Monthly Archives: March 2011

A new Martin Scorsese interview book, reviewed in the L.A. Times:

Brilliant, brazen, engaging, esoteric, reverent, irreverent, ironic — all are qualities that have forged the 68-year-old director into an unqualified master. Much revered, once reviled, Scorsese has created some of the most extraordinary work in modern cinema: the gangster leitmotif of “Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas,” “Casino” and “The Departed”; the awakening feminism of “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”; the brutal anger of “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull”; the unsettling treatise on fame in “The King of Comedy”; the respectful religious provocation of the much-maligned “The Last Temptation of Christ”; and on it goes.

The length and breadth of that work is the starting point for longtime film critic, author and documentarian Richard Schickel in “Conversations With Scorsese,” his intriguing, sometimes maddening but ultimately satisfying new book. Though billed as a conversation, it often reads more like a lecture series as the men discuss each of Scorsese’s feature films, a smattering of his documentaries, his views on editing, music, color, storyboarding and everything else in the filmmaking process.

As anyone who’s ever caught the filmmaker on TV or in person knows, everything about him seems irrepressible — his humor, his passion, that rubber-band grin, the Buddy Holly horn rims and those caterpillar brows. That nature is both the appeal and the conundrum of the book — when to rein him in and when to let him run. Schickel does a good deal of both, though the book would have benefited from more tightening.

I’m sure there is some good stuff in here and I’m not surprised that Scorsese is less than candid about his failures and his personal life.

Good looking to Long Form Reads for linking to Hilton Als’ 1999 New Yorker profile of Richard Pyror:

Pryor’s art defies the very definition of the word “order.” He based his style on digressions and riffs—the monologue as jam session. He reinvented standup, which until he developed his signature style, in 1971, had consisted largely of borscht-belt-style male comedians telling tales in the Jewish vernacular, regardless of their own religion or background. Pryor managed to make blacks interesting to audiences that were used to responding to a liberal Jewish sensibility—and, unlike some of his colored colleagues, he did so without “becoming” Jewish himself. (Dick Gregory, for example, was a political comedian in the tradition of Mort Sahl; Bill Cosby was a droll Jack Benny.) At the height of his career, Pryor never spoke purely in the complaint mode. He was often baffled by life’s complexities, but he rarely told my-wife-made-me-sleep-on-the-sofa jokes or did “bits” whose sole purpose was to “kill” an audience with a boffo punch line. Instead, he talked about characters—black street people, mostly. Because the life rhythm of a black junkie, say, implies a certain drift, Pryor’s stories did not have badda-bing conclusions. Instead, they were encapsulated in a physical attitude: each character was represented in Pryor’s walk, in his gestures—which always contained a kind of vicarious wonder at the lives he was enacting. Take, for instance, his sketch of a wino in Peoria, Illinois—Pryor’s hometown and the land of his imagination—as he encounters Dracula. In the voice of a Southern black man, down on his luck:

Hey man, say, nigger—you with the cape. . . . What’s your name, boy? Dracula? What kind of name is that for a nigger? Where you from, fool? Transylvania? I know where it is, nigger! You ain’t the smartest motherfucker in the world, even though you is the ugliest. Oh yeah, you a ugly motherfucker. Why you don’t get your teeth fixed, nigger? That shit hanging all out your mouth. Why you don’t get you an orthodontist? . . . This is 1975, boy. Get your shit together. What’s wrong with your natural? Got that dirt all in the back of your neck. You’s a filthy little motherfucker, too. You got to be home ’fore the sun come up? You ain’t lyin’, motherfucker. See your ass during the day, you liable to get arrested. You want to suck what? You some kind of freak, boy? . . . You ain’t suckin’ nothing here, junior.

Als contends that Pryor’s two greatest albums are “That Nigger’s Crazy,” and “Bicentennial Nigger.” I love the former but think the later is not nearly as good as “Is it Something I Said?” and “Wanted: Live in Concert.” But I do think that Pryor at his peak reached a place that no comic has ever approached, before or since.

[Picture by Ken Taylor]

The Yankees made a bit of news on Thursday when they played Jorge Posada in the field for the first time this spring. It wasn’t at catcher, but at first base, where Posada actually looked good in catching a line drive and starting a double play.

I’m glad to see the Yankees use Posada at first base, giving them another option on days when Mark Teixeira needs a rest. (Ugh, there’s that word again.) But they have yet to use Posada as a catcher this Grapefruit League season, and have indicated they have no intention of doing so. I think that’s a mistake. By giving Posada just a few reps behind the plate, they could ensure his availability as a third-string, emergency catcher during the regular season. If Russell Martin were to miss a few games on a day-to-day basis, the Yankees would then have Posada available to back up Jesus Montero (or whoever the No. 2 catcher is). This would give the Yankees more flexibility, prevent an unnecessary call-up of someone like Austin Romine, and give the proud Posada the satisfaction of knowing that he might still do some catching in 2011.

The Yankees seem to think that Posada could get hurt if he catches at all this spring. That’s always a possibility, but it seems like an awfully negative way of thinking by which to operate a team. Imagining worst case scenarios at every turn can lead to some strange managerial decision-making. It’s also an odd way of thinking for a team that was willing to put Posada behind the plate in critical postseason games just five months ago…

(more…)

Yankee single-game tickets go on sale today at 10 AM.

Once again, I can’t afford to buy more than a few upper-deck or bleacher seats, and will be relying on the kindness of friends, StubHub, and occasionally press passes to get to games in person this year. There’s not much sense in complaining about the price of tickets, or anything else in New York City, really – it is what it is, which is expensive, and either you can afford it or you can’t; if the market couldn’t bear it, they’d go down, but apparently it can. And Yankees tickets have never been what I’d call reasonably priced in my adult life, so I’m used to it. Still, I always read books and articles where people talk about just walking up to the Stadium and paying a few bucks for a ticket and heading inside, back in the day, and feel a twinge. Leave it to baseball to succeed in making me nostalgic for things I never even lived through.

Mets tickets are, for obvious reasons, much more affordable these days on the whole (plus, they have Shake Shack. I wouldn’t argue that it’s one of the absolute best burgers in the city if only because they only offer American cheese, which is pathetic, but it’s better than anything I’ve gotten at Yankee Stadium, for sure). And truly affordable are Brooklyn Cyclones games, which are actually faster to get to from my Brooklyn apartment, cost $10 for perfectly nice seats, and are lovely and relaxed experiences even though the quality of play is far from major league-ready. I have a great picture of me and Sandy, their seagull mascot, from last season but after careful deliberation I’ve decided it’s too embarrassing to post. Anyway, the point is, I’ll still get my live baseball in one way or another.

Maybe this is the year I finally set foot on Staten Island for a Staten Island Yanks game. Amazingly, though I have spent nearly three decades living in New York or close outside it, and though I have been to Queens and the Bronx hundreds of times, I’ve never made the journey to the city’s 5th borough. Cue up your Staten Island jokes.

Meanwhile, Trenton is a place that I have set foot in, but only by accident, and I vowed never to make that mistake again. But should I make an exception for Manny Banuelos, who recently received the Mo Rivera seal of approval in a major way? Maybe, maybe.

What’s your ticket situation this year?

The Yanks lost to the Phillies today. Cliff has the recap.

[Drawing by Mary Byrom]

Writing ain’t easy…even for Tina Fey.

There was a good piece on why writers abandon novels in the Book Review last Sunday. I like this bit from Stephen King: ““Look, writing a novel is like paddling from Boston to London in a bathtub,” he said. “Sometimes the damn tub sinks. It’s a wonder that most of them don’t.”

From the Brick City Gutter to a Touch of Class…

Picking up on yesterday’s tune by Joe Cocker, let’s do it right:

And since we’re dippin’ into the K-Solo, here he is with Red flippin’ the old Just Ice beat. Time to get your ass to the gym and work it out to this banger:

On the heels of the new Joe D book, consider Derek Jeter: From the Pages of the New York Times. It’s handsome, with lots of glossy photographs as well as a fine introduction by Tyler Kepner. For the serious Yankee fan, this one is a keeper.

Best Pizza is reviewed in the Times:

Most garlic knots let you down. After one or two salty, satisfying bites, you’re left to chew on the increasingly impenetrable thing like a masticating cow. It’s a snack food for suckers and optimists, anybody with a Charlie Brown-like faith that maybe Lucy Van Pelt won’t pull away the football, that this time it might be great.

The garlic knots ($3 for six) at Best Pizza in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, deliver on that hope. Baked in a century-old brick oven, they arrive charred on top and creamy inside, more gougère than repurposed crust. There are no tricks, just good technique: dough that rises all day; a drizzle of garlic oil after the knots come out of the oven; a dusting of shaved pecorino; chopped parsley, because that’s what you do. The knots are served on a flimsy paper plate with pickled vegetables (fennel, mostly) because Best Pizza is a slice joint, where $3 will feed you, and $15 will pay for a feast.

The good–it looks damn tasty, the bad, it’s in Williamsburg. But if you happen to find yourself in Hipster Dufus Heaven, looks like it is worth checking out.

[Photo Credit: Brooklyn 365]

Over at Esquire, Scott Raab interviews Chris Rock.

Miguel Cabrera’s swigging-scotch-in-front-of-the-arresting-officer DUI last month was already firmly in the bad news category, but details are emerging – as details will – that make it seem even scarier. According to the Detroit News:

Before his drunken driving arrest last month, Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera threatened to “blow up” a bar that refused to serve him and then told police to shoot him, according to a police report released Wednesday that reveals new details….

…Cabrera walked into the Cowboys Bar-B-Q & Steak Co. after last call and was asked to leave, bar manager Fletcher Nail said in a statement to police.

The ballplayer ignored the manager and walked up to a table of strangers and began talking to them, said Nail.

When Nail again asked him to leave, Cabrera patted a bag on his shoulder and leaned down close to the manager’s face.

“You don’t know me,” Cabrera told him. “I will kill you. I know all of you, and I will kill all of you and blow this place up.”

The News also has video of the arrest, but I felt uncomfortable watching; it’s too embarrassing. Anyway, you don’t even know what’s really going on with a public figure lie Cabrera, but if he doesn’t have a serious problem he’s doing a great impression of someone who does, and I hope the Tigers are doing what’s best for him.

Meanwhile the Mariners recently started giving players and employees key fobs with the number of car services on them. That’s one of those good common sense sort of things that can only help, and can’t hurt, but I always wonder how much responsibility – if any – clubs have, or ought to have, for their players’ extracurricular behavior. A guy who drives his Rolls Royce drunk despite having a truck of security professionals with him is probably not going to be reasoned with.

My main concern with spring training is that nobody on the Yanks gets seriously hurt. Otherwise, I avoid watching games and I don’t follow the stories out of Florida too closely, because I don’t want to know too much. I crave the element of mystery and surprise and I want to be fresh once the season begins. There are other sports to keep me busy now–it’s hoops galore these days–and other interests, book and movies, that I’ll put aside once the regular season starts.

This is will be the ninth season for me at the Banter and, as you can tell, baseball alone, never mind the Yankees, is not enough to sustain my interest. Writing is hard, even when it is a quick blog post, and it is important for me not to become jaded and bored. Which is why I’m lucky to have a great crew of contributors as well as a cherce group of regular readers.

Here’s hoping this season turns out to be a fun one. I’m counting on it.

I took pride in my ability to imitate batting stances growing up so I never fell in love with the Batting Stance Guy. He is good, very good in some cases, but I’m a tough critic. But I have to say, the kid has skills. This made my day (the Boswell is killer, love Dan’s Sideshow Bob wig, and Ozzie, well, see for yourself and smile):

Thanks to Cliff for pointing out the facts.

Manhattan in Moscow, via Mark Lamster…cause he’s got it like that.

There is an excerpt from the new Joe D book in this week’s issue of SI. Check it outski:

JOE DIMAGGIO sat reading Superman and smoking in his room at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. He adored Superman comics, although he did not want many people to know this. If the newspapers picked up on it, who knew what people might think? What if they made fun of him? His roommate, Lefty Gomez, had the assignment of discreetly buying the weekly comic book for DiMaggio; whenever Joe himself carried a copy he tucked it out of sight. He read the daily Superman strips in the newspaper too.

Superman was a story of unambiguous heroism in which the seemingly impossible was routinely achieved. Something important was always at stake. Everybody loved Superman, and unfailingly he saved the day. There was also the ever-present element of secrecy, of Clark Kent’s disguising a completely other identity that no one, not even Lois Lane, could know.

“Why, Joe, you’re just like him,” Gomez would kid. “He puts on his uniform, and all of a sudden no one can stop him! He’s everyone’s hero.” Sometimes when Gomez bought the comic—and DiMaggio always had him get it the very day it came out—he would goof around by calling out to DiMaggio, who hovered off to the side, “You mean this comic book, Joe? Or this one, the Superman?” DiMaggio would scowl and turn his back and walk off a few paces. Only Gomez could get away with tweaking him like this.

That night, June 28, 1941, with a chance for DiMaggio to pass George Sisler’s American League record during a doubleheader at Griffith Stadium the next day, he and Gomez would stay in the room. DiMaggio’s hitting streak was at 40 games, one short of Sisler’s mark from 1922, and as the 26-year-old DiMaggio had realized over the last few days in New York City and Philadelphia, being out in public now meant being subjected to almost relentless pestering.

For the unleavened experience…

Check out this piece on Matzo.

Charles Pierce is the latest in Chris Jones’ compelling Five for Writing series:

At one point in one of the stories, Sherlock Holmes tells Watson that he is related to a famous French painter named Vernet. Watson expresses surprise that Holmes is not a painter himself. “Art in the blood,” Holmes tells him, “takes the strangest forms.” My grandfather was a sign-painter and a landscape artist. One of his best hangs in my living room. His daughter, my mother, played piano in a saloon. I do what I do. Art in the blood takes the strangest forms.

Shouldn’t we find the art, or love, or whatever you want to call it, in everything that we do? From they way we look, and see things to how we treat people? From the work that we do–no matter what it is–to the way we cut an onion and prepare a meal. That’s why life is art and vice versa.