Happy birthday to the sensational Jane Russell, who was born on June 21, 1921 and passed away last year.
She caused a stir in 1954 when she sang "Lookin' for Trouble" while wearing a bodysuit with three strategic cutouts in The French Line. Producer Howard Hughes reportedly designed the film's outrageous costumes himself.
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Previously, DL and I have had some discussions about the importance of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's "Ol' Man River" from the seminal American musical, Show Boat, and the varied performances of it since its premier in 1927. Here's another one. From the 1997 "A Celebration of the American Musical" concert at Avery Fisher Hall, it features the wonderful operatic bass, Samuel Ramey, and the American Theater Orchestra, conducted by Paul Gemignani. I'm posting it because...well, just because it's terrific.
This was a fun, star-studded concert, and I highly recommend checking it out. One especially entertaining selection is Ramey, baritone Dwayne Croft, and the late tenor Jerry Hadley, singing "There is Nothing Like a Dame" . The whole concert, though, is well worth your time. (And who said opera guys can't be funny?)
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The late Madeline Kahn (1942-1999) was one of the most talented women of the 20th century. She received two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress, the first in 1974 for her performance as Trixie Delight in Paper Moon; the second the next year for Blazing Saddles, in her unforgettable turn as Lily Von Shtupp, "The Teutonic Titwillow." In this movie, she sings possibly the dirtiest song ever written that never actually mentions sex, "I'm Tired"
In fact, her comic performances for Mel Brooks are what she is most remembered for: Blazing Saddles,Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and The History of the World, Part 1. She also did some brilliant work in early episodes of Saturday Night Live. If you have Netflix, check out her first appearance, from May 8, 1976. (Some of the clips are available on Hulu.) Her range is amazing: Marlene Dietrich, Pat Nixon, a twelve-year-old girl explaining sex to her friends at a pajama party, a film noire vamp singing "I Will Follow Him" with John Belushi's Jack Nicholsonesque private eye. There is also a sweet couple of minutes with Gilda Radner, which leads into Kahn singing this exquisite version of "Lost in the Stars" from Kurt Weill's musical of the same name (an adaptation of Cry, the Beloved Country, which just happens to be one of my favorite books). I remember watching this the first time it aired and, at the age of 14, being completely stunned. I've been looking for it again for 35 years. (I apologize for the poor quality of this clip. NBC is very stingy with their material, and this is the only version I have been able to find online, other than embedded in the complete SNL episode.)
Big Stars, Little Stars - Madeline Kahn by loischantrelle
Kahn was one of those people who got singing. What I mean is that, on top of a powerful voice with impressive range and lovely pitch, she knew how to present songs so that the lyric and music blended into a whole work of art, in the tradition of Sophie Tucker and Judy Garland, so that her singing became a true performance and a song-writer's dream. As funny as she was - and she was funny as all hell - this is what I love best about her as a performer. She could sing anything - from some blues to a duet with Sesame Street's Grover. Finally, here's a clip of her from the 1988 celebration of Irving Berlin's 100th birthday. Don't be surprised at how wonderful she is.
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Once a year, in March, every American wants to be a poet.
At least those glued to their televisions sets for the three weekends of the NCAA basketball tournaments. It’s why March is synonymous with Madness, the month in which much of America is obsessed with college basketball.
William Wordsworth, who played point for the 19th Century Romantics, defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Wordsworth penned poems a half century and longer before basketball was invented in 1891, but his definition is the best explanation I’ve found for why even those Americans who don’t play or watch basketball care deeply for three weeks, 130 games. (67 games for the men, 63 for the women)
It’s why we leap up off the couch when an impossible, almost-half-court-chunk floats through the net to win a game. For that moment, we too levitate, like the ball, part from a mortal body. In symbolic spirit, we rush onto the court to embrace teammates and fellow fans. And at least in the early rounds, it’s with the belief that the moment will lead to more. And more. It’s all about the dopamine dump.
Basketball-induced dopamine is my drug of choice. I was born in Tobacco Belt North Carolina the year after UNC took the 1957 title –– beating Wilt Chamberlain and Kansas in triple overtime. My first pair of rubber pants broadcast “I’m Behind the Heels” though I ended up playing in college for rival Wake Forest. My claim to fame may be playing in the first Women’s Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament in 1978. I never had much of a jump shot, but I can still pass well, time a mean pick and have been playing coed pick-up hoops in New York City for 30 years. My favorite Mother’s Day surprise: a t-shirt with a photo of me blocking out two bigger guys for a rebound.
And why is this drug more powerful in March for insiders and outsiders alike? My theory hinges on a video clip basketball fans know well: N.C. State Coach Jim Valvano, moments after an improbable win in the 1983 championship, stunned by joy, running in circles like he is going to hug each and every one of us, all in the next minute.
In March, the pool of people to hug, to high-five is just so much bigger. All of a sudden those gushing about a give-and-go play the night before are gabbing with co-workers who in February would think the talk was about ordering lunch. It’s shared and ordered mass ritual that promotes ecstatic connection. Like poetry.
Wordsworth’s teammate, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, had something to say on this: “poetry, –– “the best words in their best order." Which is what millions of us will be seeking when we bet our brackets. That our ordering of the best teams in the best order will make us soar. Some hope that our discernment of merit will make magic. That our wisdom will march our teams into the alliterative aristocracy: the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight, the Final Four.
President Barack Obama, our three-point-shooter in chief, unveils his brackets on national television on ESPN. Obama hasn’t picked a men’s winner since his first year when he correctly tapped the University of North Carolina, a key state in his electoral count. Obama scrimmaged with the Tar Heels during the campaign because some smart strategist knew the other basketball powerhouse in the state, Duke, skews Republican. Obama picked the women’s winner right once too, the Connecticut Huskies in 2010. Nothing risky in those top-seed choices.
“Surprised by joy,” to rework a Wordsworth line, is a big part of the fun. In a single-game elimination tournament, there are inevitable surprises. We all like to root for underdogs –– the Davidsons, the Butlers and George Masons that make a run. We know there’s no science to surprise; we know it might even be us. Here’s a tip for a basketball know-nothings: try the perceived pecking order of mascots. If the Wofford Terriers beat a powerhouse like the Kansas Jayhawks, suddenly your boss’ boss might know your name.
All you got to get right is six games and “One Shining Moment,” the song that closes out the championship, is about you, is the “one shining moment, you reached for the sky.” The first verse is all hard work and perspiration, a “best words, best order” disciplined approach to craft. The second verse blends in adversity, with annual video of wrenching injuries and missed shots.
It’s the bridge lines of the song, “Feel the beat of your heart/ feel the wind in your face” that CBS Sports counts on to turn on the tears. Romantic lines that could be pulled from a Wordsworth moment, though granted not set in an arena of 50,000 screaming fans. Here's the montage for Obama's bracket winner.
I’m convinced Wordsworth, who labeled golf “a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness,” would have loved basketball as “Strange fits of passion have I known/And I will dare to tell.” In fairness, CBS would be overstepping to personify Wordsworth’s “impatient as the Wind,” with drive after drive toward the basket. Or Wordsworth hearts, “the breathings of your heart,” with players thumping their chests.
But can’t you just picture Wordsworth and a buddy comparing their brackets over a beer. Crowing over wins, lamenting losses: “Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.”Appreciating as his fellow poet Coleridge noted, “Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.”
Catherine Woodard has played coed, pick-up basketball in New York City for three decades. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, RHINO and other journals. In 2011, Woodard was the featured poet at UnshodQuills.com, co-published Still Against War/Poems for Marie Ponsot and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She will be a 2012 fellow at the Hambidge Center in Georgia and is a board member of the Poetry Society of America. Woodard is a former president of Artists Space, one of the nation’s oldest spaces for emerging visual artists. Woodard has a MFA in poetry from the New School University and MS in journalism from Columbia University.
Find out more about Catherine Woodard and read her poetry and journalism here.
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*Notes from Fred Astaire's first screen test. Something to keep in mind when reading the next rejection slip.
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Take a look at what Tom Devaney has artfully done with "OnandOnScreen," which is devoted to poets' pairing their work with a video of their choice. The current issue includes Catherine Wagner and Wayne Koestenbaum and Matt Hart and Leonard Gontarek and other worthies. A tip of the fedora to Tom, who writes that the site is meant to present a dialogue between "moving words and moving images," enhancing "the essential strangeness" of each medium. What happens when poetry and video join forces? Here, for example, is a poem featuring a boy, a girl and "Fly Me to the Moon." You'll see. You'll hear. -- DL
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"A book ought to be an ice pick to break up the frozen sea within us."-- Franz Kafka
-- etrelles
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On December 9, Paul Violi's friends, family, and colleagues gathered together at the New School to pay tribute to this marvelous poet by reading his poems to a grateful audience. If you missed the event, you can watch it here. If you don't know Paul's work, you are in for a couple of hours of enormous pleasure.
--sdh
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Here’s my Christmas book gift recommendation. To (re-)discover a first-rate critic, and read about a life that went wrong in a harrowing way, you must read Everything Is An Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson (Fantagraphics Press), by Kevin Avery. Nelson, who died in 2006 at age 69, was part of the first generation of rock critics, instrumental in bringing attention to musicians including Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, the New York Dolls, and Warren Zevon. He served as the record-review editor of Rolling Stone and was an A&R man for Mercury Records.
But this thumbnail sketch of Nelson’s career doesn’t begin to suggest his import as a writer and presence. Avery’s book is divided into two parts. The first is a biography titled “Invitation to a Closed Room: The Life of Paul Nelson.” The second is a collection of some of his most famous and/or influential pieces, titled “Good Critic Paul: The Writings of Paul Nelson.” The biography tells a story that might easily be transformed into the plot of one of the semi-obscure hard-boiled writers Nelson admired so much, a tale out of David Goodis, say, or Horace McCoy. It’s the story of a man who loved a certain kind of music, literature, and movie with a passion that eventually overtook his life. Nelson was a romantic, and prized tales of loners, misfits, and rebels. Whether it was Zevon’s song “Desperadoes Under the Eaves,” the Lew Archer detective novels about missing children and bad parents, or the sere Westerns of Howard Hawks, Nelson prized above all portraits of men who performed with grace under pressure, who pursued doomed love affairs, who held themselves apart from society as independent agents even when what they really were were high-functioning hermits.
So it was with Nelson. His greatest influence and activity occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s. In a 1976 Village Voice essay entitled “Yes, There Is a Rock Critic Establishment, But Is That Good for Rock?,” Robert Christgau named the Establishment’s core quintet: John Rockwell, Dave Marsh, Jon Landau, Nelson, and Christgau himself. All but Nelson continue to have active careers; Nelson, however, became, in a Graham Greene phrase Nelson himself used too frequently, a “burnt-out case”: His taste and standards of excellence became so circumscribed, his natural inclination to hole up in his small, rent-controlled, pack-rat Upper West Side apartment re-watching old movies and re-reading The Great Gatsby and thrillers so self-seductive, that he slowly slipped away from the world.
Eventually, Nelson took a job behind the counter of Greenwich Village’s Evergreen Video store to make a bit of money; he pretty much ceased writing, and abandoned keeping up with new music. When he died, he was indigent and malnourished.
Does this sound like not the sort of book you’d give as a cheery Christmas present? Perhaps, but you’d be wrong: This volume is exhilarating. Avery tells with great energy Nelson’s tale, with copious details about the active period of his subject’s life, and in so doing limns a portrait of a certain kind of pop-culture/bohemian existence in the late-70s. And Avery’s generous selection of Nelson’s writings are certainly among Paul’s best, particularly Nelson’s profile of Ross Macdonald, “It’s All One Case,” and the harrowing account of helping to pull Zevon back from an addict’s life in “Warren Zevon: How He Saved Himself from a Coward’s Death.”
I knew Paul somewhat – he assigned me reviews at Rolling Stone; I visited his apartment a number of times to watch movies and admire his carefully maintained collection of first-edition mysteries. A picture of Paul among other friends taken at my wedding appears in this book. But my acquaintance with Paul Nelson doesn’t color my judgment of “Everything Is An Afterthought” as a first-rate book: It’s right there in the pages, in the opportunity to hear Nelson’s soft but authoritative voice. One of the subtexts of Avery’s book is that a critic can be as much of an artist as any artist he or she writes about. This is a portrait of an artist who declined to be an artist anymore.
--Ken Tucker
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I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say
by Anthony Madrid
A creative communications, branding, and resources consultancy founded by Victoria C. Rowan
