Chicago Street Incident

•                                 ••                                 •

I was coming back from the grocery, my cane of
course in my right hand, trailing a little cart with
my left.  I had entered the cross walk at the inter-
section of Eugenie and Wells.  I was having a little
difficulty maneuvering the cart and my head was
down.

Looking up I was headed right at young woman
on her cell phone.  She was looking straight at me.
In a moment her eyes de-focused and she shifted
her eyes to my right.  She didn't change her path.

I moved right, and we passed without incident, but
in that moment her eyes lost their focus I could see
that she had absolutely no interest in me as a human
being.  She made no adjustment for me.

 I might as well not have been there.

Maybe she wasn't really there.

•                                 ••                                 •

DEEP UNDERCOVER

A Motion Picture Treatment

by Callahan Cleanwood

the basis of a true story

ANGLE ON:

NITT ROMEY'S boyishly handsome, exuberantly happy face.  He
is listening to words of praise pouring out of Hollywood Icon
CLINT EASTWOOD who is addressing a crowd of ROMEY SUPPORTERS.

It's clear the praise of this legend is like a drug - he can't get enough
of it - to a man who has allowed himself very few of life's pleasures.
After the speech, SUPPORTERS gather around NITT to congratulate
him on the words of the Man with no Name.   

Although anxious to work his way to the star, NITT can't help asking
EACH WELL-WISHER, "Did you hear what Clint said?"  As NITT 
basks in the glow of the moments-old memory,

CLINT looks back from a SIDE DOOR.  Behind him stand TWO 
FIGURES IN COWBOY HATS W/FACES IN THE SHADOW.
CLINT sizes up NITT:  "do you think he'll bite?"  

"Reckon he will."  Spit chewing tobacco.

THE THREE  slip out, letting the door close behind them.

ON THE ROMEY PLANE - NIGHT

NAN stands behind ROMEY buckled into his SWIVEL CHAIR.
They are surrounded by CAMPAIGN AIDS, all in shirt sleeves
with loosened ties.   

ROMEY

It's perfect.

CAMPAIGN MANAGER

The risk seems too great.  

ROMEY

What risk?  What could go wrong?

ANGLE ON:

LOGO OF 2012 RNC

PULL BACK TO REVEAL:

SEARCH LIGHTS MOVING OVER STAGE AND HALL looking 

for the MYSTERY GUEST.  

ON A MONITOR - AN ANCHORWOMAN rubs her hands like

Simon Legreed, wondering who the MYSTERY GUEST will be.

CLINT  stands ready to walk on.   NITT comes up BEHIND  him.  

Without turning around, CLINT starts talking:

Imagine, Governor, a movie star who wanted to break into 

performance art.  Being a star, he's used to having his whims

indulged.  Not wanting to start from the bottom and work

his way up, he imagines performing in public the first time

before a huge national audience.    Who knows?   It may be 

the last.  Still he wants to make a splash, so what would be

the best venue to leave his mark.   Not a regular tv show: 

with cable the audience is too splintered; not a sporting 

event: he doesn't want to play 2nd fiddle to a sports event.

He's got it:  a national political convention, the night the

candidate accepts the nomination.  The big cuhuna, the 

one night Americans still watched tv together as a nation.

Only one problem:  how to upstage the candidate.  The

Star wants to be the star, not the supporting player,

but he's just the opening act.  What to do?  What to do?

Suddenly he gets it.  What is Hollywood?  It's the dream

factory.   And where do dreams come from?   The unconscious.

The unconscious is much more powerful  than the conscious

as a storyteller.    Let the candidate represent the conscious

aspect of the Republican mind, he, the STAR, would embody

the unconscious fears, resentments and assumptions which 

actually motivate the Party.  He would bring forth the true
dreams of the GOP.  He would show fully in the sleep of 
reason, what nightmares have risen.

Just then the Theme from The Good, the Bad & the Ugly 
suddenly sounded its opening notes.

"Listen, Clint, maybe you shouldn't go on," said Romey.  "It doesn't

look like you're feeling well."

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Clint Eastwood!"

"Never better," and the man with no name strolled out under the 
bright, bright lights.

THE END

My Favorite SNL Alumni

•                                             •                                             •

                 

 I certainly don't claim these are the 3 greatest  Saturday Night Live

Alumni in the show's history - just that they are my favorites for the

reasons outlined below.   I present them in no particular order:

Bill Murray has had quite simply the greatest motion picture career of 
any alumni.  Unlike Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell who are perpetually 
stuck in films which play as a little more than extended comedy sketches, 
Bill Murray has caught the eye of some of the best directors of our time 
from Michael Almereyda to Jim Jarmusch to Tim Burton and Wes Anderson, 
not to mention such stalwarts as Richard Donner, Ivan Reitman, Sophia 
Coppola, Sydney Pollack and Harold Ramis.   

Still even his frequent forays into messy, high-concept, low production values comedy reveal a sensibility which appeals to the imagination like no other SNL alumn's crotch humor.  The scene I've included from the early Meatballs captures the essence of Bill Murray for me:  a profound belief that it just doesn't matter.  An insouciant willingness 
to fail is the source of Murray's strength, and it's what makes his work in his "throw-aways" sometimes as compelling as his most   "serious" work.


Mike Meyers does not rank as one of the greatest performers from the alumni ranks - though he is a very good performer - but for my money he has the most original comic mind to come from the main cast.   The very late night sketches on SNL are usually, putting mildly, of the second rank - that is unless they were Mike Meyers sketches, in which case they were often just too weird to go into the prime time of the show.  

Even when the sketches don't quite work, such as a time machine sketch in which a young man finally gets in synch with an attractive woman and a competitive male via the time machine in a bathroom stall, they still hold and intrigue the imagination and linger in the memory.

Although Wayne and Dieter are Meyer's most popular creations, for me the epitome of the Mike Meyers character will always be Simon, the hapless, cheerfully unloved British schoolboy who loves drawering.  

But what made Mike Myers most special for me was that  no other SNL alumn has ever showed the same talent the classic but rare comic tradition of developing and then sustaining and building a sight gag.  Just think of the various fruits Austin Power holds up to cover block Elizabeth Hurley's breasts in the first Austin Powers' film, or this one from the second:

SNL deserves credit for launching Chris Rock, although his special talents do not lie comfortably in the usual skills  around which the show is designed.

Quite simply Chris Rock is the hardest hitting social satirist left since George Carlin died.  He is the best of today's stand up comics.  His remarks on male-female relationships are probably the source of his popularity, but it is the distinctions he makes between being wealthy and being rich, or between having a job and pursuing a career which really have bite.  His remarks on racism, by contrast are so carefully nuanced, whites might well be surprised they are not made more uncomfortable.

•                                             •                                             •

FLOAT: a super short Chicago story

•                                             •                                            •

He had one of those laughs which sounds like an assault when it
comes up unawares behind you on the street, but as he passed her
she found her hatred of the abrasive laugh melting into an
undeniable sense of oneness with the still laughing man and his
fatuous sideburns, so sharply delineated along a 165º angle.

In another moment she grabbed at the air she lived in to keep
her balance as she found herself - right there on the sidewalk
on Wells outside the stucco busts of Second City - melting into
a strange oneness with all those coming and passing.  Did they
feel this oneness all the time?  No surely not.  Had anyone
ever felt it before?

Still she kept melting, struggling to keep her head up and her
lungs open,  feeling the danger was real, and she might really
go down under a single, infinite wave into this sudden ocean.
Had it always been there?  Could it continue to exist if she
drowned in it?

She wasn't panicking exactly, but she couldn't stop struggling
either, despite the voice inside her which kept counselling:

Float.

•                                             •                                            •

Is This Supposed to be PROFESSIONAL Baseball?

Am I the only one who feels the celebrating at the end of major league
baseball games, especially those ending in a walk off have gotten a little
excessive?

These guys are supposed to be professionals after all, and often they're
jumping around like popcorn in hot oil in games that have little long
term significance and don't affect post season play.  It goes against the
understated stoicism which has long been part of the baseball myth, not
to even bring up an arcane idea such as it's poor sportsmanship and
disrespectful to the team which has just fallen short.

Here's an interesting coda to this posting:  players hurt while celebrating.

Self-Promotion

•                                         •                                         •


Anyone who knows me will tell you that of all the cultural
institutions I love, including my alma mater (boola-boola),
the absolute closest to my heart is WFMT.

I think it is simply the best classical music station in the
United States.  I'd almost go as far as saying that given
today's cultural climate, it's the best possible classical
radio station.   It's one of the glories of Chicago and a
real gift from the heartland to the cultural capitals of
America on the Coasts.

The New York Philharmonic is syndicated nationally
thanks to WFMT.  Same with the Los Angeles Opera
and the San Francisco Opera.   It plays a very
generous selection of vocal music  - a form of music
banned from most classical stations in this country
apart from the weekly Metropolitan Opera Broadcast
on some stations - and FMT plays more opera than
anyone else, at least two complete operas per week.
The station plays contemporary music with a fearlessness
otherwise unknown in the halls of classical music.  I'm
certain when I finally get to hear the music of Natasha
Bogojevich, America's most underrated composer, on
the radio, it will be at 98.7 here in Chicago.

If you've never heard the station, I urge to start listening
now.   Still when fundraising time rolls around, I can
barely endure the endless stream of self-congratulatory
talk which is evidently necessary to keep WFMT on the
air at the high standard to which we listeners have
become accustomed.

My point is not to criticize FMT but to bemoan the
culture which makes it necessary to wallow in verbal
self-admiration in order to survive.  I recognize all
this verbiage is necessary, and I do give; but the better
part of my nature wishes the station could at least
acknowledge the corrupting influence such necessary
self-promotion subtly but inevitably exerts.

Don't let me overstate the case.  It's not that in fund
raising, as in war, the first casualty is the truth; it's
instead the loss of a balanced view.  The announcers
can't admit there are times the same music gets played
too much or that certain local symphonies which they
play don't really merit the attention.

We can no longer talk of ourselves as we really are,
because we are taught that if we don't promote ourselves,
who else can we expect to do it.  Self-doubt doesn't sell,
and selling has become the business of life.

The question is do we really want our relationships with
others to be reduced to constant selling in which each
tries to get the other to buy.  For the sake of having a
buyer for ourselves, we agree to play the buyer for the
other.  It's a diminished world we live in, but it's our
world, so start promoting - just realize the price extracted.

Henry Adams, Guest Blogger

My guest blogger this week is Henry Adams, perhaps
America's first great historian - the first I know of at
least.  The great grandson of John Adams and grandson
of John Quincy Adams, he was of the first Adams
generation to give up the ambition of being president.
(His father, Charles Francis Adams, nursed the ambition
though not able to realize it.)

Here Adams writes of the Founding Fathers's attitude
toward military spending:

Granting that the American people were about to risk 
their future on a new experiment, they naturally wished to throw aside all burdens of which they could rid themselves. Believing that in the long run interest, not violence, would rule the world, and that the United States must depend for safety and success on the interests they could create, they were tempted to look upon war and preparations for war as the worst of blunders; for they were sure that every dollar capitalized in industry was a means of overthrowing their enemies more effective than a thousand dollars spent on frigates or standing armies.  The success of the American system was, from this point of view, a question of economy.
               
                       - History of the United States During the
                         1st Administration of Jefferson, Part I*

Some of us still agree with the Founding Fathers that not
all money spent on defense makes America safer or
stronger.  In fact as as it diverts money away from vitals needs, 
such as educational opportunity for all, safe highways & bridges
and clean water, military spending can make us less safe.  


Too much military spending can even destroy a nation.  Look at
what happened to the Soviet Union in the 1980s and early 90s
when excessive spending on defense led to the collapse of the
government and the break up of the empire.  


It would be ironic if we couldn't escape the same fate for ourselves.


*Adams, Henry, History of the United States During the First Administration of Jefferson, Part I,
Charles Scribners' Sons, New York, 1891, p. 162.


Note: Please ignore the white highlighting.  I do not know why it
shows up and have been unable to rid myself of it.  If you have
any insight, please let me know.