New York – Yeah, Another Blogger

It’s A Wonderful Life . . . Or Is It?

January 9, 2024Yeah, Another Blogger153 Comments

My better half and I jointly watch an hour or more of television fare five or six evenings each week. Mostly we dial up series, with the occasional movie thrown into the mix. During the second half of December, however, we went movie-crazy, by our standards, what with five flicks passing before our eyes. In chronological order, they were: A Thousand And One; A Million Miles Away; Maestro; Rustin; It’s A Wonderful Life. All came out last year, excepting It’s A Wonderful Life, which, since its release in 1946, has ascended to an exalted status reached by few films. I’m now going to devote a few words to it and to A Thousand And One, as they, unlike the others on the list, seem to be in no hurry to fade from my mind. They made a strong impression on me and got me thinking.

I’d seen It’s A Wonderful Life once or twice before, but not in ages. Not blessed with the world’s finest memory, I might as well have been viewing it for the first time last month, so few of the scenes did I recall. Well, all I can say is, “Wow!” IAWL deserves its immense popularity and the high esteem millions of folks hold it in. This is a great movie, one that pulls at your heartstrings and does its darnedest to make you believe in the basic goodness of humankind. Hats off to that.

Frank Capra, also of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and It Happened One Night fame, directed It’s A Wonderful Life. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, be aware that spoilers lie ahead. I’m confident they won’t lessen your enjoyment should you choose to view it.

IAWL tells the tale of George Bailey (played flawlessly by James Stewart), a generous, caring individual who discovers that his company, through no fault of his own, suddenly is on the verge of bankruptcy. Distraught, and finding no way to right the sinking ship, he decides to put an end to his earthly existence. The money his wife Mary (the superb Donna Reed) then would collect from his life insurance policy would keep her and their children sheltered and fed for a long while.

Moments before George is about to carry out his plan, a heavenly force — Clarence, a low-level guardian angel trying to earn his wings — intervenes. Clarence’s efforts, and those of Mary, save the day. George learns that his importance to his family and community is immeasurable, and that his many friends truly love him. Anyone whose heart is not encased in granite will find themselves tearing up at It’s A Wonderful Life’s happy ending, an ending that implies that never again will George allow despair to conquer him. George will be okay.

But will Terry, a main character in A Thousand And One, be okay? That’s a worrisome unknown in the powerhouse drama written and directed by A.V. Rockwell.

We first meet Terry (played by three actors, one for each time period the movie covers) in the mid-1990s. He’s six years old at that time, a foster-care child lonely for his absent mother Inez. Portrayed with swagger by Teyana Taylor, Inez is armed with eyes that don’t miss a thing. She is barely into her twenties and always has lived on society’s edges. Inez re-enters Terry’s life after being released from prison, soon taking him, illegally, from his foster parents. For the next eleven years she tries as best she can to raise him. Ultimately, however, circumstances catch up with them big-time.

A Thousand And One pulls no punches. Set mostly in New York City’s Harlem section, it often is as gritty as a sandstorm. I’ve given away much of the ending of It’s A Wonderful Life. I won’t do the same with A Thousand And One, whose concluding scenes I didn’t see coming. Those scenes left me concerned, not for street-savvy Inez’s prospects, but for those of shy and gentle Terry. For the most part, I’ve led a stable and comfortable life. A Thousand And One has me counting my lucky stars.

What a world we live in. So much poverty and inequality. So much violence and emotional trauma. So much intolerance, indifference and deception. That’s the way things always have been. And, I believe, always will be. There also is beauty in our world, of course. And love and joy and kindness. It can’t be denied, though, that life is a very rocky road for multitudes of people. Too many Terrys, and other unfortunates, are out there. If only it were otherwise.

Bruce Springsteen’s Bringing Me To Broadway!

June 24, 2021June 28, 2021Yeah, Another Blogger112 Comments

What can you say about Bruce Springsteen that hasn’t already been said? Not much, that’s for damn sure. The guy, after all, is an icon. An idol. And for good reasons: he’s talented as hell, smart as a whip, down to earth, and has been working his tail off in the music biz for over 50 years. Shit, his work ethic is unparalleled. And it hasn’t waned. He’s 71 years old, for crying out loud, yet has more energy than just about any teenager.

A scene from Springsteen On Broadway (photo by Rob DeMartin)

His latest project? He’s about to revive Springsteen On Broadway. An intimate one-man performance in which Bruce sings some of his songs and tells stories about his life, the show originally ran from October 2017 to December 2018 and was a huge success. When it reopens on June 26 at the St. James Theater, it will be the first Broadway production to be staged since COVID shut down New York’s theaters 15 months ago. Bruce is leading the charge to help the city return to its glory days!

Dig this: I personally know Springsteen a little bit. That’s because, unbelievably and from out of the f*cking blue, he showed up at my door in mid-2017, offering to make me — a nonentity in possession of zero musical talent — a member of his mighty E Street Band. “You’re shitting us, right, Neil?” I hear a chorus of doubters ask. Yo, ye of little faith, would I lie? You can read all about it by clicking here.

Alas, a band member I never became. I would have if the group had gone on tour, but tour it didn’t. Springsteen On Broadway and coronavirus saw to that. As a result, I was certain that Bruce had forgotten all about me.

Wrong! When my phone rang one evening early this month, none other than The Boss was on the other end.

“My man! Bruce here. It’s been a long, long while since we talked.”

“Bruce? Hey, it’s great to hear from you. How have you been?”

“Good, man. Real good. I’m always busy, you know. Wrote four songs this morning, for instance. They flowed out of me like a sweet mountain stream. Then I practiced the guitar for an hour. After that I was on the phone all afternoon with the director and stage crew of the Broadway show I’m bringing back in a few weeks. How about you? What have you done today?”

My throat seized up for a second. What had I, a stumbler through life, done? Well, as is often the case, taking a superb dump was the only thing that had invigorated me at all. Some might be afraid to reveal such an intimate detail to others, but I count myself as one of the brave. Bruce wasn’t the least bit fazed by what I told him.

“Neil, I know where you’re coming from. Once in a while I go through uninspired spells too. Listen, I feel bad that you haven’t gotten a chance to perform with my band. I want to make it up to you. What I have to offer would get you off your unmotivated ass, other than when you’re taking dumps, of course, and put you smack in the middle of the spotlight.”

“Does this have something to do with Springsteen On Broadway?” I asked.

“Indeed it does. Neil, I want to tweak the show a bit. Mostly it’ll remain the same — heartfelt, quietly powerful — but I’m going to add an interlude where I tell a couple of drummer jokes. The audience will love the change of pace. Here’s the deal: You’ll wander onto the stage right after I finish singing Thunder Road. I’ll introduce you and announce that you’re my straight man. Then I’ll say, ‘Neil, what do you call a drummer who breaks up with his girlfriend?’ You’ll shrug your shoulders to indicate that you don’t know. ‘Homeless!’ I’ll yell. Next I’ll ask you, ‘What’s the difference between a drummer and a savings bond?’ You’ll shrug again. I’ll bellow, ‘Only one of them matures and earns money!'”

“The crowd, I’m positive, will be roaring with laughter,” he continued, “and as they do you’ll bow and make your exit. Sound good?”

“What? That’s it? Bruce, how about giving me at least a couple of lines of dialogue? I mean, I’ve never been on stage before, but I know I could handle that.”

“Baby steps, brother. Baby steps. For now, this is the best I can do,” Bruce replied. “And it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. You never know where this kind of exposure might take you. Are you on board?”

Only a fool would have answered no.

(Please don’t be shy about adding your comments. By the way, in 2018 a performance of Springsteen On Broadway was filmed for Netflix. If you have Netflix, do yourself a favor and watch the show if you haven’t yet. Springsteen thinks and feels deeply. He’s something else.)

Snap, Snap, Snap: A Photography Story

February 9, 2018Yeah, Another Blogger85 Comments

Starting in the late 1970s, and continuing for 10 or 12 years, I passed a good amount of time wandering around Philadelphia (where I lived), other parts of the States, Europe and elsewhere with a Kodak Pocket Instamatic camera in hand or in pocket. A non-techie all my life, the Instamatic was the perfect camera for me. Small and easy to load — you dropped a film cartridge into place and then closed the back cover over it, a process even I could handle — the camera provided photographic images that struck me as just fine. Bulky cameras, special lenses and filters, carrying cases? Man, I wanted no part of any of that. And still don’t. I like my life plain and simple, because I’m a plain sort of guy who some might describe as being simple too. Doesn’t offend me. I’m simple that way.

And so, wander I would, snapping photos of things that caught my eye. Street scenes, decorated house doors, gnarly trees, cool-looking cars, mountains and forests . . . fairly avidly I documented all of those and more. Outdoor photography was fun, a hobby that made me think creatively and provided exercise in the process. What was not to like?

Alas, for reasons I haven’t tried to decipher, my photography excursions came to a halt. The photos I took, and they likely number in at least the high hundreds, lie within boxes shoved into attic and basement and closet niches. I haven’t looked at any of them in 10 years or more. And I probably didn’t label half of them. I swear, I’m going to hire a personal assistant one of these days to haul out those photos and put them into working order. And then I’ll donate the pictures to the Smithsonian Institution, which I hear has a program called We’ll Accept Anything, As These Photographs Taken By Extremely Ordinary Americans Clearly Prove.

Fortuitously, my wife Sandy, whom I met in 1990, picked up the slack. On our vacations and at family gatherings she’s the one who for years took nearly all the photos. Sandy, kind of a photography buff, always has had cameras far more advanced than the Instamatic, and happily danced into digital camera ownership earlier this century. I had no problem with her handling the photographic duties. I didn’t miss them, whatever the reasons might have been. Needless to say, when I started this blog in April 2015 Sandy was the chief photographer.

And then came January 2016. During that fabled month, Sandy bought a new iPhone and donated to me the iPhone she’d been using till then. iPhonically-speaking, for me it almost was love at first sight and first usage. I mean, the phone is so cute, so compact, and not too hard for a technological imbecile like me to figure out.

Before then I’d been a flip-phone person, basically ignorant of the wonders of smart phones. But within days I became an addict, surfing the web, watching videos, etc., etc. And my iPhone’s camera? Why, it called to me with a song that I was powerless to resist. Before I knew it I was snapping photos left and right, far more than I did in my Instamatic days. Twenty-six months later I’m still snapping. And, by the way, not long after the iPhone came into my possession Sandy lost her photography job with this blog.

And why do I bring up all of this? Hold tight, Bunky, as I’m about to tell you. Not that you haven’t already guessed, seeing that photos are on display right from the start of this essay.

A day or two before I sat down to begin the composition of that which you presently are reading, it dawned on me that not the worst idea in the world would be to write a story into which I might place a number of photos that I took in 2017. Dozens of them I’d already used in blog articles during that year. But many others were sitting all sad and lonesome, feeling unwanted, on the hard drive or whatever it is within my iPhone. “I’ll liberate some of you! And I accept your thanks in advance,” I said to the pictures.

Yes, it’s as simple as that. As I’ve prominently noted above, I’m a simple guy, so what would you expect? In any case, the year 2017 found me in my suburban Philadelphia region, in the City Of Brotherly Love itself, in The Big Apple, in Cleveland and on Cape Cod. There were a few other locales too, but that’s enough. I selected about 30 photos from the previously-unused pile and studied them almost assiduously. I whittled down the pile to the eleven pix herein contained. Some are artsy shots, some are candid, some display the wonders of nature, some have sentimental value to me. My favorites are the two that follow: a selfie of me and Sandy taken on Cape Cod, and a spontaneous etching that I made in the sands of a Cape Cod beach.

Thanks for reading and gazing. Your humble reporter is now going to sign off, hopefully to return in the near future with an as-yet-undetermined commentary upon something or other.

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A Big Apple Day

August 24, 2017December 24, 2020Yeah, Another Blogger63 Comments

Is New York City the apple of my eye? Well, once it was. I spent who knows how many hundreds (thousands?) of hours in one or another of its five boroughs while growing up on Long Island. And after moving to Philadelphia in the mid 1970s, to start what became a 34-year career in government work, I made pretty frequent trips to NYC, 10 or 15 each year. I was pulled there magnetically by its museums, architecture, music clubs, gracious and spacious parks, and streets just made for strolling and girl-watching. Nobody needs me to tell them that the Big Apple is one of the coolest kids on the planet. It has been for, what . . . at least 100 years?

But, for one reason or another, those Philly-to-NYC visits became less and less common when the early 1990s rolled around, petering out to a mere one every few years. Incredibly, New York City, with which I’d had the cuddliest of relationships, faded gently from my mind. “New York, wait for me! You’ve meant the world to me! I’ll be back semi-regularly, I promise. Hell, you’re only 100 miles away,” is what I should have felt and said. But I didn’t. Man, if you’d have told me before then that such ever would become the case, I’d have had you committed.

This, then, is where Dave, one of my greatest pals, enters the story that you’re reading. He, like me, used to be a Long Islander. We became friends there in high school, during the Middle Ages. And he used to love NYC. These days, though, the city’s hustle and bustle does a superb job of frazzling Dave’s nerves. He ain’t in love with NYC anymore.

Still, Dave, who took up residence on the West Coast 40 years ago, visits New York now and then, despite the jittery situation with his nerves. I guess he’s a masochist. And one of those now-and-then occasions occurred recently. “Yeah, I’ll see you there,” I told Dave when he informed me of his impending eastward trip. Thus, two Saturdays ago I headed north from my home in the Philly burbs to hang out with Dave for half a day in the greatest of the famed metropolis’ five boroughs. Manhattan.

We met where 42nd Street and Broadway colorfully come together. In other words, at the bottom end of Times Square. And for the next four hours we graced various neighborhoods, and Central Park, with our dynamic presences. Though on the cusp of age 70, we strode the streets like the titans we vaguely once were. And vaguely still are. Gorgeous girls couldn’t keep their eyes off of us the other day. Isn’t that right, Dave?

“Damn straight, Neil,” Dave just told me. “Damn f**king straight! Even though it could be that our 20/80 visual acuity distorted our view of things just a little bit.”

Speak for yourself, Dave. I know what I know.

Here’s how we spent our time together: We shot the breeze vigorously, catching up on each other’s doings. And we walked and walked and walked while shooting that breeze. And when we got tired of walking we sat on boulders in Central Park, and a little after that on chairs in a snazzy restaurant near the park’s southwestern corner.

What’s more, we didn’t have any interest in taking in any famous sights, though we saw some anyway (such as Carnegie Hall, Columbus Circle and horse-drawn carriages in Central Park). You can’t not see them in this history lesson of a city. To repeat, then, what’s already been said: Yapping, wandering, eating and girl-watching proved to be the items on our agenda.

The time flew by, as sometimes it does, and around 3:30 PM Dave and I said our goodbyes. He needed to go back to his hotel and start getting ready for the wedding that had brought him to NYC in the first place. One of his friend’s daughters was about to get hitched.

But my bus wouldn’t be leaving for an hour and a half. I had time to kill. And what better way to do that than to stroll along some of the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, the Garment District and Times Square. Those nifty sections of the city run into each other, and would keep me close to the Port Authority bus terminal, from which my Philadelphia-bound ride was scheduled to depart.

Which brings us to the final topic I want to talk about. To wit, photos. I didn’t take any while with Dave, except for a couple of selfies of him and me. Why? Man, if there’s one thing I’ve learned since starting this blog, it’s that obsessive photograph-snapping can interfere one whole lot with enjoying the time you’re spending with people you like. Besides, who the hell would want to see a picture of the roast beef sandwich that Dave tore into at the snazzy restaurant, or of the boulder we sat upon in Central Park? Oh, you would, would you? It figures.

All I can say is that it seems that you’ve come to the right place anyway. Because after Dave and I went our separate ways my picture-taking mode kicked into high gear. And the pix that I shot over the subsequent hour are the ones you’ve been looking at on this page. New York City is a lot of things. One of which is photogenic. So, even a clod like me can’t help but come away with some nice shots.

Thanks for reading and viewing. Till next time . . .

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