Two paintings of Greg G in Santa Monica (gouache on paper), 1997

The writer Nik Cohn was profiled in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. A gifted critic of Rock n Roll, Cohn is most famous for this piece–“Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night”–the basis of the movie “Saturday Night Fever.”

Thing of it is, he made most of it up:

“There’s nothing I’ve written that I’ve been able to reread in later years without deep, deep dread,” [Cohn] said, waving off a compliment. The prime example remains “Saturday Night.”

It’s hard now to believe anyone took it for literal truth. Its audacious artfulness makes most New Journalism look like court stenography. Vincent and his Bay Ridge posse were composites, based on the mods he knew in London a decade before. Cohn — who appears in the article as a shadowy figure in a tweed suit — never did spend much time at the 2001 Odyssey disco. That “Saturday Night” struck a deep nerve was not particularly comforting to its creator. “I found it very difficult to function,” he says of the aftermath, not overjoyed to be talking about it. “I completely lost my way and had enormous self-contempt. It knocked me off my trolley, and my trolley has never been the solidest base in the universe.”

…“When I was young and on the hustle, there was something that made people not want to talk to me,” Cohn admits, still savoring the turnaround. “So when people actually started talking to me, I thought, Wow, this is far more fascinating than all the stuff I made up. I realized you don’t have to create the myth. You don’t have to embroider. It’s all there.”

I’ve never read Cohn’s stuff on Rock. But I’m curious.

Three to One does I (scream!) cake.

Indians.

Final day of the winter meetings.

Hardball Talk’s got it going on.

Update: Albert to the Angels. Whoa, Daddy.

It’s cold in New York today. I saw a dude on the train on my way to working this morning. He was not wearing a coat. I looked down.  Sandals with no socks. Really, man?

When I got to work and, I said good morning to Big Lou, one of the security guards in my building. I told him about the guy on the train.

Lou said, “Well, you never know, he could have a foot problem.”

“No, Lou, I think some people are just Herbs.”

“You never know, Al. Who are we to judge?”

I stopped and looked at Lou and told him that he was right. I thanked him for pointing out the facts. Won’t be the last time today that I need correcting.

Good to have people like Lou in your life.

Sitting on the train this morning at 125th street, the light pours in from the east. It’s always good to have someone blocking the sun.

One small move on their part and:

Blinded by the Light.

Let’s all agree that before you write an article about trading Jesus Montero for a starting pitcher, that starting pitcher needs to be better than current free agent C.J. Wilson.

For the last two years, C.J. Wilson has been better than Gio Gonzalez in almost every way. Wilson pitched more innings, kept balls in the park at a better rate and walked fewer batters. They whiffed guys at close to the same rate, but Gonzalez jumped up in 2011 to claim a slight edge. That’s in raw numbers. When you look at the home road splits, it becomes clear we are talking about two different animals. Wilson is stellar outside the harsh environs of the Ballpark in Arlington. Gonzalez is ordinary once removed from Oakland and its acres of foul territory.

The main knock against Wilson is that he has walked 167 men in the last two years. Gonzalez has issued 183 free passes in 25 fewer innings.

Gio Gonzalez is five years younger than C.J. Wilson and still under team control for several years. His explosion in strikeouts in 2011 bodes well for his future. Those are huge points in his favor, no doubt. He’s projectible and cheap and certainly may be better than C.J. Wilson in a few years when Wilson gets older and Gonzalez is in his prime. But Jesus Montero is under team control for six more years. Which sounds better, Jesus Montero for six years and C.J. Wilson for whatever it takes to sign him? Or Gio Gonzalez for four years and whatever bat they have to sign to replace Jesus Montero?

The Yankees are not making headlines during the Hot Stove season, so the writers are left to make their own heat. Hey, I’d love to see Gio Gonzalez at the back end of the staff while he tries to get those walks down and learns to pitch to Death Valley in Yankee Stadium. But not at the cost of six years of a bat like Montero’s. Not when a better version of the same pitcher can be obtained on the free agent market.

The Yanks win negotiating rights with Hiroyuki Nakajima.

Oh, hell yeah. Check this out.

Saveur talks Sunday sauce.

We listen…with our stomach.

[Photo Credit: The Pioneer Woman Cooks! and  My Recipes]

Here’s another original manuscript from W.C. Heinz, reprinted with permission from his daughter, Gayl Heinz.

This piece, “Maybe Tomorrow, Maybe the Next Day” is about a comedian, Jeremy Vernon. It originally appeared in the Saturday Evening Post (January 27, 1968).

Enjoy.

f

A few weeks ago, I received the following e-mail from Jeremy Vernon:

Unfortunately I can’t tell you a lot about Bill, except that I very much enjoyed his company and working with him. He was a warm, gentle man (perhaps, somewhat surprising to me, for a sports figure) extremely considerate and tactful, and his questions were well thought out, intelligent and he dug deep.
He took notes rather than using a tape recorder during the interviews, which were casual, btw, at purely random times, it seemed.

Bill followed me to Cherry Hill, NJ where I was appearing with Peggy Lee at the Latin Casino. He was with me for about 5 days, I believe. The band leader appeared to be soused or otherwise whacked out, and Bill kindly eschewed mentioning it in the article. Between shows I took Bill to see a nearby 2nd rate club I had working in my salad days, The Hawaiian Cottage, a pseudo-Polynesian “family” restaurant. The owner, Joe Zucchi (singular of zucchini?), treated me to a sandwich, but presented Bill with a bill for his food. Bill took it with a knowing, tolerant smile.

The way the article came about was that Bill had been given an assignment to write about a working comedian who was not a “name.” He contacted the William Morris agency, who directed him to the late Corbett Monica (who wasn’t late at the time), and me. I was appearing at the Copa, with Miss Peggy Lee. Bill said he chose me over Monica, if memory serves, because I was less well known, which he found a richer source for a story. Hey, this was some 44 years ago. Possibly Bill found me less slick and unassuming.

For more W.C. Heinz here’s Part One, Two, and Three.

What’s a matter with you, boy?

One of my favorites from Eric and Parrish:

[Photo Via: Music From the Pit]

Before long, Albert Pujols will agree to a long contract worth a whack of cash. The Marlins? The Cards? I still figure he’ll stay in St. Louis but would enjoy seeing Pujols shaked things up and head to Ozzieland in Miami.

Meanwhile, the Yanks play Take My A.J., please.

Getting sick on a train is tough business. I’ve seen people pass out and throw up, usually in tight quarters. One time on a crowded train, a woman feinted into the unsuspecting lap beneath her. The person attached to the lap made a move to quickly give up his seat, but in his haste to make space he dropped her on the floor.

I’ve never been that kind of sick, but I’ve felt a fever creep over me in those hellish depths. It was winter, hat-and-scarf winter, and that icky warmth spread out from the center of my thick jacket. It traced the outlines of my shoulders and neck until it erupted in sweat down my back and out towards my hands.

I wrenched my scarf free. I would have left it for trash on the floor if there was enough space to let it fall. I jammed the wool hat in my bag and wedged the bag between my legs. I unbuttoned the jacket. Even the warm, dank subway car air was welcome inside the jacket.

I pivoted slightly so I could wiggle one arm free of its sleeve. And then the other. The jacket slid down into my arms and I folded it over and over until it looked more like a pillow. I tied the scarf around the jacket like a sweaty parcel. Then I reached down to reposition my bag over my shoulders.

I thought to myself, if there is snow on the ground when I get out of this subway, I am going to bury my head in it.

I stood there sweating for a few minutes, holding the jacket package and feeling eyes on me from all over the car. The train slowed down to approach 125th St. I had about a hundred blocks to go.

By 168th St, I was shivering.

 [Photo by Lesley Steele]

Drawing Class: NYC. Charcoal on paper. (1996)

Over at Deadspin, I profile the late George Kimball:

George Kimball hung upside down some 70 feet in the cold Manhattan air, still in need of a cigarette. Well, the doctors had said smoking would kill him, hadn’t they? The previous autumn, they had found an inoperable cancerous tumor the size of a golf ball in his throat and given him six months to live. Five months had passed. He’d finished his latest round of chemotherapy, and now George, 62 years old and recently retired from the Boston Herald, was at the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom in 2006, to cover a night of boxing for a website called The Sweet Science.

He’d never set foot in the place before. He didn’t even know what floor he was on when he went for a smoke between fights. There was a long line at the elevator so he went looking for a backstage exit and stepped out into the winter night, onto a tiny platform seven stories over the sidewalk. And then, as George would later tell the story, he plunged into darkness.

His leg caught between the fire ladder and the wall. He knew right away it was broken. He dangled from the fire escape like a bat—except bats can let go. He tried calling for help but his voice was too weak from the cancer treatments; he could barely whisper. Also, he wanted that fucking cigarette. A security guard, ducking out for his own smoke, found him, and it took another 20 minutes before the paramedics could get George on his feet. They wanted him to go to the hospital for X-rays but George talked them out of it. His wife was a doctor, he explained, and with all the chemo, he had more than enough painkillers at home.

He went back to his seat to watch the last two fights. Afterward, he hobbled to a drug store and bought a knee brace, an ice pack, a large quantity of bandages, and a lighter to replace the Zippo he lost in the fall. Two days later George would go to a hospital to set his broken leg. But that night, he went home. His wife Marge cleaned the scrapes on George’s arms, and he took a big hit of OxyContin. Then he filed his story on the fight.

* * *
George was a large man with one good eye, a red beard, a gap between his two front teeth, and a huge gut. He was a literate, two-fisted drinker who never missed a deadline and never passed up an argument. One night, when he was 21 and partying in Beacon Hill, he was struck on the side of the face with a beer bottle. That’s how George got his glass eye.

It became his favorite prop. “You’d be amazed,” he said, “by how many people ask you to keep an eye on their drink.”

George began his career when Red Smith and Dick Young were the lords of the press box. On the night he fell out of the Manhattan sky, he had been a sports columnist for close to 40 years, “the last of his kind,” according to Michael Katz, the longtime boxing reporter for The New York Times. He drank one-eyed with Pete Hamill and Frank McCourt, smoked dope with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and did with William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson whatever was in their heads to do at the time. George covered Wimbledon and the Masters, the World Series and the Super Bowl and more than 300 championship fights. He golfed with Michael Jordan and sat in a sauna with Joe DiMaggio. “He’d show up with Neil Young,” Katz said, “and get drugs from the Allman Brothers. Mention a name and he’d somehow know the person.”

Check it out if you get a chance. I’m proud of the effort I put into this one.

Hey yo, check out the wife’s note card site: Blue Pear Prints.

Just in time for the holiday sale.

Don’t sleep.

Well, here’s something that caught my eye.

Looks like they are worth a try. And the site, Melanger, is dope.