Woody Allen Leaves NYC!

[Let me make this very clear:I wrote this in 2000 and in no way was Woody Allen or anyone else involved...a word of fantasy fiction.]

It was a surprise move by an American icon who has been known for his crochets and favorites. Woody Allen moved last week out of Manhattan to a small rural community in New Jersey. He explains the move in this interview:

Woody: I know, I know, everyone calls me a traitor, a backstabber, the Wandering Jew. Hey, I was faithful to Manhattan for years! Years! I put that city on the map after millions of Americans had given up on it. I think I’ve paid my dues and what did I get in return? OK, I got good bagels, but what else? Did anyone think I deserve a tax break? Or at least a mayoral nomination? But I’m not bitter. Don’t say I’m bitter.

Interviewer: So your move was not to make a point? Then what did initiate it? And why the secrecy?

Woody: What secrecy? We hired a limo and got a couple guys with a truck and they came and packed our stuff and moved us out. I didn’t stop any of the paparazzi from shooting pictures...

Interv: ...that appeared on the various morning shows and sparked phone calls from all areas of New York.

Woody: We had talked about this for some time. I’ve never been across the Hudson you know. I mean--I could visit once or twice, but never inhabited any part of it. You have to inhabit somewhere to really get to know it. I flew over Jersey sometimes and we drove through it and I thought: there are places down there that I could go and live and that would be different.

Interv: So you wanted to change your life in some dramatic meaningful way.

Woody: Well, if you want to be banal about it you could say that. I’m not wearing boots and a cowboy hat. I still dress the same, I hang out...

Interv: Do you sneak back into the City on weekends?

Woody: I’ve been back a few times.

Interv: And?

Woody: Same ol same ol. I go to the old places and they’re still there, but I don’t feel anything you know? I look at the skyline of New York across the Hudson and say, “There’s a big city.” I don’t feel the music, those great ol Gershwin tunes, I don’t hear them when I look at it.

Interv: Hard to believe. Have you had a checkup lately?

Woody: Oh now it’s the brain scan thing, is it? Listen, I could hang up you know. This is so typical of you big-city guys, putting a negative spin on someone who has simply chosen to live a simpler life. If you could see this house. It’s huge! We could fit any New York apartment inside this house and have a condo left over. Really. Some mornings I just get up and run through the rooms, up and down stairs...into the basement. We have a ping pong table there and a pool table and a little area for playing music...we have a hot tub too.

Interv: And you can’t take the subway. How do you get anywhere?

Woody: I’m taking driving lessons. It’s not easy out here, you know, they’re not all egg farmers in pickup trucks...these gigantic vehicles speeding along with little women sitting up there talking on their cellphones...it’s scary. You have to learn how to protect yourself. I’m learning tai chi too.

Interv: So you intend to make this a permanent move? You didn’t hold your lease here?

Woody: A big change. I can breathe. My chest has expanded a quarter inch in a month since the move. I always had this squinchy little chest. I was afraid to breathe too deep because I could imagine all those particles in the air filling my lungs. Now I breathe deep (makes a big inhaling sound, followed by a whoosh). Holding it I don’t do too well. I’m learning how to hold my breath so I can swim underwater.
###

Character or Charisma?

I started thinking about the power of charisma back in the Sixties, when JFK was running for President. (Sidenote: I wanted to write about it for my master's paper, but my advisor set me onto Puerto Rican juvenile delinquents instead. Ah well, my career in journalism was doomed from the start it seems.)

Anyway: Charisma. It rises again today in the person of Barack Obama, who seems able to get women hopping just as JFK did. Young folk, the kind we hope embody the future of our nation and the world, seem entranced by Obama. In my estimation, it's pure charisma.

Who else had it? Franklin D. Roosevelt had it, with his patrician airs and that jaunty cigarette holder and his winning grin. Harry Truman? No, he didn't have it, but he was a good President without it. He just needed to do the right thing and take the blame if he did or didn't. Eisenhower had it, but not because he was homely and bald; he had it because he'd been a hero, a general who led our armies to victory in WW2. Then JFK followed him, and the dream of Camelot, that a great leader could be handsome and intelligent and honorable. After him, LBJ (another politician thrust into office); he didn't have charisma, what he did have was power and the tools to wield it. Then Nixon. Poor Nixon. He knew he didn't have charisma, and people hated him for the lack, and that twisted him, so everything he did was to get even with those who had it. Then, skipping over Gerald Ford, we got Jimmy Carter. He had a homespun, aw shucks air about him that might have passed for charisma in some places, but not enough. Ronald Reagan had it and knew how to use it to convince people of his principles. Even his enemies liked him. Bill Clinton had/has it, and there's the problem for Hillary, where their calculations went awry. She doesn't seem to have it. Barack does.

Should we elect leaders on the basis of who has It and who does not? I'd say no, but history insists that some of our worst Presidents have been those without grace, which is another word for charisma.

But my biggest concern is about the uses to which personal charisma is put. We have to know as we vote that the individual character behind the charisma is strong enough to deflect the inevitable corruptions of power--the temptation to weasel and use the power in the service of something that, once clear thought is established, is not honorable enough to justify it. Like if you have a blackbelt in kung fu and use it to beat up the coach of the opposing team in your kid's soccer league.

Island Escape, Return to the Island

For the second time in our married lives, Penny and I have returned to cold winter from a tropical escape. The first time was in 2001 when we stayed at a friend's house on Oahu for 5 weeks. That time we landed in a typical icy landscape at Kennedy airport; our pores were wide open and our clothing minimal and our tans were no defense at all. And at the wrong terminal to catch the bus to Manhattan. Damn near froze before we got on the bus. Ah, memories!

This time, we had been to St. Croix (say-croy, a piece of literature advised) for 6 days. in a little cottage on the west side, with a small group of friends. (The green arrow below is provided by Google and has nothing to do with where we were.)




The flight back on Thursday from San Juan was cloudy most of the way until we looked out and saw Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard below us, as clear as if from a satellite--our view was of course from an angle as the plane descended--the green arrow in Google image below is pointing at Nantucket and I can't figure out how to eliminate it.

As soon as we landed the snow started--"Welcome back to the winter reality you only thought you'd escaped, ha ha!"

I said to Penny: "I feel as if we've been evicted from Eden."

We both had to fight off colds.

What exactly is the point of an escape to a beautiful warm sunny place with turquoise waters, colorful little fish, frigate birds and pelicans, dolphins swimming past about 50 yards from your front door--if it doesn't shield you from the awful shock of return?

This: I'd do it again.
Remember when winter was fun? See: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2008/02/24/

The Pig Did It

THE PIG DID IT

That's the title of a novel by Joseph Caldwell, first of a trilogy about "the pig". It's one of the funniest and weirdest books I've read in a long time. Highly recommended. Outrageous things happen as if they are commonplace. I can't even begin to describe it without giving away some of its secrets. It takes place in Ireland, and the author reproduces, I'm sure, Irish speech as it's spoken today (not one "Shur and begorra" to be read). But I'll give a sample that gives away none of the substance of the story because I'm in love with the language in this book:

...just the thought of climbing the pastures up past the heather, through the furze and the rocks and the muddied paths to the waiting heights, had given him again the sight of his great-aunt, tall, indomitable, astride the summit, gesturing with an arm grand enough in its sweep to include all the lands below and speak to him the words that had struck into his soul and made him Irish forever, no matter what other allegiances he might claim. "It was surely at this height,"

Aunt Molly had said, "it was at this height and at this place that the devil brought the proud powers of England and, speaking, said to them: 'All this will I give you' " -- and here the gesture came--" 'All this will I give you if you will but bow down and worship me.' And no sooner had the devil spoken these words than their knees, their English knees, buckled under them--and who would blame the poor hoors, such a height and such a wonder as was laid out before them? And so we fight not only to free ourselves but to free them too, don't forget. To get them up off their knees at last so they can stand and walk upright in the lovely land, free of the tempter's thrall. It's for them, for the kneeling English too, that we fight, poor hoors. And so it goes and goes and goes until we've freed them for good."
But then she would laugh a great laugh and add: "Or for evil. For with them, you never know." Then she would sigh a heavy sigh and repeat, by way of an amen, "Poor hoors."

Sure and begorra I may find meself talkin or writin again in my own poor faux Irish brogue.

My Wife Is A Better Woman Than I Am

Any doubts I may have had about electing a woman for President were either alleviated...or aggravated...by what happened on New Year's Day. In New England. At something like 10 a.m. my wife and two other ladies went for a quick dip. In the Atlantic ocean. I and the other husbands stood by, bundled up, and photographed them. To my eyes, the waves looked a bit sluggish as if they were on the verge of freezing their white tips, but the women went in anyway. I might have marked that off as just feminine highjinks, but since then, my wife has taken to following her hot shower with a cold one. I tried it, once, and shrieked.

Mystery: Why Do People Read Mysteries & Detective Stories?

I have developed a theory about it and I'll let you in on that soon if not later. I just finished a detective mystery: THE FALLEN by T. Jefferson Parker (funny how many people surnamed Parker write mysteries? Robert B. Parker, for instance.). A detective who has a fairly foolproof technique to discern if people are lying solves the assassination of a cop and helps clean up San Diego's crime problem...a bit. In the process however, he's thrown from a sixth- floor window and survives, then loses his beloved wife because she's just unsatisfied and "falls out of love with him." Weird. The cop who was killed had lost his 3 year old daughter by drowning and then his wife moves away from him. And they were reuniting when he's killed. So--sadness and despair, drinking and loss of sleep and betrayal and false friendship and corruption and obsession permeate this book.

In thinking about it, I realize that characterizes the tougher kind of mysteries. There are nicer ones, of course, called "cozies" in the trade; the TV version was MURDER SHE WROTE, with "Jessica Fletcher" as played by Angela Lansbury; the murdered victims were, without exception, unlikable people and nobody really missed or mourned them. My friend Carolyn Hart can write similar stories in her Death on Demand mysteries, but she also writes tougher ones (the Henrie O mysteries). But in the really tough stories (think THE MALTESE FALCON), someone nice is murdered in an awful way and as the detective (nearly always a friend or best friend or lover) traces through the history of the mystery, he or she always uncovers more slime and awful critters who skitter away at the first touch of light. The endings are not "happy," so much as they resolve in some way the mystery and leave the living participants just a teensy bit better off than they were.

Why is this?

I think it's because these stories appeal most to the despairing and depressed, readers who feel their lives are tossed, turned, destroyed. This may not be a universal truth; I could be wrong. Let me know. If you're a happy person and yet you enjoy reading such stories I'd like to know more about you.

There Will Be Blood

The other day, for work-related reasons, I read the shooting script for the movie THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Like too many scripts these days (LUCKY # SLEVIN is another), they include a cast of amoral, immoral, hate-filled, revengeful sleazebags, some of which usually get ripped- off and/or killed by the others. In ...BLOOD, the supposedly God- filled, prophet-preacher turns out to be as hate-filled and revengeful as the bad guy who is the main protagonist. Seems as if movies (and TV) project the world as worse than the way I see and live in it. Having our media image a violent world influences some people to behave hatefully rather than lovingly. "Monkey see, monkey do" kind of influence. It is possible, as some hope, that seeing such bad behavior in the various media has the opposite influence: that of encouraging people to be really nice to themselves and to others. I guess it is possible but I have yet to see any serious study that indicates this. Not that I rely on polls or studies to tell me what or how to think.

Great Graphic Novel! By Feiffer!

Ah, the excitement of having a blog, even if nobody visits...If you have time, press the NextBlog button at top of screen and you'll see some other blogs that are, at present, more visually interesting than this one. But I hope to change that, starting with this issue.
GRAPHIC NOVELS.I've been writing books for years, and drawing cartoons, and recently I thought about starting a graphic novel. I mentioned this to a local librarian and that I wanted to research other graphic novels. He pointed me to several collections. Here's one that's from the 1970s but very funny and worth finding a copy to read. It's TANTRUM by Jules Feiffer.





The story is simple. A middle-aged man is unhappy and wishes he were two years old again and, presto, he is. His wife and teenage kids are distraught. He runs away and pursues pleasures that should make him feel young again. Finally... well, I won't spoil it for you. Here's more of Feiffer's drawings. It looks scribbled and not worked-over, as if he made the whole book in a feverish burst of creativity. Ah! To have a feverish burst again! (I once wrote a short novel in two weekends. It's no good, of course, but every once in a while I think of it again and may revise it.)

The Grumpy Curmudgeon Blogs

A daughter has set this blog up for me so that I can, as she puts it, "rant". I do not think of myself as a ranter. Rather, I'm an older person who has some things to say and no other outlet. If you discern any shadows of wisdom in the occasional pieces I put here, please let me know.

I'm unsure what I'll write about. Perhaps, since I'm reading a lot, I'll discuss some of the books I read, the thoughts and ideas in them and what they may stimulate in me.

book crit:"gods behaving badly" a novel by marie phillips. I like this novel. Lotsa fun and surprises. It's got the old Greek gods, from Athena to Zeus. Aphrodite is here too, and as sexy and flighty as Madonna or Paris Hilton. Apollo the sun god is a handsome selfish libertine. The thing is, that since people stopped believing in them, this set of gods have grown weaker, had to leave Mt. Olympus and now live in a London house. It's not a good house and it's in a run-down neighborhood and because the gods are not accustomed to cleaning up after themselves, the house is a mess. Artemis (you may remember her as Diana the Huntress) decides they need a cleaning lady, so she hires Alice, a modest and shy young woman who has a modest and shy suitor named Neil. Troubles begin when Apollo gets the hots for Alice. Madly, passionately, because he's been shot with an arrow by Eros, at the instigation of naughty Aphrodite. I won't tell you what happens, but the world almost comes to an end, and several characters visit the Underworld, which is a fairly bleak but well thought-out piece of eternity.

Complaint: the author rules out the existence of any other God and to me that's a cheap shot; I'd have liked to see the gods in this book cope with the God of Christianity, which is the one I understand best. However, she had to limit the players and the landscape or the book would have been twice as long. Or maybe impossible to write.
Anyway, it's fun.

OK, what next? Upcoming are reviews of graphic novels I've read recently. It's a new focus for me because I want to make a graphic novel, so I'm studying the best of what I can find available and I'll talk about them and put up illustrations where I can.