Oh Boy, New Math!

I’d like to continue the theme from my last blog about comedians and their role in bringing us the news, albeit with a certain slant. But first humor me with a brief departure, still in the realm of popular culture, to this season’s premier of TV’s Mad Men. In this episode the creative director of a new, breakaway advertising firm blows an opportunity to promote his company in a magazine interview. When he defends himself before his board by saying that his work speaks for itself, he is told, “turning creative success into business is your work and you failed”. I took this harsh criticism personally and wondered if by writing a blog “with no agenda”, I am in essence failing. Samuel Johnson, a great writer and a man of many quotes said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”. To me, unlike to admen and pundits, it’s not that black and white. Admen love to force us into clear cut choices, their brand or brand X. One of the best ad campaigns ever, the one in the 70s for Miller Lite, took two choices and pointed them both to their product: “Tastes great…Less filling”. It was a heads I win, tails you lose angle that caught on and led to America’s acceptance of light beer. Interestingly, the advertising firm responsible for the campaign, McCann Erickson, was also the firm that, in Mad Men, made the hostile takeover at the end of last season. No takeovers here. I plan to keep writing without monetizing or expecting anything in return except your (mostly) kind comments.

In 1964 David Frost imported a comic news hour from England, That Was The Week That Was. Despite a solid core group of comics plus guests such as Woody Allen, Steve Allen, Bill Cosby, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, the show only lasted one year. Instead of using skits as SNL would later do, TW3, as it was called, used songs to comment on current events. The main songwriter was a Harvard graduate and math instructor, Tom Lehrer. He got his start as an undergraduate where he wrote “Fight Fiercely, Harvard”. He entertained classmates, performed at clubs, eventually recorded an LP and had 300 made for sale around Harvard. (This was just like Bert and I at Yale. See 11/09 blog, Cay-ent Get They-uh From He-uh.) In 1955 he was drafted and served two years at the NSA. His big contribution to army cryptography was the invention of Jell-o shots. He continued his songwriting and performing but never gave up his day job. His songs were clever, in the vein of Cole Porter or Yip Harburg. When he heard that TW3 was looking for songs he wrote one for National Brotherhood Week:

     Oh, the white folks hate the black folks,

     And the black folks hate the white folks.

     To hate all but the right folks

     Is an old established rule.

The TW3 regulars performed this song and 8 others including his best known "New Math":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCUuh8_VhE

When TW3 ended, Lehrer was left with enough proven songs to make a second album, That Was The Year that Was. This was released by a major label, promoted nationwide including appearances on the Tonight Show, and made it into the Benjamin household where it joined Allan Shermans’ My Son The Folk Singer and Nut in our collection of comedy albums.

Though both Lehrer and Sherman sang funny songs, they were very different. While Lehrer was clever and precise, Sherman was Hamish and a bit of a slob. He was an LA TV producer who wrote humorous lyrics to popular tunes and performed them for his friends. He lived next door to Harpo Marx, whose friend George Burns heard Sherman’s songs and got him a record contract. His themes were those of 1960s American Jewry. His first album, My Son The Folk Singer, parodied our imperfect assimilation into American society where we retained our old world speech patterns, strong family ties, boorish manners and thrifty ways:

     Shake hands with your Uncle Max, my boy

     And here is your sister Shirl

     And here is your cousin Isabel

     That's Irving's oldest girl

     And you remember the Tishman twins

     Gerald and Jerome

     We all came out to greet you

     And to wish you welcome home

The juxtaposition of these lyrics and Sherman’s accent with the melody of an old Irish tune was hysterical. It was pure side splitting shtick when he replaced “Meet Branigan, Fannigan, Milligan, Gilligan,Duffy, McCuffy, Malachy, Mahone,” etc. with

     Meet…

     Merowitz, Berowitz, Handelman, Schandelman

     Sperber and Gerber and Steiner and Stone

     Boskowitz, Lubowitz, Aaronson, Baronson,

     Kleinman and Feinman and Freidman and Cohen.

His next album, with its hit song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" made him a star. Even JFK went around singing his songs. Sadly, he died at the age of 48, having too well assimilated into a life of overeating, smoking and booze.

So, what was it for me as a kid, Lehrer or Sherman? Yankees or Mets? Flintstones or Jetsons? Tastes Great or Less Filling? Vicki’s Manhattan or Marty’s Brooklyn? The answer? “Oh, Boy!” I liked them all. That was the real new math, “So very simple, That only a child can do it!”

You Can't Beat That

Chevy Chase spoke last week at a 25th anniversary screening of his movie Fletch. During the movie, he sat with the audience, squirmed in his seat, made uncomfortable faces and tried his best to show his discomfort with the attention and exaggerated adulation given by the Avon Theater’s pretentious artsy audience. After the screening he owned up to not being an actor in the vein of Sean Penn or Robert DeNiro, and said that he just tried to be himself in his films, making wise cracks, improvising, falling down, basically doing the same things he had done from Elementary School to Saturday Night Live to get laughs. When an audience member stood up, mike in hand, and took five minutes to comment and finally ask a question, one whose only point was to show how knowledgeable and perceptive he was, Chevy was brilliant. He rolled his eyes, stuck his finger down his throat, hanged himself with his tie, and when the question finally came, answered it with a quick quip and moved on to the next question. It was a merciless strike at pomposity that made us all smile. It reminded me first of Woody Allen’s coup with Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBtXfBdEXEs

It reminded me second of why I like Chevy Chase. It’s not because he’s a great actor. In every one of his movies, all lightweight comedies, someone else was always funnier. Sure, he’s a comedian, but more for falling down (his classic SNL parody of Gerald Ford) and smirking than for quickness and wit. Though many thought he’d inherit Johnny Carson’s job as host on the Tonight Show, Johnny said of Chase, "He couldn't ad lib a fart at a baked bean dinner". Johnny missed the point. Chevy was surrounded by the best ad libbers ever. He was hired as SNL’s head writer for the likes of John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray. He played straight man for Richard Pryor in a racially charged skit that included the N word and ended with a bug-eyed, boiling over Pryor hissing, “Dead Honky”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl9I7IUFKu4&feature=related

YouTube won’t even show the original.  It’s too hot. Chevy never had to be the funniest guy on stage and never could. And he never tried to be. We liked him because he was willing to be the tag along, second fiddle, prat-falling straight guy. His line, “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not” wasn’t directed at Belushi, it was aimed straight at us. He was the dumb schmuck lucky enough to be up there on stage with greatness. He was one of us. While Belushi and Pryor have crashed and burned, Chase has grayed, gained some weight and rolled back onto TV for NBC in some sit-com that I’ll likely never see.

If Chevy was great in any comedic role, it was as host of SNL’s Weekend Update. In the tradition of Laugh-In’s Look at the News, he satirized the week’s news stories. Even better, Update introduced editorial comments from the likes of Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella (“Never mind.”), John Belushi (”But nooooo...”) and many other cast members and guests. When Jane Curtin took over Chevy’s role in 1976, she added Point/Counterpoint which immortalized her as everyone’s favorite “ignorant slut”.

News today is even worse than in 1976 and it is not surprising that most of our 16 to 30 year olds get it from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. Despite being a comedian, Stewart has been voted our most admired and trusted news anchor. He has a keen nose for political hypocrisy and probably invented the technique of using video clips to catch politicians making blatantly contradictory statements. He, like Chevy, says nothing and instead, rolls his eyes to make his point. He lacks Chevy’s physical presence. He is short, slim and a bit of a Nebbish. Of course, it follows that he is a Mets fan. While Chevy is a New York blue blood, descended from the Mayflower, Stewart, nee Leibowitz, grew up in New Jersey, proposed to his wife in a crossword puzzle, at times sucks up to guests and has socialist leanings. His gift, more than his razor sharp wit or his willingness to let his righteous anger show on stage, is his heart. After 9/11 he showed that heart at a time when he knew we were not ready for comedy:

The view... from my apartment... was the World Trade Center... and now it's gone, and they attacked it. This symbol of American ingenuity, and strength, and labor, and imagination and commerce, and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the South of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty. You can't beat that.

No argument here. I’m happy my kids get their news from Stewart. As Chevy would say, “Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow”.

Amazing Grace

Armando Galarraga, a fourth year pitcher for baseball’s Detroit Tigers, was robbed of a perfect game last week by an umpire’s bad call at first base. Galarraga was one out away from being only the 21st pitcher in baseball history to pitch to and get out 27 batters in a row when the umpire called a man safe at first. Instant replay, not allowed under these circumstances in Major League Baseball, clearly showed the batter to be out. The umpire later admitted that he had made a terrible call. In the heat of the moment, Galarraga, a 28 year old Venezuelan, smiled, waited for his manager’s confrontation with the umpire to end, went back to the pitcher’s mound and calmly got the last out. In post-game interviews, he said that he held no animosity toward the umpire because umpires are human and like us all, make mistakes.

In the hundreds of media commentaries that followed this imperfect perfect game, the word most often used to describe Galarraga was grace. The word seemed to fit, but the more I thought about it, the more I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant. I understand graceful. That’s a big reason why I like watching sports…the play of a shortstop can be as beautiful, graceful as the moves of a ballerina. But grace is not graceful. Grace carries with it strong Christian overtones that I, as a Jew, just did not have ingrained in me as part of my upbringing. As Alexander Pope said, “To err is human; to forgive divine”. Were baseball’s pundits comparing Galarraga to God?

I went to the dictionary and looked up grace:

1. elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action.
2. a pleasing or attractive quality or endowment.
3. favor or good will.
4. a manifestation of favor, esp. by a superior: It was only through the dean's grace that I wasn't expelled from school.
5. mercy; clemency; pardon: an act of grace.
6. favor shown in granting a delay or temporary immunity.
7. an allowance of time after a debt or bill has become payable granted to the debtor before suit can be brought against him or her or a penalty applied: The life insurance premium is due today, but we have 31 days' grace before the policy lapses. Compare grace period.
8. Theology.
• the freely given, unmerited favor and love of god.
• the influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them.
• a virtue or excellence of divine origin: the Christian graces.
• Also called state of grace. the condition of being in God's favor or one of the elect.
9. moral strength: the grace to perform a duty.
10. a short prayer before or after a meal, in which a blessing is asked and thanks are given.
11. (usually initial capital letter) a formal title used in addressing or mentioning a duke, duchess, or archbishop, and formerly also a sovereign (usually prec. by your, his, etc.).
12. Graces, Classical Mythology. the goddesses of beauty, daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, worshiped in Greece as the Charities and in Rome as the Gratiae.
13. Music. grace note.

With the help of dictionary.com, especially the second and third bullets under 8 above, it becomes clear that when a human is severely wronged and is able to smile, remain calm, not attack his offender, finish the job at hand and then forgive, many of us see the inner beauty as coming from God. Maybe it does. Aren’t we all made in God’s image? If so, image is not enough. Go ask Serena, John McEnroe or that Pakistani squash player from my February “Schwing!” blog. They showed anything but grace in their outrageous court behaviors. Galarraga not only had grace, he had grace under fire. For some, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, that quality did come from a spiritual strength. I know nothing about Galarraga’s faith. To me, he just seems like a happy guy. For some reason, Venezuelans are, by World Value Survey, among the happiest people in the world. I think that one cannot have grace under fire without an inner peace, whether from religion, spirituality, a Caribbean “don’t worry, be happy” mentality or even Prozac. No matter…Galarraga’s perfect game with its asterisk is more perfect than any other because of his grace. 

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.” Gandhi 

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love." Martin Luther King, Jr. 

“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.” Emo Philips

A Parent's Blessing

Graduation season is upon us in the Benjamin family. It’s a season full of so many thoughts and emotions, it’s hard to sort them all out, let alone make any sense of them. And that’s just for me, a proud parent, one slowly, reluctantly, resignedly further loosening the ties and hoping the prodigal daughter will find her way in life.

Dustin Hoffman was The Graduate, and coincidently, was also a Benjamin. The idea for this blog post came to me last month as I watched The Graduate on television. Hoffman’s Benjamin character, in the movie’s defining moment, burst out of his car and ran in the drenching rain away from Mrs. Robinson, to her daughter Elaine to tell her about his affair with her mother. As Benjamin leaves the screaming and hysterical Elaine, Mrs. Robinson, physically diminished, cowering in the hallway with dripping hair and running mascara verbally rises to put the knife into his emotional wounds with a cruel, victorious “Goodbye Benjamin”.

I wasn’t afraid for Benjamin. I’ve seen the movie at least 20 times and know that he recovers from this trauma, finally sees a future for himself, goes for it and gets the girl in the end. Like any parent, I did give a thought or two about how the graduate got himself into such a mess. On a completely different level, I recognized the brilliance of Mike Nichols, specifically the movie’s water imagery. The cleansing rain, the womb-like depths of Benjamin’s suburban swimming pool, the naked exposure of the opening scene’s fish in their tank. No doubt about it, The Graduate is a great movie, one of the best ever. When my mind stopped wandering, I was left with one thought: What is it to be a Benjamin?

Clearly, you can’t dismiss us with a “Goodbye”. We’ll take that as a challenge and end up with the girl and the last laugh. Is our attitude that it’s All About the Benjamins? I don’t think so (though some wives and in-laws may disagree). I never even saw that movie. Having a couple Benjamins in your pocket is a good thing, but for us, it’s not about the money. We are a tribe, descended from the youngest son of Jacob and his most beloved wife Rachel.

Benjamin was originally named Ben-oni, “the son of my sorrow” as Rachel died giving birth to him. Jacob renamed him “the son of the right” which most interpret as meaning strong and virtuous, as in right hand man. Benjamin was a full brother to Joseph who’s other brothers sold him into slavery and who went on to be advisor to the king of Egypt. Benjamin was held captive by Joseph and used to trick Jacob into coming to Egypt. When Jacob died he blessed each of his sons. His blessing for Benjamin was, “Benjamin is a ravening wolf, in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he snatches a share of the spoil” (Genesis 49:27). This was a blessing, not a curse. Benjamin went on to live a life that was so blessed that it is said he was one of only four men in eternity to die without sin. There’s good in being strong, self-sufficient, self-sustaining and grabbing for what you feel is rightly yours. Yeah, that sounds like a Benjamin.

Wolves are not always loners, and as I said above, we are members of a tribe. The tribal mentality carries with it the connotation of fierce loyalty. The tribe of Benjamin was attacked and almost completely wiped out by the other eleven tribes in Biblical times when they refused to surrender a group of rapists and murderers to justice. 600 Benjamins survived and took wives from the other tribes. They went on to give birth to the first king of Israel, Saul, who was a Benjamin. Mordachi and Esther were Benjamins. In the Bible it says we taught our sons to fight left handed in order to have an edge in battle. We are strong, selfish, clever, insanely loyal and enduring.

So, graduate Benjamins, in conclusion, I leave you with a word. No, it’s not “Plastics”. Had Benjamin taken that advice he’d only have had a job. I said it already. It’s not about the money. The word is family. We gave birth to you. We raised you. We taught you tricks to get ahead. We are in your DNA. We will fiercely defend you. We will let go and know you will sustain yourself and grab for your share. Go with our blessing. Find out what makes you laugh out loud like Benjamin and Elaine in the back of that city bus. Your happiness is our happiness. That is family.

A Doctor's Week

I had a good week at work this past week. In the world of medicine, that’s a rarity these days. Not that I don’t feel good about what I do. As a physician, not a day goes by when I don’t help someone. I earn a good income and feel good about providing well for my family. I exercise my mind with diagnostic challenges and do endoscopic procedures that, like any good video game, are still fun after 25 years. Sadly, the meddling of insurance companies and government and the poor state of our economy have combined to ruin the doctor patient relationship. When caring and trust are replaced by indifference and mutual mistrust, practicing medicine is like any unpleasant job where you are just happy to have the week end.

My week ended with a funeral. I don’t normally attend patients’ funerals. As a specialist, I don’t usually form close, long-term relationships with my patients. I see them once and maybe again 5-10 years later. Also, if there’s a funeral, someone, including me, is going to think that if the patient’s dead, the doctor is somehow to blame. When I was ready to back out on attending this funeral, Barbara reminded me that even though I only knew the woman for one month, I have known the family for many years. She says funerals are for the family. I went to high school with one of her sons in law and have stayed friends over the years. I have seen his family grow, and have gotten to know and like his wife and her family in a hello at poolside kind of way. I never met her mother until she arrived from Florida and ended up in the Stamford Hospital ER with GI bleeding. I was consulted to diagnose and treat the bleeding, but once I read the medical reports the family brought up from Florida, I knew that the bleeding was only one manifestation of a widespread, rapidly growing and soon to be fatal malignancy. Over the next month I helped the patient, a retired nurse, and her family anticipate, understand and deal with issues such as nutrition and pain control. When other physicians promoted aggressive therapies, I made sure the patient and family stayed focused on realistic expectations and goals. When I made a house call last week I sensed a calm sadness in the patient that was mirrored in her two daughters. I was not surprised that she passed a few days later. I was surprised, though, to receive the news in a tearful bedside phone call from her daughters and husband. They called to thank me for my medical expertise and human kindness. They thanked me again at the funeral, the husband with a very public bear hug and a card that he put in my pocket. It was good to see a family so full of love, to know that I helped them and to be recognized and thanked for what I do.

Usually there’s no love and no thanks. It’s up to me to know I do it well and do it right. Earlier this week I did not give into pressure from a hospital internist and oncologist and refused to surgically put a feeding tube into the stomach of a terminal esophageal cancer patient. His problem wasn’t that he couldn’t eat; his esophagus was kept open by a stent. He was just in too much pain from a spine that had been replaced by tumor. I felt good about recommending high dose pain medication and Hospice care.

Midweek I refused to prescribe a new medication over the phone to a patient who I hadn’t seen in a year, who had stiffed me for her copay, who said she was out of work and couldn’t afford to see me, whose insurance wouldn’t pay for her old medication and who needed medication “now!” because she was going on vacation. I got her to come into the office, pay her year old copay and make an appointment. In return, my secretary gave her samples of her old medication to last her a week. I’ll likely never see her again, but got a kick out of her chutzpah and 20 bucks to boot.

At the end of the week I performed a difficult colonoscopy on a bleeding 73 year old, located and stopped his bleeding and saved him from having half of his colon removed. Despite being a working professional, he had little insight before or after as to the significance of his bleeding. He expressed no gratitude afterwards, only irritation that I had him admitted to the hospital for observation. Still, I know that I did good.

Some career choice, huh? And that’s what I call a good week! No regrets. I like what I do. So, can someone out there tell me how we got into this healthcare mess? Let’s talk about it sometime, say over a game of tennis. I like the weekends too.

Schwing!

The Vancouver Olympics end today after the men’s ice hockey finals this afternoon between Canada and the US. It’s been a wonderful two weeks for me with TV coverage on three different networks that I recorded on DVR, scanned at super fast forward and either viewed or erased. No ads, minimal fluff, no 10,000 K cross country skiing, but some amazing individual and team performances. To the credit of NBC, they kept the jingoism down, and though they are probably obliged to highlight the accomplishments of the US athletes, they gave plenty of time and credit to the host nation, Canada. There were two bits of fluff that I actually liked. The first told the story of Gander, the small town in Newfoundland that on 9/11/2001 took in all of the passengers from US bound flights that were diverted to eastern Canada when US airspace was closed down. The 10,000 citizens of Gander took in 7,000 passengers and crew, housed them, fed them, gave them emotional support and accepted no money in return.

The second was a piece on Canada’s many outstanding comedians. There’s Mike Myers, John Candy, Jim Carrey, the first for me; Dan Aykroyd, and loads more. Some say that the long Canadian winters induce a form of insanity that produces comedians. Others theorize that it’s the authoritative society that creates rebels that fight back with humor. I don’t buy that one. How many really funny people come out of Switzerland? Part of the answer, at least since 1977, is Lorne Michaels, the founder and producer of Saturday Night Live. He is from Toronto and no doubt sought to promote the careers of fellow Canadians. He didn’t make Rick Moranis and Eugene Levy funny but he did give them a forum for the development and broadcasting of their talents.

Despite the Olympics and all the hype surrounding it, the biggest sports story for me in the past two weeks came right out of New Haven, CT. The US collegiate team squash finals took place in a match between Trinity College and Yale. Trinity, the number 1 team in the US for the past 12 years, was led by senior, Baset Chaudhry, a 6’5’’ player from Lahore, Pakistan. Yale’s top player was a 5’8” freshman from Singapore, Kenneth Chan. Chaudhry has been the best player in the US for the past three years. He was undefeated this year and beat Chan handily in their previous meeting. According to his coach, he is an excellent student and a popular figure on campus. His parents came from Pakistan and were in New Haven to see his last team match. At the end of the match, which Chaudhry won in straight sets, he had a Serena-esque meltdown in which he physically confronted and verbally attacked his defeated opponent. The outburst was caught on tape and featured on ESPN’s Sports Center:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=4949438

The ESPN piece was presented by Merril Hoge, an ex-NFL running back, cancer survivor and motivational speaker. Hoge presented the frightening incident with a smirk and joked about the towering Chaudhry’s intimidation of Chan. As his co-commentators chuckled in the background, he quickly and condescendingly explained away the game of squash, and then went on to talk about buttocks seals and verbal spraying. The only reason the sport of squash received any national coverage was because one of its top players acted badly, one might say like a football player. Whereas antisocial behaviors such as fighting and trash talking are condoned or encouraged in many sports, they are not a part of squash which actually has Ethics Guidelines. To his credit, Chaudhry, once past the heat of battle, apologized to every team and coach in collegiate squash and ultimately punished himself by withdrawing from the national individual tournament, giving up his last chance to defend his two time championship. ESPN did not report this in follow-up.

Merril Hoge may see himself as a motivator who can help us “Find a Way” in life, but he and ESPN missed the boat on this one. We need to decide as a nation if the way to success includes behaviors that injure others and whether such behaviors such as drug use, bullying, trash talking, robbery, rape and murder are excusable in those who have achieved great success. Maybe we should just be a bit Canadian, include good deeds in our definition of success and learn to tell a good joke. Schwing!

I’ll Bring the Kleenex

I hope you readers took the time to view the last YouTube clip in my “What a Dog” blog. It showed the ingénue, Cameron Diaz, in the role of a nightclub performer who dropped men’s jaws and induced howls and whistles. An actress only gets to be an ingénue once, and Cameron made the most of it. I tried to divert your attention from her clinging, shimmering gold sequined dress to the sexily dubbed singing voice, but once she let her fingers play down the right side of that dress, who could notice the voice? Perhaps ingénue is not the correct word as it implies naiveté and innocence more than newness to acting. Lauren Bacall, 50 years earlier, was a similarly sultry ingénue in her first role as Slim in “To Have and Have Not”. She even taught her man, Humphrey Bogart, how to whistle:

You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.

Diaz and Miss Bacall had similar beginnings. Cameron left the beaches of Southern California at the age of 16, signed on with an agency and spent the next five years as an international model. Bacall began modeling in New York City at the age of 17. She appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, was noticed by director Howard Hawk’s wife Nancy, was invited to Hollywood for a screen test and the rest is history. Nancy Hawk helped her develop her style in clothes and her trademark seductively low voice. Miss Bacall lured Humphrey Bogart from his wife all on her own.

Cameron went from temptress in The Mask to angel in the Charlie’s Angels movies. She played a ditzy blond on screen and began to play the potty mouthed bad girl off screen and in the Tabloids. I’m sure for her it seemed the right move, but can a woman who used Ben Stiller’s semen as hair mousse (Something About Mary) ever be taken as a serious actress? To her credit, when she doesn’t have to appear in a film, she does a great job. She is a perfect Princess Fiona in the Shrek movies. Sweetness with an edge, and a tolerance for us donkeys.

In my house, Cameron Diaz is best known for one of her lines from Charlie’s Angels, “I love tickets”, which she delivered in response to a potential suitor’s line, “I’ll get tickets”. Though endlessly repeating movie lines is a decidedly male annoyance, even the women in my family will almost smile when I respond, “I love tickets”. And I do, both repeat the line and love tickets. Have you noticed that many of my blogs make references to movies?

Some of my love of the movies is genetic. My father grew up in the pre-TV era and would spend all afternoon Saturdays at the movies for a quarter. The Brooklyn theaters would have serials, Flash Gordon and the like, newsreels, a double feature and contests with prizes for the kids. My maternal grandfather, Julius Davis, loved movies and would laugh and weep audibly, a strange sight for a ten year old me to witness in a public Manhattan theater. My grandmother Florence, who was a very controlling and in control woman, explained that he cried because he had strong emotions that just came out at the movies. Their's was an old world marriage. He practiced medicine, sat in his chair and read newspapers and journals. She managed the home, help, children, social calendar, vacations…basically everything and everyone else. She was always very protective of him. We had to be quiet during his daily nap. We couldn’t sit in his chair. My aunt Dorothy wouldn’t eat lox because my grandparents threatened to put locks on the door if she kept going into my grandfather’s office. After his second heart attack Florence stayed home with him for three months. When she finally thought he was well enough to be home without her, she went out to join her sisters for their weekly card game. He was not home when she returned. A panic followed. The police found him that night in a city hospital morgue. He had been found dead in the back row of a Broadway movie theater. We’ll never know the whole story. No doubt he took advantage of my grandmother’s afternoon out to take a walk on a beautiful summer day. One possible scenario: he developed chest pain and ducked into an air conditioned movie theater to sit down and rest. A second scenario: he liked movies but the one he chose was too much for his weak heart. Either way, he died in a place where his feelings could be freely and openly expressed. I express mine there too. Join me sometime. You can buy the popcorn. I’ll bring the Kleenex.