barnyard animals and the like. Goofy AHH-OOOGAH horns. This kind of thing. I’ve spent my share of time in various medical facilities in recent years and amid folks getting all manner of serious news. Nothing punctuates the gravity of a nurse telling a patient that the doctor has spotted something in his test results that he’d like to speak to him about than a single, loud sheep’s “BAHHHHHHH.” Really, is this what things have come to? And then the oblivious phone owner tapping the screen and answering with a dull ‘hello?’ Indignities are mounting all around us, multiplying by the day. Can you picture such audible punctuation after Lou Gehrig’s “luckiest man on the face of the earth” or FDR’s “a date which will live in infamy”? We’re getting stupider and the circles smaller and smaller.

On the other hand, “The People vs OJ Simpson” is one of the better things to come along in quite a while. The FX mini series walks a dizzying tightrope, blending spot-on parody with historical context and cultural sensitivity. It’s good on so many levels, the least of which not being John Travolta’s portrayal of smarmy celebrity attorney Robert Shapiro. It’s a real shame that several of the principals from the case didn’t live to see themselves depicted. You have to admire what Travolta’s doing here, apparently resurrecting his career for a third time as he simultaneously plays off his own real-life image as a Hollywood straight-man sending out hotel riders demanding a male masseuse and tin foil with heavy curtains covering all windows. The show offers a rare combination of satire and illumination, skewering racial groups and ego-laden individuals alike. It refuses to insult its audience’s intelligence on the matter of who killed whom, yet manages to present a nuanced interpretation of what was going on back then (and likely still is today.) It’s also worth watching, as my buddy Tom Myers points out, to watch Nathan Lane’s portrayal of ex Marine F. Lee Bailey while knowing that, unlike some of the others, the 82 year-old lawyer lived to see it. Put it on your must-see list, right after ‘The Larry Sanders Show,’ in its entirety.