Just Two Words…

The recent passing of comedian and director Carl Reiner gave us all a chance to remember a master of his craft. It also gave me a chance to reread one of my favorite, and shortest, comedy bits of all time. Playing the reporter to Mel Brooks’ 2,000 year-old man, Reiner asks an obvious question, “Did you ever meet Jesus?” As nonchalantly as ordering an egg cream at a lunch counter, Brooks’ character replies yes, “Nice guy—wore sandals.”

Brilliance in four words.

No matter what faith, we are still talking about Jesus, Son of God, not a son of the Ferragamo shoe family. Yet blithe indifference is the beauty of this bit, the throw-away nature is what makes me burst out laughing every time. It’s not a punch line, not a carefully constructed story set up, and that second it takes to register makes the line all the greater.

Craftsmanship isn’t the art of the obvious, it’s knowing how perfect it is but still marveling at every detail and finding something new to appreciate. When my wife and I visit Rome, a visit to Gucci is tops on the (well, her) agenda. And while our budget doesn’t allow for the $3,000 black leather handbag, I can appreciate it for a lot more than a way to carry lipstick and 20 Euro bill. Touch the leather and you realize what “buttery soft” really means. Try seeing the stitching. You really can’t—the illusion of a straight line is the sewing equivalent of Seurat’s pointillism. The shine both beautifully diffuses the light but also draws it in like a black hole.

I’ve been thinking about beauty, particularly in the use of words, lately and how it can show up in the oddest of places.

The modern masters of the quip, rather than the stand-up joke, are well known—folks like Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Winston Churchill were not only craftsmen but also commanders of the language. Unlike these writings, they didn’t need a second draft. The quip elevated to the front page of a newspaper is a great headline, and none was better than the New York Post’s “Headless Man in Topless Bar.” There in five words a master told the story (clearly not a natural death), a description of the salient details (decapitation), the place where it happened (strip joint), and all under tawdry air. Brilliance splashed across a page in 150 pt. type. You’re smiling just reading it.

But sometimes these gems come not from polished writers but from those who don’t even try. Watching the recent Netflix documentary on the Commission mob trials, the film showed Genovese crime boss “Fat Tony” Salerno as he was hustled into his car after making bail. On cue, the reporters swarmed around the vehicle in the usual scrum. What followed is unintentional comedy gold:

Reporter: “Mr. Salerno, do you have any comment about the charges.”

Fat Tony: “Go f—k yourself.”

Reporter: “Thank you.”

Fat Tony: “You’re welcome.”

“You’re welcome.” Just two words. But it’s the reflex reaction that just keeps me laughing. The “Thank you” is a wise ass retort to profanity, and funny in its own kind of way. But “You’re welcome” takes you back to any kid who gets a gift from a friend of their parent’s. The parent will ask “What do you say?” and the child will give a sheepish grin and reply, “Thank you.” The friend, smiling at this teachable moment, will then over exaggerate the “You’re welcome” and all is good with the world. So it was with Fat Tony, this weird reflex moment of politeness that momentarily interrupted his normal string obscenities and orders to murder people. In reality, it was just another way to say f- you, but so funny because the film clip shows how he startles himself with his own false courtesy.

Words and the behavior it engenders have been at the forefront of the news around New York, well at least if you are trying to get a drink outside. While inexplicably not allowing any indoor dining, and the related revenue it would bring to desperate restaurants, the state and city have concocted a series of ever-changing rules for extended outdoor eating and drinking. Bars in particular have had to tread carefully, as the line between violating open container laws and lawful business is ill defined. King Cuomo’s court issued a set of rules that allowed outdoor imbibing with the purchase of food, “which shall mean a diversified selection of food that is ordinarily consumed without the use of tableware and can be conveniently consumed, including but not limited to: cheese, fruits, vegetables, chocolates, breads, mustards and crackers.” While we were all getting a good laugh that “mustards” are a legally-defined thing, a wise-ass bar owner soon whipped up a batch of “Cuomo chips” to comply. Unsurprisingly, our Albany monarch was not amused.

Thus another magisterial edict came down with even newer, and not necessarily improved, language. As reported in the tabloids, “According to the new SLA guidance, a bag of chips or nuts does not meet the food requirement, but ‘sandwiches, soups or other foods, whether fresh, processed, precooked or frozen,’ do pass muster. ‘Other foods,’ according to the SLA, “are foods which are similar in quality and substance to sandwiches and soups; for example, salads, wings, or hotdogs would be of that quality and substance.’”

And so we are left to reflect upon these many, many words. This isn’t intended as comedy, but the joke is really on the suffering businesses and the patrons who just want to cool their thirst on a hot summer’s eve. So if you are out and about trying to grab a drink with friends, keep an eye out for the inspectors doing less-than-God’s-work checking on your social distancing and the edible selections with your beverage. Should they ask you anything, just give them a two-word answer, “You’re welcome.” Let them figure out what you really mean.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Helpless People in Lawless City

Changing of the management guard is often times cause for a celebration. My college newspaper was no different and every spring we hosted a banquet for that year’s retiring editorial board. “Banquet” was really a fancy way of saying that we shelled out a few bucks at the hotel across the street from campus for a room with non-paper tablecloths and chicken sandwiches on decent china. The break from the brutalist concrete of the student center was welcome, and the relaxing atmosphere kept the stories flowing. The photo editor put together a slide show (a time long before any fourth grader could whip up a multi-media PowerPoint) and popped a cassette tape into a boom box he had brought along. The strains of “Dirty Laundry” started up, with a predictable groan from all in the room. The outgoing editor-in-chief looked dour, a Serious Journalist who would go on to do Serious Journalist Things, and all I could hear him quietly mutter was, “I hate that song.”

35 years after that lunch, Don Henley seems almost quaint in poking fun at the fourth estate. Long before predicting that bubble-headed-bleach-blonds and innuendo would rule the airwaves, there was the standby tabloid mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Unfortunately for New York City, there is so much blood on the streets it’s hard to know what story would start the day’s coverage. Only the vintage New York Post headline, featured on a long-ago opening credit of Saturday Night Live, captures what is going on: “Mayhem In The Street.”

Starting with the Covid populace imprisonment to the George Floyd protests, property crime progressed from petty theft to pretty well-well run theft rings. But after that, the wheels have fallen off the axle of law and order. We are at a point now that shooting deaths and hospitalizations outnumber Covid cases.

How the hell did we get here?

Nine shot last Sunday.

15 shot over 15 hours the previous weekend. Three in 15 minutes.

A six year-old girl runs for her life as her father is shot next to her in broad daylight as they crossed the street. The father dies.

A one year-old is shot in the park at a family picnic, the victim of a stray bullet. The Mayor visited the grieving family. The Police Commissioner visited the grieving family. Presumably, like any high profile case on the show Law & Order, the Chief of D’s [Detectives] was on the phone to the precinct to establish how important it was to crack this case.

The NYPD’s Chief of Patrol was one of three officers hurt trying to break up a melee.

On. And on. And on.

But wait, shouldn’t we all be safe with the city and state having, depending on how you look at it, the toughest gun laws in the nation? Now Chicago and Washington, D.C. could also argue that they have the toughest gun control laws as well. Chicago and Washington, D.C., by absolute numbers for the former and percentage by the latter, are in even worse shape than New York City.

So really, how the hell did we get here?

Blame lies across a land so large it could almost cover all of blood splattered on the sidewalks. Responsibility and action are, unsurprisingly, in shorter supply than hope for a Covid vaccine.

Our Governor was “concerned,” calling the violence “horrific.” Beyond that no plan of action to end this scourge has been forthcoming. Our insipid Mayor once again shunned any responsibility, blaming the Courts for closing up shop during the pandemic. The Court system, being a government entity, had plenty of statistics to back up their rebuttal that tens of thousands of cases had been processed during Covid. Unfortunately, no matter how efficiently the Courts work, New York’s new bail laws don’t just create a revolving door for criminals but hand out a permanent get out of jail card that is the envy of this real-life Monopoly game. Naturally the Mayor endorsed these “criminal justice reforms” and the Governor gleefully signed them into law. The effect has been to let out repeat offenders so that they could go out and repeat again, including the alleged attacker of the NYPD’s Chief of Patrol.

Perhaps disbanding the NYPD’s “anti-crime” unit, in order to appease the non-law abiding, curfew-breaking Floyd rioters, was the tipping point. Maybe, maybe not. I’ve never been a fan of the unit’s name, as I can’t imagine there is a companion “for-crime” unit. But what was the purpose of the group? Getting the guns off the street that the mighty cloak of the law was supposed to shield us from in the first place.

And for the rest of us, really almost every every person in the city, who are just trying to live our lives? What is the message our “leaders” give us?

Kick 'em when they're up. Kick 'em when they're down.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

One Hand Clapping

Recently my classic rock station had another ‘80’s rock weekend promotion. It’s kind of ironic since the 80’s saw a lot of great music—Madonna’s pop, Police’s new wave, and Prince’s…well however you define him. Aside from sandwiching Van Halen and Guns ‘n Roses at each end of the decade, it was not a time for the next Stones, Who, or Beatles. The station was really announcing that it was cheating on its musical roots but the listeners were going to like it anyway. So a quartet of folky female voices wafted through the speakers before a Gibson guitar screamed and a pounding high tom announced the Bangles’ “Hazy Shade of Winter.” As part of the soundtrack for the coke-fueled ‘80’s film Less Than Zero, this cover of the otherwise forgotten Simon and Garfunkel piece was an appropriate choice. But while the decade of decadence featured drugs, sex, and money as their own kind of sport, the actual sports world is now the Sounds of Silence.

Some leagues have made a few returning moves, but mostly with things using four means of propulsion. NASCAR was first to roar back, turning laps in front of empty stands. As a television event, it wasn’t so different because the crowd noise always gets drowned out by the over-revved car engines.

The sport of kings dipped its hoof onto the track, and it showed how much fans are part of the entire experience. Now I’ve been by the rail of Saratoga’s backstretch when they start a race. 30,000 fans are opposite me, but only if the wind is right can you hear their distance shouts. The starting gate opens and the magnificent beasts hurtle past you in a mostly chestnut blur. The only sound is the pounding of horseshoes on sandy turf, a muffled puff, puff, puff from each horse, and a contrast to the power generated by nearly a ton of horse going 25 miles an hour.

As demonstrated at Belmont Park a few weekends ago, it all makes for boring television. There should be 100,000 people screaming for a triple crown, literally shaking the stands and TV cameras. I’ve been on the rail by the finish for that. I’ve been in the stands for that. I’ve watched it on TV at home and would do so again. Except for street bookies hustling for any kind of betting action, it was a mediocre two minutes of fleeting interest after months in a new broadcast content vacuum.

Basketball promises to return, again without fans in the stands. What’s the point of watching without a couple of guys in the seats, one with a large “D” and the other with a white fence cutout, with the organ pounding away as the crowd sings “De-fense”? I saw the Michael Jordan documentary and enjoyed watching the ’92 Olympic scrimmages and his comeback practices. How the NBA is going to top the squeaking sneakers and occasional profanity of those clips is, at best, unclear to me.

All of which brings us to our nation’s summer game, baseball. It should be the summer game, but neither the players nor owners could figure out how to play in front of empty stands to kick off the Fourth of July weekend. It’s not that I look forward to the crack of the bat and an announcer frantically calling a dribbling ground out to short as the greatest athletic feat ever performed. I’m not looking forward to endless commentary about social distancing precautions as the outfield camera pans across players far enough away from each other to constitute their own countries. What I am really not looking forward to is the fact there isn’t a season. 60 games? College teams put that together while driving to their own world series. Joltin’ Joe’s hit streak would have encompassed 93% of this “season.”

Sports is now a temptress, the Mrs. Robinson of TV trying to seduce us with false promise. Indeed, where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? It seems that in trying to come back, the thrill of sports has left and gone away.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.