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Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World's Most Loved (and Hated) Team

Jesse Kornbluth — Thu, 24 May 2012 03:35:01 -0400

Rob Fleder (editor)

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 24, 2012

READER MAIL: The Robert Kennedy piece about the real Gross National Product struck a nerve with many of you. One letter was amazing. Marla writes: “Twenty nine years ago, I was 16 years old, preparing to go off to be an exchange student in rural Argentina for a year. I was from Bedford, New York, and I'd never been anywhere before. For the occasion I got a ‘travel diary’ to write all my secret thoughts. I was so concerned with what I would write on the first page. I was obsessed with this idea. I figured I had to write something to introduce my adventure. But what words could a girl from Westchester possibly write that would be significant enough to kick off this momentous journey? Certainly not my own words. But I came across the text to Robert Kennedy's speech, and I was so moved I immediately memorized them and then I wrote every one of those words down as the first two pages of my diary. And off to Argentina I went. The military junta fell three weeks before I arrived and the sentiment regarding ‘Yanquis’ was as bad as it possibly could be. In the year I was there, war crimes were uncovered, the ‘Mothers of the Plaza’ marched for their disappeared children, and I learned what it was like to look into America from the outside. I often had to refer to those words to remember why I was proud to be an American. I haven't thought of the speech in years, but I never forgot those words. So when I clicked on Head Butler this morning with your customary teaser, I knew immediately what it was, and of course, I silently recited them. They still give me goose bumps…”

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SUMMER CHECKLIST: Not possible it’s that time again. If you’re as surprised by the advent of summer as I am, make sure you’re equipped. Sunscreen? Do consider Anthelios. Hydration? We swear by our PUR Water Filter & Dispenser. Going out? Take a Vapur Anti-Bottle. For scrapes and cuts, Egyptian Magic.

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When I worked at America Online, Memorial Day was about a brief nod to the war dead and a loud hello to grilling season. We’d built a giant special feature about grilling, and every year we rolled it out and collected another zillion clicks. So I would probably be smart to fire up a grill feature.

But the thing is, I’m not as fond of charred beef as your average exemplary American, and I’ve got scant affection for dry, stiff chicken, and as for watching fish flake off into the charcoal, no thanks. And when I picture Dad in an apron with I WEAR THE PANTS on it, I just completely lose it.

As for the war dead and wounded, what we mostly do is dishonor them. Read Marian Salzman’s piece about vets with brain injuries and you’ll be sad and furious.

So for a Memorial Day “celebration,” it looks like we’re down to baseball, the so-called national pastime. I could argue that. If you feel like taking the kids to a Yankee game, you’d better be in the 1% --- tickets and snacks are budget-busters for lesser mortals. Not that the new Yankee Stadium is anything close to your vision of it. The House That Ruth Built now has so many flashing screens you can’t keep your attention on the action. Truly, being there is the next worst thing to being trapped in a slot machine at Foxwoods.

Happily, Rob Fleder --- who is the former Executive Editor of Sports Illustrated and can probably field and bat brilliantly --- has pulled together a book of pieces about the Yankees. Add peanuts and popcorn, cook up a dog and slather it with mustard, crack open a beer better than Bud, and you’re ready to read these 24 pieces. [To buy “Damn Yankees” from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

Some writers love the Yankees. Others love them less: Dan Okrent, Frank Deford and J. R. Moehringer (yes, the author of The Tender Bar). And guys like Roy Blount Jr are just too funny to take sides.

This is a writer’s book, not a sportswriter’s book, and that makes all the difference. Like the transplanted Irish writer, Colum McCann, author of “Let The Great World Spin.” His is a father-and-son story, but with a lovely twist. He’s not passing on his love for baseball. His son is teaching it to him. A sample:

Down, 3-1. Bottom of the ninth. One on. Nobody out. The Yankees against the Minnesota Twins. Game 2 of the American League Division Series, October 2009. A-Rod is at the plate. The air has that chewy sense of hope. There is always call for a miracle.
“It’s gonna happen, Dad.”
This is what baseball can do to the soul: it has the ability to make you believe in spite of all other available evidence. My son, John Michael, is 10 years old. We are in the bleachers. He leans in to me and says that the pitch is going to come in high and fat. It’s still a new language to me. The pitch is thrown, and indeed it does — it comes in high and fat, and 94 miles per hour. A-Rod leans into it like he’s about to fell a tree and smacks the ball and it soars, that little sphere of cowhide rising up over the Bronx, and it is a moment unlike any other, when you sit with your son in the ballpark, and the ball is high in the air, you feel yourself aware of everything, the night, the neon, the very American-ness of the moment.
And then it strikes you that the ball has an endless quality of fatherhood to it.

The Yankees as eternal winners? Here’s Dan Barry on the years they weren’t even close:

The seasonal failure of the Yankees made the game of baseball somehow sweeter. It became a kind of binding agent for a suburban family in need of one: a shared distraction; an ever-ready conversation changer. When my father lost his job, or temper; when our home’s domestic quarrels became loud enough for the entire neighborhood to enjoy (Mets fans, all of them); when the three dogs slipped under the fence and ran away again, there was always this:
Dad, didja see that the Yankees are gonna get Rocky Colavito? Rocky Colavito?!?
Dad, watch me do a high-kicking windup, just like Lindy McDaniel!
Dad, guess what? Bobby Murcer is an All-Star!
Dad, it says here that Mickey is going to play in the Old-Timers’ Game. Can we watch that together? Can we?

But if I start quoting, this piece will go into extra innings, and Derek Jeter will be on a walker. So let me suppress the urge to tell you about the player who lost his skills overnight and Catfish Hunter moving unsteadily toward death and the future superstar Robinson Cano. Let me not say that some pieces fell flat for me, and that my tolerance for the Yankees is not quite what it used to be, and that I once reviewed a biography of George Steinbrenner with such loathing that my editor needed asbestos gloves to hold the printout. (My prose was, correctly, tempered before publication.)

If you know someone who reads the sports pages first, here’s a book that he --- or she --- will greatly enjoy.

Robert Kennedy: The Gross National Product (March 18, 1968)

Jesse Kornbluth — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:33:12 -0400

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 23, 2012

It’s no one thing, just the drip drip drip of inaccuracies and misrepresentations, the hatred of the poor and the darkly pigmented, the lust to punish people who can’t fight back.

This retro thinking and hateful speech pops up in surprising places --- even, I can attest, at New York dinner parties --- but it can most reliably be found on cable “news” shows, where the hosts seem to think what’s happening in this country is a sporting event and they’re Charles Barkley and the guests either have no clue what the facts are or don’t give a damn.

"One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be as hard as hard can be grows harder yet,” J.M. Coetzee has his protagonist say in Disgrace. Coetzee was writing about post-apartheid South Africa. But for tens of millions of Americans, that’s a fair description of how it is here right now.

How do you live with yourself when you click on a web site or read a pundit’s column or turn on a “news” show and find yourself exposed yet again to hatred and stupidity and raw prejudice delivered so slickly it almost sounds like reasonable opinion?

If you’re like me, you armor yourself by keeping very busy. And so my day is a long and satisfying sprint. Do. Accomplish. Facilitate. Help. Give.

Then, two rooms away, I hear the television on and my wife screaming, and I know she’s not watching a horror movie.

Screaming at the screen isn’t my style. Flight is. Memory of better times is. When I feel like I’m drowning in lies and distortions and the astonishing lack of compassion for those who missed the brass ring, I think back to a time when someone said words that cut through the fog.

Like Robert Kennedy, at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas, on March 18, 1968.

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.

Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them.

It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets.

It counts Whitman's rifle [In 1966, Charles Whitman killed 16 people and wounded 32 in Austin, Texas] and Speck's knife [In 1966, Richard Speck raped and killed 8 student nurses in Chicago], and the television programs that glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.

It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Why do those words thrill me?

Maybe because there’s no call to action here. Kennedy’s not advocating legislation. Or pointing a finger for political gain. He’s raising a concern. Sharing a thought. Asking a question.

An adult, speaking as an adult, to adults.

More, please.

Jacqueline du Pre

Jesse Kornbluth — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:37:01 -0400

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 22, 2012

Her career lasted only 12 years, but if had been only half as long, she'd be considered one of the greatest cellists of the century --- her playing was that pure, her personality was that compelling, her story is that intriguing.

Jacqueline du Pré, born in 1945, heard a cello when she was four years old and reportedly asked her mother for "one of those." Her mother was her first teacher:

She was marvelous, because she has a great talent for teaching small children, and she started off by writing little tunes for me when I could hardly play the thing at all, and she added words to these tunes, and on the opposite side of the page she drew beautiful pictures illustrating the tunes. And she used to do these while I was asleep, and I could hardly wait until the morning came, because in the morning I'd wake up and find this beautiful thing waiting for me. And then we'd rush down and play it together. And that really made me very excited about the cello.

Other teachers followed, but she needed so little --- at 17, she made her concert debut, playing the Elgar Cello Concerto at London's Royal Festival Hall. In her hands, the Elgar sounded as it never had before --- she didn't play the music, she became it.

Jacqueline du Pré didn't lack ambition, but practice bored her, and she avoided it. Decades later, when she was sick and a well-meaning interviewer praised her accomplishments, she would have none of it: "I've achieved nothing at all because I've never had to work."

Her reality check wasn't reviews or ovations --- it was the music. "I have the same feeling when I walk in a very beautiful place that I have when I play and it goes right," she said.

So it seems absolutely correct that, on New Year's Eve in 1966, Jacqueline du Pré would meet pianist Daniel Barenboim at a party in London in 1966. ''Instead of saying good evening,'' she recalled, ''we sat down and played Brahms.'' They married six months later at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

She was tall, large-boned, a formidable presence. She was also shy and otherworldly --- she never knew, for example, what things cost. So her relationships were best when they were about music --- Barenboim has described her as "a musical conversationalist."

According to her sister Hilary, when Jacqueline was nine years old, she shared a vision: "Don't tell Mum, but... when I grow up, I won't be able to walk or move." In 1971, when she was just 26, vision became reality in the form of multiple sclerosis.

She died in 1987, at 42. And that leaves us with her music and some documentary films.

The compilation of her favorite cello concertos is probably the greatest bargain in all of recorded music: half a dozen classics for $17. The Dvorak Cello Concerto is one of my favorites, I've been listening to it, with some care, for decades. But to hear du Pré is to hear it as if for the first time. And the others? All at the highest level. [To buy "Favorite Cello Concertos: Boccherini, Dvorak, Elgar, Haydn, Monn, Saint-Saens, Schuman" from Amazon.com, click here.]

Or is it the Elgar, alone? The Elgar is where you start with du Pré and will always return --- its beauty goes far beyond the power of words. To buy the Elgar Cello Concerto from Amazon.com, click here.)

Jacqueline du Pré may have had a complicated life, but the story of her real life --- her life as an artist --- is really very simple. Barenboim summed it up nicely: "I have never come across anybody who was so completely music. Everything was music in her. Brain, heart, intestines --- it was her most natural form of expression."

To buy "Jacqueline du Pré In Portrait" from Amazon.com, click here.

To buy the DVD of Jacqueline Du Pré: A Celebration of Her Unique Enduring Gift" from Amazon.com, click here.

To visit the Jacqueline du Pré web site, click here.

BONUS VIDEO

The Fabulous Sylvester

Jesse Kornbluth — Sun, 20 May 2012 21:34:06 -0400

Joshua Gamson

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 20, 2012

Donna Summer died, and the entire country paused to remember disco. Not that America had really embraced this music in the late '70s; it was gay, druggy, dance-hall fare, far too sexy for the heartland. But "Love to Love You Baby," even with its orgasmic moaning, broke through. As did "Hot Stuff." As did "Last Dance."

Not to denigrate Donna Summer or Gloria "I Will Survive" Gaynor, but the disco singer I most cherish is Sylvester. History is not kind to drag queens; he's almost forgotten. But his performances were legendary, his life story is dazzling and a few of his songs....if you can't quite place him, try this:

Or this:

At the height of her fame, Donna Summer tried to commit suicide by jumping out a window. Thwarted, she turned to Christianity and never tried to hurt herself again. Sylvester would never have thought to ruin his makeup. The way he saw it, he was God's own star....and that's the story of the fabulous biography, "The Fabulous Sylvester." [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here.]

They were young black teenage boys in Los Angeles in the early l960s. Their obsession was make-up, and "outfits," and the creation of larger-than-life, to-die-for personalities. Gay? Sure, but not that interested in the act itself: "They had taken bubble baths and washed themselves with Jean Nate," Joshua Gamson notes. "They might be willing to get nasty later in the evening, but they had their reputations and hairstyles to uphold, and they worked way too hard on their Max Factor to let just anybody mess it up early on."

There were maybe two dozen kids like this in LA, and they hung together, bound by fabulousness. "Like Folies Bergere in the ghetto," one of them recalls. Naturally, Miss LaLa, Miss Louella, Jackie Kennedy and Dooni had a name for themselves --- the Disquotays.

Of them all, Dooni may have been the most creative. He watched old movies all night on television, sketching the clothes and gestures of Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn. He was tall, and pretty, but most of all, he was "arranged" --- his look was always flawless. And completely unlike anyone else's. A Disquotay recalls: "With Dooni, it was always an ongoing saga. What's she gonna do next?"

What "she" did is now the stuff of pop culture legend. Dooni grew up and became Sylvester (from his real name, Sylvester James). If you know disco at all, he was the singer with the church-bred voice that ranged from a rich baritone to the stratosphere. "(You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real" --- for me, that was the big hit. Talk about propulsion! Anticipation! Heat! It's not the silly lyrics ("And the music's in me/And I feel real hot/Then you kiss me there/And it feels real good") that burn into you, it's Sylvester's gospel refrain --- "Woooh, I feel real, I feel real, I feel real, I feel real."

I loved Sylvester's music for just that reason. Though completely invented --- totally synthetic --- he did feel real. He was real. Back when everyone was pretending that all America could love disco, that it really had nothing to do with homosexuality, he was openly and proudly gay. "I want to destroy reality when I'm performing," he said, and he did.

Call him a faggot? "That's Miss Faggot, to you." But that was too narrow. As Gamson writes, Sylvester was "gay, black, a woman and a man." And that is why he was beloved: "His sound brought to mind a bright, soft, blue-skied world --- one where race and gender no longer divide us and we love whom, when and how we want."

"The Fabulous Sylvester" is not only a stunning piece of sociology, it is a brilliantly researched biography. Joshua Gamson talked to everyone who knew Sylvester, at every stage of his life, and the result is the kind of full portrait we usually get only of major historical figures. We see him singing in church as a kid...stealing a bra and a girdle, getting arrested and going to jail for a few days, which he explained to friends as being "on location, filming a movie"....working at a morgue so he could experiment with new makeup concepts...and then, in 1970, at 22, discovering San Francisco.

From here, "The Fabulous Sylvester" is a totally bent how-she-made-it showbiz story. Crazy days (well, nights) with the Cockettes. Going out on his own. Singing with some then-unknown sisters named Pointer. Becoming an unforgettable opening act in his hot pants, boots and mascara. Finding two remarkably fat female singers, Two Tuns o' Fun (who later became The Weather Girls and had a huge hit with "It's Raining Men").

The highlight of the book? Sylvester's appearance at the San Francisco Opera House. Everyone was there: the Mayor, socialites, drag queens, studs, his mother and sisters. Sylvester took some LSD before the show and then a Quaalude to take the edge off. The reaction? "A sheet of vocal sound" --- shouts and cheers and tears all mixed together, as Sylvester took a disparate crowd and turned it into one beat, one heart.

And then, in rapid succession, the death of disco and the rise of AIDS. Lovers were dying all around him; Sylvester knew he was next without needing to be tested. He made a will so his friends would have pieces of him to cherish. And then he turned on the Home Shopping Network and shopped some more. He died in l988, at 40. By his request, he was buried in a red kimono.

Why should we care about this seemingly ephemeral entertainer?

Because of what he knew: "Whenever you think you have on too much, you should put on more, just to be safe," Sylvester said.

Because of what he preached: "You are a star," he sang. "Everyone is one. You are a star. You only happen once."

Because of what he achieved: When Sylvester really rocked the house, he would say, looking back to his church background, "We had service." Yes, he did. And it was beautiful. Gentle. Absolutely free --- and totally doomed.

I guarantee you: If you read this book, you'll be blinking at the start, laughing in the middle, slack-jawed at the heights and weeping at the end. And you'll be a better person for it.

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To buy the CD of Sylvester's "Original Hits" from Amazon, click here. The collection is uneven. You'll do better to download the MP3 single of "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" for 99 cents here and the MP3 single of "Dance (Disco Heat)" here.

BONUS VIDEO

The Harder They Come

Jesse Kornbluth — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:00:10 -0400

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 17, 2012

Summer. There's going to be a song, a mood. There always is.

This summer, I feel a Bob Marley festival coming on: Red Stripe and jerk chicken in the backyard, "One Love" on the outdoor speakers. This hardly suggests a Marley revival; Marley dead has sold more CDs than he ever did alive. But this year we have fresh Marley media. In the theaters, there's a two-and-a-half-hour documentary about Marley. Want a digital tour? The Marley family has created an enhanced e-book, Listen to Bob Marley: The Man, the Music, the Revolution.

One love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right...

If only.

Not to bore you with the facts, but two jump out for me.

Bob Marley's best work was with the Wailers, when the band was called Bob Marley and the Wailers. And as important as the Wailers were, they came after a bunch of lesser-known musicians who transformed the music that was ska into what we know as reggae.

Reggae may be the music of love and healing, but it originated in blood, poverty and racism. Our version of this music is really a prettified reggae 2.0, reggae made safe for the tourist board and an airline.

In the interest of historical accuracy, let's jump into the Wayback Machine and go back....back.....

1972. President Nixon was taping the meetings that would cause him to resign. The big movies were “The Godfather” and “Cabaret.” The hot music was Pink Floyd's “Dark Side of the Moon” and a new band called The Eagles.

A very American year. A very white year.

Until a movie and a soundtrack changed everything.

"The Harder They Come," the first full-length feature that anyone could remember originating in Jamaica, was released early in 1972. No one noticed the myth-busting drama about Jamaica that substituted violence, marijuana, politics and the music business for endless beaches and picturesque waterfalls. Then it started playing at midnight. A cult formed immediately. [To buy the DVD from Amazon for $8.14, click here. To buy or rent the digital version from Amazon, click here.]

The soundtrack was an anthology that's been called “the Sgt. Pepper of reggae.” It featured Jimmy Cliff and Toots & the Maytals and a bunch of obscure talents singing their hearts out in a desperate bid to make some kind of mark on the world.[To buy the CD from Amazon, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]

Together, the music and the movie made a potent package. And a straightforward one. The plot was simplicity itself: Jimmy Cliff leaves his home in the hills to come to Kingston, hoping to be a pop singer, only to be thwarted in every possible way. Here, at last, was a film that didn't sugarcoat the truth about colonialism and exploitation. It was filmed on the cheap and looked grainy, but that wasn't a flaw --- this kind of film should look as if were made by insurrectionists who stole the film and then took over a lab to develop it.

I fell hard for the film and its music. In a matter of months, I was hanging out with Toots, the Jamaican Otis Redding and leader of Toots & The Maytals, and pitching a film idea to Bob Marley, and eating fish stew in a smoky backstage dressing room --- I was completely addicted to reggae music's stutter-step, off-beat appeal. Primitive? Not at all. This was and is some of the most sophisticated music on the planet. It just happens to disguise itself as pop music that makes you want to grab a beer and dance.

There's not a weak cut on the CD, not a dull moment in the movie. Oh, to be 26 again, and discovering this stuff for the first time. Well, no. But this is true: Oh, to be in your home when you watch or hear “The Harder They Come” for the first time.

Inside Moves

Jesse Kornbluth — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:46:06 -0400

Todd Walton

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 16, 2012

E-MAIL FROM TODD WALTON: A new edition of "Inside Moves" will be published in Spring of 2013, with an introduction by Sherman Alexie. This trade paper edition is part of a new line of books, each a re-issue of a long out-of-print work selected and introduced by a currently well known writer. The publisher will issue e-book versions of "Inside Moves" as well as e-book versions of all my other published fiction. Hallelujah.

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“Inside Moves” is so out of print that if you want to read a new copy, you will pay $101 for a hardcover or $39 for a paperback.

You’re not going to do that.

What you’re going to do is buy a used hardcover or paperback --- both start at 99 cents --- and pay the shipping. Then you’re going to clear a few hours and read a quick 200 pages. And then, if you think you’ve just taken a sensational ride, you might write me and say thanks.

[NOTE: THE CHEAP USED PAPERBACKS ARE SOLD OUT. LOOK AT THE USED HARDCOVERS. Click here.]

And if you don’t fall in love with Jerry and Roary and the guys at Max’s Bar and Alvin the pro basketball player and Louise the actress?

In that case, please write me and I’ll mail you $5, no questions asked.

A reasonable person would wonder: If this novel is all that and a bag of chips, why has it been out of print for donkey’s years?

A reasonable person would inquire: If the movie made from this novel is so terrific, why wasn’t there a DVD version until 2009?

My response: Beats me. (I’ve spent hours these last few days not hitting the SEND button on the e-mail that has me ask Todd Walton if Head Butler can publish his novel as an e-book and enrich him by….oh, I dunno….. hundreds of dollars.)

But enough of publishing and Hollywood oversights.

I read “Inside Moves” when it came out in 1978 because I’m a fool for novels that have great characters and pure story --- and nothing else.

Great characters? Not here; these aren’t guys you’d voluntarily hang with. Jerry is a cripple and Roary got shot in Vietnam and Max has no legs at all --- as the book starts, they’re losers hanging out in Max’s bar. And attitude? Roary’s the narrator, and here’s how he introduces himself:

I don’t want you to get the idea this book is about me, because it isn’t. It's about Jerry, but I thought I'd better say something about myself so you know what kind of angle you’re getting. In a way, you’re getting a cripple angle, but then again I wasn’t born a cripple. There’s a big difference between a born cripple and somebody who gets crippled. The main difference seems to be how bitter they are. That isn’t always true, but take Jerry, he was born cripple and he’s the sweetest guy in the world. Me, I was born straight, played fullback in high school. Me, I’m bitter. I’m no sweetheart.

The old fiction trick, the unreliable narrator? Not at all. Roary really is a mess; overweight, unshaven, hostile. Which is why he idolizes Jerry and becomes his sidekick. Because Jerry, despite a knot in his hip and one leg shorter than the other and no height to speak of, has a skill --- he is a playground basketball star.

Basketball is the metaphor here. The title first: inside moves are what get a player a shot near the basket. They are also, as I know you know, your internal changes, the ability to adapt to new situations and people. In basketball, Jerry has a sensational shot from the outside; he also has great inside moves. But off the court? Jerry has no mojo, as he proves daily in his marriage to Ann, a junkie whore.

Cripples. A bar for losers. A junkie whore. Todd Walton seems to kiss every possible cliché on the mouth.

Sensible you asks: Why should I read this bummer?

Because it’s not a downer.

There’s a ton of plot in this book, and I’m telling you none of it, because you’d think I’ve lost all critical ability. Jerry challenges someone to a 10-point basketball game, and as the result of that --- no, no way. Roary forges a business partnership with a rich widow, and the next day --- no, that’s laughable. And the last half of the book? Don’t even start.

Here’s the thing: A few pages into the book, you will stop judging these people. And not to get all J.S. Salinger on you, you will see that the metaphor powering this book is not as cheesy as it’s going to sound here.

We are all cripples, every last one of us.

And yet we persevere.

Jerry and Roary and a few other characters in “Inside Moves” make gigantic changes. Improbable changes. Magical changes. But that’s the point. As C.S. Lewis says, “Miracles only happen to people who believe in them.”

“Inside Moves” will make you believe. Or your money back.

The Tender Bar

Jesse Kornbluth — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:08:26 -0400

J.R. Moehringer

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 15, 2012

J.R. Moehringer's father, a noted disc jockey, was out of his mother's life before J.R. was old enough to remember that he was ever around. ("My father was a man of many talents, but his one true genius was disappearing.") His mother, suddenly poor, moves into her family's house in Manhasset, Long Island.

In that house: J.R.'s mother, grandmother, aunt and five female cousins.

Also in that house: Uncle Charlie, a bartender at Dickens, a Manhasset establishment beloved by locals who appreciate liquor in quantity--- "every third drink free" --- and strong opinions, served with a twist.

A boy needs a father. If he doesn't have one, he needs some kind of man in his life. Or men, because it can indeed take a village.

You know how a book like this must work: First the heartbreak, then the healing. Early on, there's a scene that tells you how deep the wound is: J.R.'s father calls to say he's taking J.R., age 8 or so, to a Mets game. The appointed hour comes. And goes. Late that night, his mother comes home and asks about the game. And then this:

I wrapped my arms around her, startled by how much I loved her and how intensely I needed her. As I held my mother, clung to her, cried against her legs, it struck me that she was all I had, and if I didn't take good care of her I'd be lost.

To take good care of her, J.R. must become a man. But where will he find the men who will help him grow up?

He starts with Uncle Charlie. One night J.R. watches "Casablanca".... and sees his uncle as Humphrey Bogart. And although he was just eight years old, "I began to dream of going to Dickens as other boys dream of visiting Disneyland."

J.R. gets his chance when his grandfather runs out of cigarettes and he's sent to the bar to buy a pack. The air was "a beautiful pale yellow." Each breath "tasted like beer." There were "white-faced men with orange hair and red noses." And "astonishing" women.

J.R.'s a good ten years away from being legal. But Uncle Charlie starts including him in outings with the bar's inner circle. One drunken day at the beach they're stumped by a word game.

"Richard's Ingredients --- what is that?"
J.R. had the answer: "Nixon's Fixin's."
"The kid," Colt said.
"Holy shit," Bobo said.
"Give him another," Joey D said.
Uncle Charlie looked at J.R., then back at the newspaper. He read: "Terrific Gary."
J.R. said, "Super Cooper."

With that, everything changes. The men no longer treat J.R. "as a seagull that had wandered into their midst." Now they teach him: how to throw a curve, how to shrug, the importance of confidence. There is a trip to Shea Stadium so magical it more than makes up for his father's cruelty --- and at the very end of that chapter, there is a change so sudden, so dramatic, so totally sad, that you have to read it a second time, just to believe it. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

The characters from the bar are --- what else? --- wonderfully engaging. Uncle Charlie, of course. A tough guy, Joey D. A Vietnam vet, Cager. Bob the Cop. Smelly. Colt. And a chorus of major drinkers. No wonder that, in time, the bar itself became J.R.'s father, "its dozens of men melding into one enormous male eye looking over my shoulder."

But it's in the high school years that "The Tender Bar" really catches fire. We're past the easy jokes now ---- "Beer: a beverage, but also a meal" --- and into experiences that resonate. The guys who turn J.R. on to books. His first time. Applying to college. Getting in. The girl friend from heaven --- and hell. Graduation. The hilarious first job, and then the real one. And, at every turn, the men of the Dickens bar: their stories, their wisdom and their folly.

I'm being vague on the facts here, and for a reason: While I desperately want you to read this book, I don't want to ruin it for you. And J.R. Moehringer is such a gifted writer --- he has a Pulitzer Prize for journalism --- that his chapters are structured like small, linked bombs. The detonations are cumulative; by the end, you're deeply immersed in half a dozen lives. And, of course, a few deaths.

But, you say, a bar? Moehringer provides context:

In ancient Greece, there were amphitheaters, and there was plenty of wine served at amphitheaters. There needs to be a place where people come together, freed from their possessions and temporarily free of their houses and their identities to some extent and where they can be in semidarkness and tell the old stories. This is the very place where I decided that I wanted to find a way to tell stories for a living, and it's also the place where I first saw a man give his memoir. It was at this bar where I didn't know what it was at the time but I saw a guy tell his life story. And when he was done, he felt better about his life.

It's said that time spent in a bar is, like time spent fly-fishing, time outside of life. Moehringer captures that brilliantly. In his years at the oak plank, he made many notes on paper napkins, and what he heard has served him well, for his one-liners are timeless and priceless. "Do not laugh at me, pal," a man says. "My mother laughed at me and I had her operated on needlessly." Great stuff, and there's lots more of it.

Moehringer collected these notes, and, for years, thought he could turn them into a novel. He couldn't. Then 9/11 came along. Nearly 50 people from Manhasset died in the Towers; Moehringer, who was by then working in the West, came home to write about his home town. No jokes here, just funerals, and "the kind of crying I could tell would last for years."

The man who writes about those men and women is a writer the men of Dickens would be proud of --- he's not only learned what they had to teach him, he's gone beyond. He's performed psychic surgery on himself; he's at once painfully self-aware and fully functional. He can go from lunatic to serious in a sentence. He can forgive. Many talk of "moving on," and their jaws are all that moves; this guy did it, and it shows in every sentence.

The bar is no more. The men who schooled J.R, are, by now, dead or decrepit. But they --- and his mother --- did a helluva job on this kid. And he has returned the favor with an act of love, a remembrance that picks at every scab and still delivers hope.

I couldn't put "The Tender Bar" down.

Chants of a Lifetime: Searching for a Heart of Gold

Jesse Kornbluth — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:12:14 -0400

Krishna Das

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 14, 2012

I don’t lose books.

I lost this one.

A few years ago, I bought “Chants of a Lifetime” in Los Angeles, got on the plane, read a few chapters, put it aside and walked off the plane without it.

I realized right away I didn’t have it.

But I didn’t go back for it.

You read books when you’re ready for them. Clearly I wasn’t ready for the memoir of a desperately unhappy kid who falls in love with Neem Karoli Baba, finds ultimate happiness through his guru, loses it and regains it by chanting the names of God in a language he doesn’t understand.

What changed for me?

First is an echo of a decades-ago conversation I had with the great short story writer Andre Dubus. I asked him why he went to Mass every day. He said; “Because if Ronald Reagan defines ultimate reality, I'd have to shoot myself!” That’s pretty much how I have come to feel about most of what now passes for news: If this is reality, I need to find something else.

Better believe I have looked hard. And found lots of wisdom. But nothing grabbed me, shook me, calmed me until I encountered the music of Krishna Das. For the last few years, my wife and I have been going to his evenings at a church on the West Side. [The videos on my piece about Heart as Wide as the World were made there.] I am so not a chanter, so not a joiner, so not a seeker after a guru. But I have cherished these evenings. Last year, we brought the child, who complained briefly, then drifted into a beatific snooze.

And now I find I’m noticing a convergence of my head with others. A friend and I were talking about the music in heavy rotation in our lives. I said I was mostly listening to Krishna Das. Not just "Heart as Wide as the World,” but now, even more, “Greatest Hits of the Kali Yuga.” To buy the CD from Amazon, click here. For the MP3 download. click here.]

“I don’t know why,” I said, “but I feel Krishna Das helps me deal with a lot of the shit that’s in my way.”

“You and a lot of people,” she said, to my great surprise.

So it seemed like maybe this was the time for me to read “Chants of a Lifetime: Searching for a Heart of Gold.” [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here.]

It starts with Krishna Das --- the former Jeffrey Kagel, from and of Long Island --- about to return to America. He never thought this would happen; he’d hoped to stay with his guru forever. Now he was being sent back.

I blurted out in anguish, 'Maharaj-ji! How can I serve you in America?' He looked at me with mock disgust and said, 'What is this? If you ask how you should serve, then it is no longer service. Do what you want.' I couldn't believe my ears. How could doing what I wanted to do be of service to him? I didn't have that kind of faith. I just sat there, stunned. Then after a minute or so he looked over at me, smiling sweetly, and asked, 'So, how will you serve me?' 'My mind was blank. It was time for me to leave for Delhi, to catch the plane back to the States. He was looking at me and laughing. I bent down and touched his feet for the last time and when I looked up he, he was beaming at me, 'So, how will you serve me in America?' I felt like I was moving in a dream. I floated across the courtyard and bowed to him one more time from a distance. As I did, the words came to me, 'I will sing to you in America.'

This memoir is about getting to that moment, blowing it (a crack addiction), recovering, building a following for Hindu chanting, blowing it again (in 2002, Krishna Das pled guilty to a federal charge of money laundering and was sentenced to three years probation and six months house arrest), and moving on to bigger audiences and greater CD sales. It’s the usual story: an angel with a dirty face. Just like you. Just like me. Only here the contrasts are all in High Def.

I’m not much for reading about someone else’s God-intoxication. I prefer teaching stories, anecdotes, dish --- an adventure story --- punctuated by killer one-liners. By this standard, “Chants” is a classic. It starts with Kagel’s hilarious encounter with the Army physical. Quickly serves up a picture of Kagel in his bearded, long-haired Jesus moment. And then delivers the guru, the embodiment of divine love.

But this book does not read “holy.” Consider this, on his guru:

He didn’t teach with words. He’d shine light on me like the sun, and I’d bloom. When the clouds came between us, I saw that they were my own clouds. Then I would sit there, freaking out, ‘What the fuck! I can’t do anything about this.’

And in the end? “I feel like I'm the same jerk I always was,” Krishna Das writes, “but I don't think about myself as much as I used to.”

For most of the child’s life, my wife has put her to bed with a lecture called “Bore Me to Sleep." Exports, the Bill of Rights, what to visit in a dozen countries --- my wife has developed quite the repertoire.

My wife is away for a few days, so the bedtime boredom ritual has fallen to me. Last night, my first on the job, I told stories. I rubbed her back. Nothing worked. In desperation, I reached for this book and began to read. After a few minutes, the child asked me to stop.

“Too interesting," she said.

Out of the mouths of babes…

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For Krishna Das’s summer tour schedule, click here.

BONUS VIDEO

Albert King: Born Under a Bad Sign

Jesse Kornbluth — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:51:05 -0400

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 10, 2012

One of 13 children. As a child in Arkansas, picked cotton. Grew up to be 6’4”, 250 pounds on a thin day. Known to carry a .45 in his waistband.

Think Albert King had an attitude?

You bet. And good for him. Attitude is the first qualification for a Blues musician.

Born under a bad sign

Been down since I was old enough to crawl

If it wasn’t for bad luck

I wouldn’t have no luck at all.

Lines delivered with total credibility.

But for concise elegance we look to his guitar playing. Left-handed. Played a Gibson Flying V with a thumb rather than a pick.

And he used that thumb sparingly.

"It ain't how many notes you play,” he said. “It's how you play them."

Guitar players revered him. Mike Bloomfield, no slouch himself: “Albert can take four notes and write a volume. He can say more with fewer notes than anyone I've ever known."

Like this:

Unsurprisingly, King played in obscurity for much of his career. He worked construction. Saturday nights he was onstage in a dive.

I can't read, haven't learned how to write
My whole life has been one big fight
Born under a bad sign

When he signed with Stax/Volt, everything changed. His new label craved hits, not albums --- the goal was 3-minute songs with hooks. King obliged, and that is how, in 1967, Stax released one of the greatest Blues albums ever, “Born Under A Bad Sign.” (To buy the CD from Amazon, click here. Sadly, there is no download.)

Life changed fast. Cream recorded the title song. As did Hendrix. In 1968, rock promoter Bill Graham proposed to pay King $1,600 for three nights at the Filmore in San Francisco. "I hadn’t made $1,600 for three days in my life," King would recall.

Graham booked him with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The line was around the block; the show moved to a larger theater. The gig was extended --- for three weeks --- and Albert King had a new audience: white kids. A year later, he was performing with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, which he described as "an 87-piece blues band."

What he does sounds so simple. Play less, let every note count. It’s a code we all might consider, though few have the courage to live it --- there’s nothing shiny, nothing that grabs people by the lapels, in this approach. It’s Zen master music. And how many Zen masters are there, really?

Wine and women is all I crave
A big legged woman is
gonna carry me to my grave
Born under a bad sign

In fact, a heart attack took him. He was 69. Correctly, the Memphis Horns played “When the Saints Go Marching in” at his funeral.

BONUS VIDEOS

Real Food: What to Eat and Why

Jesse Kornbluth — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:15:52 -0400

Nina Planck

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 9, 2012

Her father was a college professor in upstate New York. Her mother started a school. But in the 1970s, Nina Planck's parents bought 60 acres in Virginia and, with their three children, started a new life --- as farmers.

The Plancks made a living selling produce at roadside stands and farmer's markets. Their children were forced to eat real food. Without restraint: "My mother used to dip her toast in the bacon fat. Nothing was off limits except white sugar and white flour."

The Planck kids grew up healthy and strong. But in her teens, Nina became a vegan. She had been 5'5” and 120 pounds, “most of it muscle.” Now she ran three to six miles a day --- and bloomed to 147 pounds, with less muscle tone.

Alarmed, she started responding to her natural hungers. And she learned two things:

1) “The more meat, fish, butter and eggs I ate, the better I felt.”

2) “No traditional culture is vegan --- humans are omnivores."

Nature created humans as omnivores? Well, look in the mirror, she says: "We have the physical equipment for omnivory, from teeth to guts. We have extraordinary needs for nutrients not found in plants. They include fully-formed vitamins A and D, vitamin B12, and the long-chain fatty acids found in fish."

Omnivores. Hmm. That should ring a bell if you've read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma or In Defense of Food. Planck's book is a companion to Pollan, a hands-on guide to what you ought to eat, and why. (To buy “Real Food” from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.)

Planck's major proposition is that “traditional” food --- “foods we've been eating for a long time” --- is good for us. “Industrial” food --- “recent and synthetic” --- is bad for us. Worse, industrial food leads to the diseases of the industrial era: obesity, diabetes, heart disease. "The greatest error of modern industrial life, which celebrates the lab and technology, is our love affair with the facsimile," she writes. "It is time to face the music. Some things cannot be replaced. Real food is one."

Egg-white omelets? Skinless chicken breasts? Farmed fish? Not on her table. Above all: avoid corn in all its forms: corn-fed beef, corn oil, and corn syrup. "You’d be surprised at how much junk food you’ll stop eating," she says.

You want to eat the skin of a roast chicken? Please do. Like mashed potatoes moistened with butter and milk? Go right ahead. And, yes, eat meat: “Plant protein is always inferior to animal protein.”

Some of this will be familiar --- there are echoes here of the Mediterranean diet. What was new to me is the unwavering emphasis on natural foods in their purest form: grass-fed beef, whole milk from pastured cows, raw milk yogurts and cheeses. And on cooking combinations, foods that work together to release more useful energy in your body.

Planck has done massive homework, and the book is clotted with science --- her conclusions aren't just the pet theories of some New Age Whole Foods crowd. smarties will read pen in hand to mark the good stuff.

But then, you should read “Real Food” as if you're going to school --- there are that many pointers to better living here. Like which “organic” foods to eat. Unless you have unlimited wealth, you'll notice your food bills are dramatically higher if you opt for an all-natural kitchen. If you have to choose, Planck says, it's better to buy grocery vegetables and wash the chemicals off. Save your money for organic, grass-feed beef --- if there are pesticides in animal protein, they're in the most concentrated form. Not healthy.

And there are charming factoids along the way. My favorite: “spring” butter, so named because it's produced by cows eating lush pasture in spring and fall. Priests used to bless it. If I could find some and slather it on real bread, I imagine I might too.

Inspired by this book, I went down to Murray's Cheese Shop in Greenwich Village and bought a sampling of raw milk cheeses and yogurt. The yogurt had creamy lumps that made me think twice --- until I had some. So that's what yogurt tastes like! Ditto the cheeses, all of them much stronger than what we usually get.

Thanks to Pollard and Planck, we have banished most of the products that our fellow citizens enthusiastically swallow --- for the kid, we've found Heinz Ketchup without High Fructose Corn Syrup.

It's a start.

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To buy the Euro Cuisine YM80 Yogurt Maker from Amazon.com, click here.