Jew Eat Yet?

Andy Hardy Buys an iPhone

My blog used to be called “Andy Hardy Writes a Blog,” named after the series of Andy Hardy films released in the 1930s and 40s. Both of my parents grew up on these films, longing for that fake kind of wholesome Americana that only MGM could provide. They passed this obsession on to me and when my parents split up in the early 1970s, I turned to the Hardy family to get me through. I relied on Andy’s wise advice-giving dad, Judge James K. Hardy (Lewis Stone), his pie-baking, pearl-wearing mother, Emily Hardy (Fay Holden), his kindly spinster Aunt Millie (Sara Haden, in her 30s when the series began but depicted as an ancient unmarried crone), and his rambunctious sis Marion (Cecilia Parker, playing 17 well into her late 20s). I eventually saw all 18 of the films on television and in revival houses (including the unfortunate 1958 “Andy Hardy Comes Home”) and started collecting Andy Hardy memorabilia whenever I could. My collection really took off when I moved to Los Angeles in 1986. I attended collectibles shows and scoured movie poster stores, spending insane amounts of money on Andy Hardy posters, lobby cards, window inserts, magazines, and original photos.

Here are three posters from my collection that hang in my office. I also have several floor-to-ceiling three-sheet posters as well as items from the foreign language versions of the films. I think these old posters are gorgeous although I used to have arguments with old girlfriends and my first wife over whether they could be considered “art” and were worthy of our walls. Happily, Kendall views the MGM artists on the same level as Rembrandt or Van Gogh so we are clearly a match made in heaven (as long as heaven looks like the one inhabited by William Powell in MGM’s “ Ziegfeld Follies”). My daughter has only seen a few of the Andy Hardy films (she prefers the ones with Judy Garland as Andy’s neighbor Betsy Booth) but after a lifetime of exposure to my collection she can name every member of the cast and even recognize them in other films.

I’ve met every cast member that I possibly could, some as recently as a few weeks ago when Kendall and I once again encountered the now 86-year-old Ann Rutherford who played Andy’s pretty girlfriend Polly Benedict. The Andy Hardy films were a training ground for MGM starlets, with people like Esther Williams, Lana Turner, Kathryn Grayson, Donna Reed, and Bonita Granville making appearances as Andy’s temporary love interests (he always went back to Polly in the end). So when Kendall and I heard that Andy Hardy himself, Mr. Mickey Rooney, was making an appearance last night as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival, we hightailed it over the Armand Hammer Museum in Westwood.

Mickey Rooney has been acting for 85 of his 87 years. It is a truly amazing career, one that he now bills as “the longest in movie history.” His film career began back as a young tot in the silent days, in 1926, and he has made well over 300 films including last year’s “Night at the Museum” with Ben Stiller. He appeared last night with his wife Jan and Kenneth Turan of the L.A. Times in a conversation called “Been There, Done That.” It’s not the first time Kendall and I have seen Mickey in person. We’ve heard him speak on several occasions, the last time following a screening at the Museum of Television of a 1957 TV movie called “The Comedian.” John Frankenheimer directed this film in which Rooney gave a riveting, brilliantly dark performance as a ruthless egomaniac TV star who abuses everyone around him. When given the chance, Mickey Rooney was an incredible dramatic actor. His performances can’t be beat in films ranging from “Boy’s Town” and “National Velvet” to “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” He’s a fascinating guy and Kendall and I never miss a chance to hear him speak about his life and career. Oh, did I mention one thing? Mickey Rooney is…INSANE!

Truly. Off-the-chart bonkers, stark-raving nuts, mad as a hatter, and around the bend. But in a GOOD way! As actor Nathan Lane recently said, “He’s a total psychotic. He’s very adorable, but there isn’t enough Ritalin in the world for him!” Listening to Mickey Rooney speak, I’ve learned to brace myself for sudden out-of-the blue bursts of verbal energy, like talking to someone with a severe case of Tourette’s. He can be quietly rhapsodizing about his experience as a born again Christian and his admiration for the troops in Iraq and then without a moment’s notice burst into a screaming tirade about MGM boss Louis B. Mayer and how his reputation has been unfairly besmirched. He can begin telling a sweet story about his love for Judy Garland and the work they did together and suddenly pepper his comments with machine-gun non sequitirs about the dangers of computers and cell phones. Kendall had the courage to stand up last night and ask a question, courage because we’d already seen how he’d either treat a questioner with great reverence or jump down his or her throat for no apparent reason. She mentioned that we are surrounded by images of Andy Hardy in our home and asked if he had a favorite among those films. His response was part fawning, part yelling. “How can I possibly remember 18 movies I made so long ago?” he roared, seconds after providing minute details of his 1937 shooting schedule and extolling the virtues of the wholesome Andy Hardy series. His wife Jan offered that his favorite was probably the one in which he got to make out with sexy Lana Turner.

Rooney was notorious as a ladies’ man and though I’m sure he’s calmed down in his later years, his wife is clearly a saint. Although he’s had a whopping eight wives, his marriage to Jan has lasted almost 30 years and the two of them still travel the world performing. They’re about to embark on another tour of England, and Mickey told the story of his encounter a few years ago with Queen Elizabeth II in which he asked to kiss her hand and she held it out for him. I’ve always heard that touching the Queen was a major protocol no-no, but you get the impression listening to Mickey Rooney that his memories often take a few detours from reality. Jan is at his side to correct any major inaccuracies although she was silent when he talked about Louis B. Mayer’s nephew David O. Selznick discovering the young Mickey when he was in vaudeville. First of all, Selznick was Mayer’s son-in-law, not his nephew, and I think he was thinking of someone else entirely, maybe Irving Thalberg? Perhaps Rooney avoided mentioning Thalberg because he didn’t want his affair with Thalberg’s wife Norma Shearer to come up. The two had a fling when Shearer was approaching 40 and Mickey was still a teenager. In his autobiography called “Life Is Too Short,” Mickey discussed his secret dalliance with the Queen of the MGM lot, pronouncing her “hotter than a half-fucked fox.” Oy. Rooney also told the story of wandering down Hollywood Blvd. at the age of 5 (alone?) and running into a young Walt Disney who wanted to show him his new cartoon mouse called Mortimer. It was apparently Rooney who inspired the name Mickey Mouse. Okay.

Rooney’s first wife was none other than the scorching Ava Gardner although their tempestuous marriage only lasted a year. Honestly, can you think of anyone more beautiful in the history of Hollywood? Kendall and I saw another of Gardner’s former lovers this week. On Wednesday night we went to the Cinematheque to see a screening of the fantastic Hitchcock film, “Strangers on a Train,” and the star of that film, Farley Granger, now 82, appeared after the film for a Q & A. The actor just published his juicy autobiography called “Include Me Out” which includes details of his many famous lovers, both male and female. I think it’s safe to say that Granger is the only human on the planet who can boast that he’s had sex with the unlikely trio of Ava Gardner, Shelley Winters, and Leonard Bernstein. Granger is great in “Strangers on a Train” and he’s a delight in person. He’s one of those people who’s so unabashedly honest, it never sounds like he’s dishing dirt, even when he’s revealing intimate details of his personal life. When people asked him if he liked working with certain co-stars, he didn’t hesitate to say “no” and then explain why. Granger made a handful of great films before turning his attention to Broadway where he had much success. Mickey Rooney also conquered every possible entertainment medium and the clips they showed before he came out showcased his unbelievable energy and talents. Rooney denies the claims that he and Garland were hopped up on amphetamines during all those Busby Berkeley musicals they made together, but that’s almost hard to believe when you see the films and hear how they sometimes worked 36 hours at a stretch. I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m dissing the Mickster, I truly love the guy even though he’s out of his mind.

As I said, the Old School Rooney railed against the evils of the cell phone during his talk, and I was scared that he might go ballistic when at least three cell phones went off in the audience (come on people, there’s no excuse for that!). I almost didn’t make it to the museum last night because I was at Farmer’s Market in the afternoon and was trapped by the juggernaut of people camping out in front of the Apple Store so they could buy the new iPhone that was finally released yesterday at 6 pm. I was flabbergasted to see hundred and hundreds of people waiting in the blazing sun all day long just to have the opportunity to fork $500 over to Apple for a PHONE. Many would have to pay high fees to cancel their current cell phone contracts and then would have to sign up with AT&T for the expensive iPhone plans. My unscientific survey of the crowd revealed a majority of folks who didn’t have a whole lot of money but clearly HAD to have the latest cool gadget even though the technology is not yet proven and will undoubtedly experience growing pains as it is perfected over time. Once again, the Apple marketers are geniuses.

While I question the sanity of every single person in that line yesterday, I DO think the iPhone is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen and I can’t wait to get my hands on one. But I’ll definitely wait for a few versions down the road when some of the kinks are ironed out and the prices come down. I can identify with the glassy-eyed passion of the Apple fanatics because I am one myself (I’m writing this post on what is probably the 10th Mac computer that I’ve owned) but I was disgusted to find out that many of the people in those lines were only buying iPhones so they could turn an immediate profit by selling them on eBay. As if the regular price isn’t bad enough, I just checked the latest eBay sales, and the new iPhones are currently selling at prices ranging from $900 to $1500! Can someone PLEASE tell me why anyone in their right mind would pay that kind of money when they could get one from Apple at the regular price, even if it takes a few weeks because of high demand? Have we become a nation of consumers with NO ability to delay immediate gratification? It’s so insane that I’m tempted to join Mickey Rooney’s anti-cell phone cult. Mickey would never pay that kind of dough for an iPhone, but I can definitely see Andy Hardy doing it to impress his latest conquest, be it Lana Turner, Esther Williams, or Ann Rutherford. Then Judge Hardy would bail him out of debt, enroll Andy in a community service project retooling old cell phones for the poor, and teach his son an important lesson about usury and the free market economy. Ah, for the good old days!

Jews, Don’t Fail Me Now

I hold Jews up to a very high standard, I admit it. It’s a dumb thing to do—having expectations of people based on what group they belong to rather than who they are as individuals, but it’s a syndrome that I and many Jews have been guilty of for centuries. “Is that person good for the Jews?” was a common refrain in my house growing up. More than thinking that Jewish people were “above” crimes and indiscretions, I think our secret worry was that as an already persecuted minority, our lives and our status might be tainted by association. I’m sure this is something that American Muslims experience on a daily basis. I remember hearing fears expressed by members of the Korean-American community when the identity of the Virginia Tech murderer was revealed. Would this now reflect badly on them? It didn’t, of course, except among lunatics who were already looking for reasons to hate Korean-Americans.

I abhor any acts of violence, no matter who is the perpetrator, but I know that even today when I hear about a heinous crime in the news, it’s often accompanied by an unconscious sigh of relief when further information reveals that the offender is not Jewish. Maybe this is a marker of my age. I was obviously not around during the national hysteria of the Leo Frank case (1915) or the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1953), but I think the ugliness of those high profile and suspect convictions (all of which led to a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents in this country) was embedded in my genes by nervous ancestors who were proud of their heritage but desperate to avoid any unsavory attention from the Gentile masses. I had friends whose Holocaust survivor parents did not allow them to wear Jewish star necklaces in public. They were so worried that harm would come to their children if they “advertised” their Jewishness that they encouraged a kind of vigorous assimilation (short of marrying a goy) that would allow their loved ones to fly under the mainstream society’s Jewdar.

My high expectations of Jews is not entirely fear-based. It’s also founded on my love for the Jewish people and my personal understanding of Jewish teachings, law, and traditions. As a rule, I do expect Jewish people to have a certain level of compassion for the downtrodden, the ability to identify with people who are persecuted by the larger society, and a basic humanity for all people, regardless of their differences. Obviously there are plenty of examples of Jews, including myself, who frequently fail to live up to this ideal but I still expect it and am shocked and outraged whenever I see the tenets of Judaism hideously twisted to support an agenda of hate and violence. And by that let me quickly say that I’m not talking about any of the issues regarding Palestinians or the division of land in that part of the world—let’s save that important discussion for another time (preferably on someone else’s blog). No, I’m referring to recent actions by the religious right in Israel against Israeli gays and lesbians.

Compared to other countries in the Middle East, Israel is seen as a bastion of tolerance for gays. Indeed, many Palestinian gays have sought refuge on the streets of liberal Tel Aviv and elsewhere. I read one horrific account recently of a 16-year-old Palestinian youth, now living just outside of Tel Aviv, who was outed to the Palestinian Authority and forced to strip and sit on a Coke bottle during his interrogation. There have been reports of Palestinian Authority vigilante squads rounding up gays in refugee camps and throwing them in prison. In the Palestinian-controlled sections of the West Bank and Gaza, sodomy carries a penalty of up to 10 years. Some Arab gays have been encouraged by terrorist groups to become suicide bombers to “purge their moral guilt.” Fundamentalist Islamic courts prescribe capital punishment for homosexual activity. So in Israel, a country that guarantees political asylum for anyone persecuted on the basis of sexual orientation, and where openly gay men and women are allowed to serve in the military, gays are completely safe, right? Not if the extremists on the religious right have anything to say about it.

In an unusual display of cooperation, ultra-orthodox Israelis, also known as Haredi Jews, have been working hand-in-hand with conservative Muslim groups, promising to “do whatever it takes, including violence” to stop local organizations from putting on gay pride events in Jerusalem. Such folks believe that while gay-sponsored events are bad enough in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, they are an intolerable affront in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Two years ago, when local gays marched through a secular neighborhood in that city, an ultra-orthodox man ran into the crowd with a knife and stabbed three participants, severely injuring one of them. Last year, after plans for another gay pride march were made public, thousands of Haredi Jews started violent riots, blocked the streets, and threw bricks at cars, injuring dozens of police officers, journalists, and bystanders. Last year’s parade was cancelled out of fear of more violence. How about arresting the Jewish leaders who were inciting the violence? As far as I’m concerned, the Jewish rebbes who are spewing their message of hate are no different from the teachers in the fundamentalist madrasas who are regularly spreading their anti-American, anti-Semitic, violence-filled bile.

Look, I’m not so naïve that I expect Israel’s ultra-orthodox rabbis to don rainbow tallit and start performing same-sex marriages under their chuppahs any time soon. I get that most of these leaders believe that homosexuality is prohibited by their interpretation of Divine Law. An excellent documentary called “Trembling Before G-d” was released several years ago that details the painful dilemma faced by Hasidic and orthodox gays who feel passionately about their religion but risk expulsion by their families and communities if they dare to come out. But as much as I personally wish that rabbis everywhere would accept their gay members, there’s an enormous difference between having different beliefs about certain lifestyles and actively trying to destroy people because of these differences.

As this year’s pride activities loomed, religious groups in Israel banded together under an umbrella group that called itself The Committee to Stop the Abomination Parade. They put up posters in Jerusalem encouraging citizens to do “practically anything” to stop the event. “In general, I’m against violence,” said a 26-year-old ultra-orthodox resident of Mea Shearim, one of Jerusalem’s most religious neighborhoods, “but I know people are very angry, they don’t want this social disease to have a bad influence on their children. We don't trust the Knesset or any other part of the secular state on this issue. We can only trust ourselves. This terrible promiscuity must be stopped.”

To be fair, the rabid extremists on this issue are still a minority, but an increasingly strong one as right-wing religious parties continue to gain seats in the Israeli parliament. Many straight Israelis have started attending the gay pride events as a show of support for their fellow citizens and for the future of democracy in Israel. “I think that it was quite clear that the main issue is not gay and lesbian rights in Israel,” said Rabbi Gilad Kariv, associate director of the Israel Religious Action Center. “From a very early point in the battle, it was about democracy, human rights, and the character of our society.”

Last Thursday, hours before this year’s parade in Jerusalem, a 32-year-old ultra-orthodox man was arrested carrying a homemade explosive device he planned to plant along the parade route. I don’t know what happened to this guy but I find myself hoping he was treated in exactly the same way an Arab man found with a bomb in Israel would be. While gays and other supporters marched through the streets surrounded by police, Haredi Jews held a counter-demonstration, burning tires and chanting psalms. They managed to stop traffic at the main entrance to Jerusalem with their fires and “Shame” banners. 19 of the men were arrested, and one broke through the police barricades shouting “Filth! Get out of Jerusalem!” before being escorted away. It is these protesters, particularly the violent ones, who are bringing shame to their country and their people.

Our beloved rabbi, Lisa Edwards, her partner, Tracy Moore, and other members of BCC, the oldest LGBT temple in the world, recently traveled to Israel as a group (photo at left courtesy of BCC member Sylvia Sukop). I can’t bear the thought of these wonderful people and deeply spiritual Jews being taunted by those ignorant ultra-orthodox idiots. I have learned more about Judaism and have come to love it more as a result of my family’s experience at BCC than I ever did in the orthodox synagogues of my childhood. Rabbi Lisa could go head-to-head on any Talmudic issue with the entire Haredi rabbinate if only they could refrain from dismissing her because she is a woman and a lesbian. And I bet Lisa would even talk to these people without calling them “idiots.” I realize how judgmental I'm being of certain branches of Judaism but their calls for violence are sending me over the edge.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m trashing the entire orthodox community with this rant, that’s the last thing I would ever do. I know many orthodox Jews, including members of my own family, for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration despite any differences we may have about religious or social issues. I love Jews of all stripes, and I admit I am attracted to many facets of the orthodox lifestyle, as evidenced by my recent trip to Brooklyn where I gazed longingly at the Hasidic hordes. But the kind of virulent protesters I’m talking about, the ones who expend so much energy preaching hate and intolerance, these people I have no love for.

They are bad for the Jews.

Tales from the Darkside

I’ve written about my mood swings from time to time but more often than not I simply disappear from view while I am flailing on the darkside. Sometimes writing indirectly about my struggles helps a lot. I was in the throes of a week-long depression when I wrote the previous post on Father’s Day and rereading it now I can see my desperate attempt to stay above water in every line. These days I tend to avoid writing about the “causes” of my depression for several reasons. One, I want to maintain some level of decorum on this blog, believe it or not, and refrain from spewing personal details about things that may involve other people. Two, I worry that I’d scare people away (including potential employers and the California electorate should I decide to run for governor one day—hey, you never know!) if I reveal the ugly, dark fears that overtake me when I’m feeling so out of control and full of self-loathing. Three, and most important, I’m more aware than ever that my external reality is NOT the cause of my depression at all. It may provide certain triggers that facilitate the downward spiral but it’s not the “cause.” I can have the same triggers another week and not be affected in the least. No, there’s some combination of panic, anxiety, inability to express emotion, and overwhelming terror that takes hold of me from time to time and I start to feel like a bug trapped in amber, unable to emerge from the total encasement that prevents me from experiencing joy, pleasure, or the belief that I’ll ever feel content again. I also tend to ramble when I’m feeling that way in an attempt to talk my way out of the Black Hole, but as my therapist and others have pointed out, “I hear a lot of words, but you’re not saying anything.” Oy, not exactly a great place to blog from (or maybe that’s the perfect description of blogging?).

It is amazing to me that a few days ago I could feel such despair and hopelessness, and now, still facing the same life challenges, I feel perfectly “normal” and excited about the future. It’s probably only in these moments while I’m “on the way back” that I would ever even talk about this stuff. I can already feel my Blog Character reasserting himself and clicking his tongue at any narcissistic ravings about my PROCESS, more than a little embarrassed at the self-indulgence of trying to explain my own emotional difficulties. Sometimes I think my Blog Character is a bit like Hillary Clinton. He keeps most of those real and messy feelings tightly under wraps, convinced that he needs to present a Positive Image to the outside world. He’s increasingly aware of his vulnerabilities but he is very concerned about presenting them in the most palatable way, so as not to alienate the public or make anyone, including himself, uncomfortable.

When I was a kid, I somehow took on the role of the “good boy,” the one people didn’t have to worry about. I remember the very few occasions when I got in trouble at school with burning shame. In fact, I could say that the only memory I have of Kindergarten is when Mrs. Reid singled me out one day as we were lining up to go down the indoor slide in our classroom. The Kindergarten teacher said that I couldn’t join the others on the slide because of some infraction that I was completely unaware of. It felt like the world as I knew it was coming to an end, in that moment I completely redefined myself based on Mrs. Reid’s disapproval.

I could barely relate one moment from my entire fifth grade year except for the day when Mrs. Seidman was marking report cards at the front of the class and we were supposed to be sitting silently behind our desks for the whole period. At one point, Louie Fishbein tapped me on the shoulder to ask me a question and when I turned around to see what he wanted, Mrs. Seidman flew into a rage, grabbed my report card, and gave me an “F” for that semester, the only one I ever received in my entire school career. It’s funny how these moments are always accompanied by a total feeling of powerlessness and a self-righteous indignation that a huge injustice had been committed. I so needed to be the perfect, good little boy that the few times I got publicly called on the carpet, my memory is that my punishment was completely unjustified. I have little reason to believe that my memories of these events are totally skewed (I think anyone who went to my school would agree that Mrs. Seidman was a borderline sociopath), but what’s interesting to me is how my whole world would come tumbling down whenever I fell off my self-constructed pedestal.

As I got older, I still had an urgent need to maintain my good boy persona, but I started developing ways to secretly rebel and express my bad side. I'm sure that my goody-two-shoes school personality contributed to the raunchy mouth I mentioned in a recent post that I developed outside of class as well as other acts of civil disobedience in high school like my decision to take every Wednesday off during senior year, just daring the administration to notice (they never did since I made sure I still got straight As).

Decades later, I’m still struggling with good boy syndrome and my desperate need to be perceived in a way that does not acknowledge difficult feelings, failures, or struggles of any kind. “Everything’s fine” is a familiar phrase to me, and one that I often believe even when why my blood pressure is racing and my eyes are rolling back into my head. While on the one hand I usually strive to avoid a “scene” at all costs, I have often found myself reviewing painful family episodes from the past and envying the family members who had the freedom to completely “lose it” in those moments, whether they were screaming, slamming doors, or barking under the table like a dog. There has always been a part of me that has secretly admired the mentally ill because they seemed so FREE. I know that this is a distorted view, but when you’re wound up as tight as I am and living with so many rigid self-imposed rules about what behavior and thoughts are acceptable, a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” mental ward can seem like a fantasy playground!

I would say that until I was in my mid-20s, I had very little understanding of my emotions. When a feeling of any kind, particularly one I judged as “negative,” would rear its ugly head, I would simply slam the door and rationalize it away using my PhD in Denial or some New Age twaddle I picked up about “seeing the bigger picture.” I remember old girlfriends begging me to discuss problems in our relationships. I would gaze at them with total pity and a little scorn, thinking to myself, “Why are these crazy women making this stuff up? There is absolutely nothing wrong with our freaking relationship!” By my late-20s I was so out of touch and miserable that I knew I had to start looking at my shit. With much fear and trepidation, I started going to therapy. I remember mentioning this in passing during one Friday night dinner at my grandparents’ house and being met with an urgent chant from my mother and grandmother who shouted in unison: “But YOU don’t need therapy!!” I felt like Charlie Brown when Lucy yells at him and the sheer force of her words sends him somersaulting backwards. “That’s exactly why I DOOOOO need it,” I screamed furiously to myself.

I’ve noticed in my creative nonfiction writing group how often I get the feedback to delete the last paragraphs of my essays. I’ve come to see that when I do write about real, difficult stuff, my tendency is still to tie it up with a nice bow and say that now everything is great, all that ugliness is in the past. So I’ll resist the urge to do that here and simply state something that we all know: Life is hard. Sometimes it’s harder. Sometimes it seems fucking intolerable. But real growth and maturity is moving through it anyway, experiencing the pain, and waiting for those glorious moments when the sun peeks through the clouds again.

Celebrating Dysfunctional Dads

My theory is that as long as there is a solid foundation of love and support, children can survive almost any level of family dysfunction. I say that as I think about my own wonderful but insane dad on this Father’s Day and especially as I struggle with my feelings about myself as a parent.

My father regrets a lot of the choices he made as a young parent in the 1950s and 60s. I’m sorry that these old decisions cause him pain since they made a lot of sense at the time and were completely centered on his desire to provide for his family. We always knew how much he loved us even if he couldn’t hang out with the family very often because he was working so hard. My father came from a childhood of poverty and occasional homelessness, a huge contrast to my mother’s privileged background despite their proximity in Chicago. My dad never knew his own father (or even who his father was) and he struggled with his loving but mentally ill mother who was institutionalized when my father was quite young. My father worked from a very early age, often several jobs at once, from the kid who holds fresh eggs over a flame to see if they’re fertilized to the guy making root beer floats and grilled cheese sandwiches at the Walgreen’s counter on State Street. He had a very strong work ethic and was always looking for ways to make his fortune. When he got married at the age of 20 and started a family, his life mission was to ensure that his children would never have to know the pain he experienced when he was young.

His hard work paid off. We never wanted for anything and we never experienced the terror felt by children who are forced by circumstance to think about their own survival. Perhaps my father’s plan worked too well. Not that I blame my father for any of my natural sloth or my difficulties with delayed gratification, but I think my siblings and I would have benefited from increased responsibilities and a greater awareness of the troubles faced by much of the world.

Not that he hesitated to tell us about the evils lurking just outside our front door. Nothing delights my father more to this day than providing his children with detailed crime statistics for any neighborhood within a 25-mile radius of where we happen to be. Just to give you a tiny taste, this morning I was talking to him on the way to a wonderful Father’s Day brunch Kendall took Leah and me to at a swank Beverly Hills Hotel. My father ended the call with a grave and urgent, “Danny, please drive very carefully today!” “Why today?” I asked. “Don’t you realize how many crazies are out on the streets on Father’s Day?” I could understand such a concern on New Year’s Eve, but Father’s Day? “You know, all those people drinking at breakfast,” he added, looking for ways to bolster his claims and get me to drive extra defensively on this most dangerous of holidays. I continued my way down Wilshire, wary of the armies of drunken Beverly Hills dads swerving recklessly through the streets at 11 am from their Mimosas and Bloody Marys.

I’ve written many posts about my crazy dad and will write more but for now suffice it to say that a more caring, loving father could not be found on the planet. True, a ball never passed from his hand to mine, and most of my early memories of him are of the back of his head chauffeuring us around to various activities he never attended, but through it all I felt the full extent of the love he has for his children. I now talk to him on the phone nearly every day. If I miss a day, or God forbid two, he responds as if I’ve gone missing on the Iraqi border and am facing imminent beheading. Sometimes I avoid telling him things that I know will make him start hocking me unmercifully, even little stuff like my recent minor accident when I got rear-ended on the freeway. My dad is blind now so he can’t read my blog but my brother periodically reads it to him. I knew the exact moment when my dad heard the post that mentioned the car accident because my cell phone started vibrating uncontrollably in my pocket. Sometimes I think I should start dropping fake stories in my blog just to test my dad’s stamina and reaction time. “Good news! I’ve decided to move to the Middle East to work with refugees in one of the camps that has been cited as an Al-Quada stronghold.” When I’m not purposely trying to raise my dad’s blood pressure, I want to tell him how much I love him and am grateful for his role in my life. Even though I still can’t throw a ball.

When Leah was born, my father and others made a big deal at how involved I was with her care. For many folks in my dad’s generation, seeing a man change a single diaper was enough to canonize him as a bona fide SuperDad. My French former in-laws called me a “père/mère,” a kind of “father/mother” which flattered me at the time even while part of me wondered if it was meant as a compliment. Somewhere along the line I'm afraid I started believing my own publicity that I was some kind of perfect dad.

Twelve and a half years later, with my daughter careening into adolescence, I know that this is extremely far from the truth. My parenting is a thousand light years away from any level of perfection, but then again, so is everybody else’s. There is no such thing as perfect parenting, we all carry our baggage into the job whether we like it or not. The trick is learning how to contain the fires of denial and begin to realize what we’re doing. Just this week I’ve seen several painful examples of how my own dysfunction has prevented me from really listening to my child or providing her with appropriate role modeling. My new goal is to permanently lower my expectations. I am a good dad doing the best I can, and that's okay. I need to figure out how to work on my own shit while being the best parent I know how to be. It’s been an extremely difficult week because part of me still wants to cling to the fantasy of being SuperDad. And yet that fantasy does a disservice to the wonderful complexities of the role. The one thing I’m confident about during the more challenging times is that both my daughter and I know how much we love each other. Love has never been the problem, thank God, and that’s a damn good foundation to start with.

So here’s to the dads out there, warts and all. I challenge us to take a good hard look at our imperfections. Let’s figure out which ones are part of our unique cache of adorable eccentricities that will be cited at our funerals and which ones we need to drop-kick to the curb.

Thanks, Mr. Wizard!

Another icon from my childhood is gone. Don Herbert, TV’s Mr. Wizard, died yesterday of cancer at the age of 89. While Herbert started his show years before I was born, “Watch Mr. Wizard” was a regular feature of my childhood, and Herbert continued to turn kids on to the wonders of science throughout the 1960s, returning a few times in later decades. I would say that Don Herbert is almost entirely responsible for my childhood love of science and I know that thousands of baby boomers were affected by his passion for the mysteries of the natural world. Herbert's show was astonishingly simple compared to children’s TV programs today, but for me he single-handedly brought to life a subject that was left for dead by the Chicago Public School system.

How I longed to be one of Mr. Wizard’s young assistants when I was a kid. I haven’t seen the show in ages but I can remember the excitement I felt watching Mr. Wizard do his experiments and how I’d scurry to try them myself in our kitchen or living room. Much to my mother’s occasional horror, I might add, as she watched volcanoes of baking soda and vinegar erupt on her coffee table, vacuums created in her heirloom teacups, or eggs magically fitting through the thin neck of a milk bottle. The beauty of “Watch Mr. Wizard” was that Herbert’s impressive experiments were reproducible at home, you didn’t need any expensive equipment. Every item in the house was a potential science project, and after watching his show I busily gathered utensils, paper straws, the tubes from rolls of paper towels, and coffee cans for my makeshift laboratory.

Herbert reminded me of one of his contemporaries, Julia Child, whose first black-and-white series, “The French Chef,” overlapped with his show. Herbert and Child were perfect television personalities, as natural in front of a camera as they were talking to family members or close friends. Their appeal included a vulnerability that is absent from most people on TV today. They’d make mistakes, trudge through experiments or recipes that didn’t work, and then instead of demanding a reshoot, they'd shrug it off as part of life and move on to the next attempt. Herbert and Child were very serious about their work but they didn’t take themselves too seriously, they were able to laugh at themselves while imparting valuable information to their devoted viewers. I loved how Herbert never talked down to his young assistants, he treated them with great respect and answered all of their questions in language they could easily understand. Such could not be said for most of my teachers at the time. Herbert used no quick edits or fancy graphics to sell his message, the show was a hit solely because Mr. Wizard was the real thing.

In addition to Mr. Wizard, my passion for science was further strengthened by visits to Chicago’s glorious Museum of Science & Industry. I’ve yet to find a science museum anywhere in the world that holds a candle to this institution, even today. Back then, visiting the imposing Beaux Arts building in Chicago’s Hyde Park (built for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition) felt as thrilling and universe-bending as accompanying Alice through the Looking Glass. Several of my favorite exhibits still exist such as the exquisite replica of a Coal Mine, the German U-505 Submarine (the birth of my Nazi obsession?), the old-fashioned Main Street (where we’d always get our photos taken at the vintage photographer’s studio), silent movie star Colleen Moore's miniature fairy castle, the real hatching eggs (we’d stand there for hours rooting for the weaker chicks to make it), and the giant beating heart that you could walk through. Others are long gone such as the Bell Telephone Exhibit that included a working picture phone we all thought would be standard fare by 1970. For a while you could use the phone (with a small black-and-white video image) to talk to people at a similar exhibit in faraway Disneyland or the 1964 New York World’s Fair. A miracle! Are the preserved fetuses at all stages of development still on display? I had nightmares about those for years. I remember how just the size of some of the rooms at the museum took my breath away. The model train set seemed to go on for miles, and I could stare at the gigantic backlit Kodachrome image all day long. Our regular visits to the museum’s gift shop always produced either the day-glo “magic crystals” which we’d grow in a glass fish bowls, or the infamous sea monkeys that we’d also hatch at home that were actually some kind of ghastly brine shrimp.

When I think about how nuts I was about all aspects of science back then from Mr. Wizard’s cool experiments and the great interactive exhibits at the Museum of Science & Industry to my utter passion for the Gemini and Apollo space programs, I wonder why I didn’t pursue any of these areas of interest as I got older. I know it’s wrong to cast blame on others and absolve myself of responsibility, but I have to say that it feels like the love of science was beaten out of me by the uninspired science curriculum and burned-out teachers of the 1960s and 70s. With a few notable exceptions, science class had none of the excitement of Mr. Wizard’s informal lab and I truly believe that my natural curiosity was suffocated under a mountain of poorly written textbooks and deadening chapter tests.

Still, just thinking about Mr. Wizard makes me want to get out the baking soda and vinegar and wake Leah up for some late night science fun.

Eight Things You Didn’t Need to Know About Me*

*But Were Afraid I’d Tell You Anyway

Just when you thought it was safe to log back onto Jew Eat Yet? I’ve decided to respond to an invitation by Communicatrix to list eight random things about myself. I hardly ever participate in memes (it took me a long time to even understand what a meme was) but this one was so broad I thought it would be fun to do some stream-of-consciousness babbling about eight disparate topics. I’m doing this with no thought about chronology or content, they will just be the first eight things that pop into my head. Amateur psychologists, feel free to make any connections you like.

1. When I was a kid, I could not swear. I heard plenty of swearing from friends and family members, but I could not bring myself to use salty language of any kind. I thought that if I said the F-word, the skies would open up and sentence me to eternal damnation. One day in seventh grade, I was playing tetherball in my backyard with my friend Michael Siegel. The ball hit me in the face and I involuntarily yelled, “Fuck!” I was so horrified by this slip that I ran to the other side of the backyard and almost started to cry. Michael, no stranger to 4-letter words, thought it was fantastic that I finally broke through my goody-two-shoes veneer. Instead of making fun of my prudishness, he comforted me and assured me that I wasn’t a bad person for expressing myself in that way. With the floodgates now opened, I quickly transformed from sounding like a bible-thumping fundamentalist preacher to a hardened truck driver on the New Jersey turnpike. When I see letters that I wrote to friends after seventh grade, I am shocked by my crude potty mouth. It's gotten better as I've aged, and I especially try to watch my mouth around my 12-year-old daughter. But I was pleased when she told me last week that because we don’t make a big deal out of those words as some of her friends’ parents do, she doesn’t feel the need to use them. I always wondered what happened to Michael Siegel and I found out last year from his sister Sandy that he died in the 1980s while getting his PhD at Princeton. Michael was a brilliant, troubled guy who was a great friend to one very nerdy kid in Chicago.

2. I’ve only walked out of one play in my entire life. I’ve seen plenty of God-awful productions over the years but it takes a hell of a lot to get me to leave a theatre. I always hold out hope that the play will get better in the last act or else I blame myself for being unable to follow the convoluted plot. I also agonize about the actors noticing that anyone has walked out before the end of the show. But during a trip to New York in November 1991, I found one play so horrendous that I left at intermission. I couldn’t wait to see “Nick & Nora,” the new musical based on MGM's Thin Man films starring William Powell and Myrna Loy (and based on characters created by Dashiell Hammett). How could it go wrong with a book by Arthur Laurents (Gypsy, West Side Story), music by Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie), and lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr. (Ain’t Misbehavin, Baby)? Talented Barry Bostwick and Joanna Gleason played Nick and Nora Charles with help from such theatre stalwarts such as Christine Baranski, Faith Prince, and Debra Monk (who was up for a Tony Award last night). I’m a huge fan of Broadway musicals, as anyone who’s read more then two posts on this blog knows, but from the opening scene of this drek I wanted to run from the theatre and demand a constitutional amendment that would ban musical theatre in this country. The songs were tuneless attempts to evoke a 1930s insouciance, the costumes and sets tried way too hard (and failed), and Bostwick and Gleason’s repartee seemed forced and made it sound as if they hated each other’s guts. As the New York Times review stated, “For every spark it throws off, there are the smoldering ashes of an idea gone wrong or the faded outline of an inspiration left unaccountably to languish…‘Nick and Nora’ consistently takes one step forward and one step back—the bad canceling out the good, the boorish defusing the charming, the spiteful negating the witty.” Finally I couldn’t take another second of it and, with visions of William Powell and Myrna Loy dancing in my brain, escaped out onto 44th Street. Maybe the mistake was trying to fiddle with perfection. The only movie I ever walked out was “Switching Channels,” a 1988 monstrosity that was a modern version of “The Front Page” and its brilliant remake “His Girl Friday.” The film was such a bomb that for years I had a hard time watching any film with Kathleen Turner, Burt Reynolds, or Christopher Reeve.

3. A few years ago I saw a ghost in our house. In our bed, actually! At about 5 am one morning I was awakened by someone tapping me on the leg. I turned around and saw a small figure in the semi-darkness and told my daughter to climb into bed with us since it was too early to get up for school. She did so as my eyes adjusted and I remember being surprised that she was putting her head right up next to Kendall’s sleeping face. Realizing that I was unable to fall back asleep, I whispered for her to follow me into the other room but got no response. When I walked into the hall I saw that Leah’s bedroom door was still closed. Needless to say, when I opened it I found her sound asleep in her bed. [Cue “Twilight Zone” theme.] And of course when I went back into our bedroom no one was in bed with Kendall. I know for a fact that I was fully awake and that I really saw this entity snuggling in our bed. But I wasn’t scared, it had a very loving energy. I always suspected that our 1909 house was haunted and was glad we had such a sweet ghost. Do you think I’m insane? Will this story hurt my chances if I decide to run for governor one day?

4. I like getting shots of novocaine. I know it’s sick but there’s something about that initial puncture that I enjoy even though it’s a little painful. I fact, I’d go so far as to say that any small cut in the mouth or lips holds some kind of fascination for me. What is that about? Am I further dooming my gubernatorial bid? Let me quickly add that as much as I enjoy certain parts of going to the dentist, I have no crazy love for the infamous dentist’s drill. The other day I heard an NPR report about Laurence Olivier’s 100th birthday and they played the scene from “Marathon Man” in which Larry is a Nazi dentist torturing the living daylights out of Dustin Hoffman with his trusty drill. Arrrrrgh! Apparently Olivier was so scared that he’d accidentally hurt Hoffman during this scene that he was constantly asking him if he was okay. As a little prank during one of the takes, Hoffman let out with an bloodcurdling scream which nearly caused Olivier to have a heart attack. Cute.

5. I’ve always fantasized about playing Rolf in “The Sound of Music.” Speaking of Nazis (like that’s a new thing for me?), I’ve always secretly coveted the role of Rolf, the Nazi sympathizer in the story. Why not the saintly Captain Von Trapp or his boys Kurt or Friedrich? Did I have some kind of swastika fetish? Did I just want to be the object of beautiful Liesl’s attention? Maybe I wanted to play Rolf so that I could change the ending and have the boy go off with the Von Trapps instead of foolishly devoting himself to National Socialism and nearly getting his girlfriend’s family killed. Oh Rolf, Rolf, you stupid weak idiot. Truth be told, I never cared for Daniel Truhitte, the actor who played him in the film. But at the endless reunion screenings I go to, I learned that Truhitte was a beloved member of the cast. Charmian Carr, the actress who played Liesl (and was the object of many of my childhood fantasies) loved him, and Truhitte actually married Carr’s Austrian stand-in whose parents’ names were—get this—ROLF AND LIESL! Daniel’s son, Thomas Rolf Truhitte, is now a famous opera singer. For all their acclaim at the time, Daniel Truhitte and Charmian Carr never made another film although Daniel recently starred in a local production of “The Sound of Music” as Captain Von Trapp and Charmian Carr appears every year at the “Singalong Sound of Music” at the Hollywood Bowl. I’ll be there again this year on June 30th watching Rolf and Liesl’s forbidden love along with 18,000 other crazed fans. I sang Rolf’s song, “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” so often to Leah when she was a baby that she still knows every abhorrent word: “Your life, little girl, is an empty page that men will want to write on…”

6. I have a recurring dream where I’m driving too fast but can’t lift my foot off the accelerator. I had this dream again this morning and it’s always very upsetting. I usually force myself awake just before the crash. What does it mean, doctor? This morning’s dream might have been inspired by the fact that I was rear-ended on the 110 Freeway yesterday while I was in a traffic jam and at a complete stop in the fast lane. A woman barreled into my car, sending my sunglasses flying into the windshield. God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. I motioned for her to pull over but as soon as the traffic started again she swerved into the crowd and was on her way. It made me think about the Paris Hilton debacle and how that judge did everyone a favor by locking up that irresponsible woman. Besides all the rest of the hoopla, maybe she’ll finally learn a lesson and prevent herself from killing someone one day. Hell, for all I know, the woman who hit me yesterday was Nicole Ritchie!

7. I had a bunch of international pen pals when I was a kid. They hailed from countries such as France, Korea, Poland, and Russia. I loved communicating with children from other countries and learning about their lives that were so different from my own. I had never even been away for a single night by myself when I decided to go visit my French pen pal in Alsace in 1975 for six weeks. 32 years later, Brigitte and I are still close friends. She now lives in the south of France and breeds Dalmatians. Visiting Brigitte many times solidified my role as a true Francophile which ultimately led to my meeting my first wife and having Leah. I’ll never forget how exciting it was to get an envelope from a foreign country back in the day. I recently looked up how kids today can get pen pals (via the Internet) so that Leah can have the experience of talking to people from different cultures. But first I want to make sure that her 12-year-old girlfriend in Botswana isn’t really a 54-year-old pedophile in Brooklyn.

8. The first movie that made me cry was “Carousel.” Hey, I told you I like musicals. I was watching the Rodgers & Hammerstein film on TV with my sister when I was 12. In the epilogue at the end of the movie, Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae’s daughter is about to graduate from high school but is being tormented by the local children who think she is beneath them. She is comforted by the ghost of her dead father during her graduation while “You’ll Never Walk Alone” blares so loudly that even Shirley Jones, covered in old lady makeup and fake gray hair, senses the presence of her late husband. To this day, the scene makes me blubber uncontrollably. I think I’ve always felt a close connection to social outcast Louise Bigelow, Shirley’s wayward daughter. “Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, and you'll never walk alone!” The song became an emotion-tugging standard for performers ranging from Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Mario Lanza, and Jerry Lewis to the majority of “American Idol” contestants. The other movie ending that reduces me to tears is “The Miracle Worker.” The scene in which Patty Duke’s Helen Keller utters “waaaaaaaaaa” when she finally gets that the water she’s touching has a name gets me every single time.

Okay, now I remember why I never do memes, I think this was supposed to be a short and pithy list. I know I’ve succeeded in my stream-of-consciousness experiment, at least, since I have a strong urge to delete the boring paragraphs above and replace them with something more interesting about myself, even if I have to make it up.

Bob Barker for President

We interrupt Danny Miller’s obsessive ravings about his family and his blog for this important announcement: there are people in this town who are more insane than he is.

I’m writing this from my usual perch at Farmer’s Market in L.A., right next door to CBS studios, or Television City as it has been called with great fanfare since it opened in 1952. For weeks now, people have been lining up on Fairfax, camping out in front of the building in sleeping bags and tents, hoping to snag a seat for Bob Barker’s final episode of “The Price Is Right” which is taping this afternoon. I’ve been watching this village emerge outside of CBS with disbelief. The corner of Fairfax and Beverly is starting to look like the area around Woodstock in 1969. There are cots and folding chairs, posters, memorabilia, and Bob Barker shrines as far as the eye can see. This morning I even saw a couple on a queen-sized mattress they somehow shlepped to the line (what are they going to do with it if they get into the taping?). At the moment I am surrounded by “Price Is Right” hopefuls who have been dispatched to Farmer’s Market to pick up coffee and donuts and other forms of sustenance. Everyone is wearing a homemade t-shirt that pays homage to their hero. “Bob Barker is Da Man,” “Canada Hearts Bob Barker,” “Come on Down!” and the ever popular “Bob Barker for President!” Hey, why not? His vigilant animal rights activism might scare off some voters but he’s got the looks, the hair, the suits, the name recognition, and even a few sexual harassment lawsuits going for him. I say he’s the perfect candidate.

I haven’t watched “The Price Is Right” since I was in high school, but I wouldn’t begrudge Bob Barker any of the accolades he’ll be getting this afternoon. He’s won 17 Emmy Awards and is the longest-running host of a game show in TV history. Bob Barker began his reign on my thirteenth birthday, September 4, 1972, the same day that Mark Spitz won his 7th Gold Medal in the Munich Olympics. Elsewhere that day, the Vietnam War was raging, the Washington Post was reporting about a $25,000 cashier’s check earmarked for the Nixon campaign that somehow landed in the bank account of the one of the Watergate burglars, and a jubilant Richard Nixon was trouncing George McGovern in the polls. In an ever-changing and increasingly dangerous world, Bob Barker has remained a comforting constant.

If you could see the roving bands of Bob Barker groupies I’m looking at right now, you might think they were members of a cult. They don’t look all that different from the glassy-eyed Scientologists who troll the streets of nearby Hollywood looking for new marks. Not that the Barker fans are proselytizing, I’m sure they’re very nice people who simply want to pay homage to their God before he disappears from their daily lives. Believe it or not, people have come from all over the world for today’s taping (the show will air on June 15th). “If they offered me $10,000 for my ticket, I’d say take a hike,” said 24-year-old Philip Barrett of Tampa, Florida. “This is the chance of a lifetime!” Melanie Zepeda Velez, 32, came all the way from Alberta, Canada, to attend the last show. “I'm here because I need to kiss Bob,” she said. I feel sorry for the fans that won’t get into the taping after all this trouble. There are only 325 seats in the studio so there are plenty of people who won’t get one of the coveted spots. I hope that doesn’t produce rioting in the streets. Bob Barker ends every “Price Is Right” broadcast with the phrase, “Have your pets spayed and neutered,” referring to one of his favorite causes. “I want to hear when Bob Barker says it for the last time,” said Barrett. “The audience is going to lose it. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it.” Oy. I admit I’m surprised to see that so many of the uber-fans camped out in their sleeping bags are so young—I assumed most of the show’s viewers were middle-aged housewives.

I used to be a big fan of game shows. I remember walking home for lunch every day during grammar school. We’d watch 20 minutes of “Bozo’s Circus” on WGN and then switch to ABC for 20 minutes of “Let’s Make a Deal” before we had to head back to school. (God forbid we should spend five minutes at home without the TV on.) Other favorites during those years included “I’ve Got a Secret,” “To Tell the Truth,” “The Newlywed Game,” “Concentration,” “Password,” “Hollywood Squares,” “Family Feud,” and “The Gong Show.” I think the best game show of all time was the long-running “What’s My Line” with the brilliant Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf, and Dorothy Kilgallen, and the most intelligent host on TV, John Charles Daly. I know I’ll write more one day about that show. And I recently mentioned my love of “Match Game,” starring our wonderful Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers, and a bunch of witty panelists, most of whom I’ve met in Kendall’s mother’s living room. I just taped 23 episodes (!) of “Match Game” this weekend as part of the Game Show Network’s tribute to Charles.

Watching the crowds turn Television City into what looks like a refugee camp, I can’t help but think of my first trip into those hallowed halls. When my parents’ marriage was breaking apart in the early 1970s we were shuttled off to Los Angeles one summer to stay with my dad’s best friend, TV writer Sam Bobrick. Sam’s show, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” also shot here, had just been cancelled because of one too many flare-ups with the CBS censors. Sam arranged for us to go to a taping at Television City starring a pal from his previous show, “Gomer Pyle, USMC.” Not many people remember “The Jim Nabors Hour” which ran from 1969 to 1971 but in the kind of sidebar that I find interesting even if no one else does, we just spent an evening with one of the regulars on that show, singer/actress Karen Morrow, at an impromptu gathering at my mother-in-law’s house after Charles died. The two were good friends. I described the Jim Nabors show that we were at (Juliet Prowse was the guest star) and Karen remembered it well. That was my first time in a TV studio and I was thrilled. I remember accosting even members of the audience for their autographs, including a man we thought was actor Ken Berry but was really a dancer from “The Carol Burnett Show” on a break from filming. I walked through the halls of the studio peeking in at the sets for iconic shows of the era such as “All in the Family” (featuring alumni from the Smothers Brothers show, Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner), “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour,” and “The Merv Griffin Show” which we also attended. “Maude,” “The Jeffersons,” “One Day at a Time,” and of course, “Match Game” were all shot in the very studio where Bob Barker will be making his last appearance this afternoon.

I still don’t fully understand all the hoopla over Barker leaving “The Price Is Right.” “I’d rather win a couch from Bob Barker than a million dollars from Howie Mandel,” said Mark Dub, a NASA engineer who flew from Houston for the final show. “He's part of American culture.”

Good luck in retirement, Bob. I might consider voting for you for President, but, um…I'll take the million bucks over the couch.

Please Read This. No, Don’t!

My previous post about Volkswagen’s use of some Wilco songs in a new ad campaign produced a huge spike in my readership and comments. That often happens when I write about Wilco because it temporarily brings over a whole new group of readers. At first I find it exciting to see my numbers rise (even though I pretend not to care or notice) but then just as quickly I start feeling anxious about what I need to do to “keep” my new readers. I’m sure Wilco fans are as diverse as any other group but it’s hard to shake the feeling that these youngish music lovers would roll their eyes at most of the topics I tend to write about. My Jewish ancestors? 1960s TV shows? A Liza Minnelli concert, for God’s sake? Gulp! I start to resent this pressure to conform (even though it’s all coming from me) and end up defiantly writing posts that I believe are of zero interest to the typical Wilco fan. As I watch my numbers go down, I feel a mixture of sadness and relief. I don’t have to please anyone, I can just be myself.

This is the same dysfunctional cycle that I’ve been repeating since I was a kid, especially during adolescence and beyond. There’s a part of me that craves attention but the minute I get it, I fear that that it will cause me to abandon my true self and create a false identity. Then the rebel inside of me kicks in with a big “fuck you!” to anyone who would have me change and I assert my independence by vigorously ignoring such temptations. The only problem with my self-righteousness is that no one is actually asking me to give up parts of myself, it’s all in my head.

One of the reasons the recent criticisms that my brother-in-law was "selling out" bothered me so much is because I've seen how grounded Jeff has remained even as he's become more and more successful. I've watched him play to gigantic crowds of people staring at him in admiration and mouthing the words to all his songs and yet the adulation never seems to go to his head. Could I survive that kind of attention so gracefully? Why does the idea of adulation terrify me so much? I don't feel the same way about critical comments. After one of my earlier posts that mentioned Wilco was referenced on a music site, I squealed with delight when I saw this comment:

oh god, not the danny miller blog. over at viachicago.org, the wilco message board, people go gaga over his blog. mostly just because they feel they can get a "non-stalkerish" glimpse into someone closely related to jeff tweedy.

Why does that tickle me so? Because I often share the groan, "oh god, not the danny miller blog?"

I’ve spent much of my life wanting to be noticed and wanting to be invisible at the same time. I love writing in this blog precisely because I write it for myself, on whatever quirky subject I feel like ruminating on at that moment. I have plenty of experience writing-for-hire and that’s fine, but this is the place where I’m able to explore anything I happen to be thinking about, no matter how offbeat or uninteresting it may be to others. If a reader doesn’t feel like trudging through one of my long posts, what do I care? That sounds sort of healthy, I guess, but as I said, I also pay too much attention to my “stats.” I’ve received lots of positive feedback about my blog over the past two years, but I still inwardly wince when my number of hits plummets, and I spend a lot time pondering why some of my blogger friends get endless comments on every single post and I hardly ever do. Sometimes the neuroses take over and I think I should just close up shop because obviously no one is interested in my convoluted ravings. Then the pendulum swings and I think, “fuck it, I love writing in this blog, who cares how many comments I get, that doesn’t mean a damn thing!” Again, I’m fighting with myself, not the public at large.

It’s not just an influx of Wilco fans that brings on this awkwardness. Whenever I write about my great-grandparents or my extended family in Toronto and then find out that some of my relatives have read my blog, I start to worry about other posts they might see on here. My siblings and I have often felt a little self-conscious around my orthodox cousins since we are nowhere near as observant. What will they think about the irreverent ways in which I talk about our family and about Judaism and other topics? Actually, this anxiety exists whenever I find out anyone has read my blog. As much as I pathetically monitor my stats, I’m always shocked when someone tells me they’ve read something on my blog. It makes me feel a little embarrassed, as if I’ve forced them to do it against their will. My usual “Please pay attention to me”/”Just pretend I don’t exist” dichotomy.

I enjoyed our friend Quinn Cummings’ recent discussion about blogging:

You know what’s annoying about writing a blog?

What’s annoying is when you say something sort of topical and you hope a little funny to a friend, and they look at you with pity and say “…yeah, I read that in the blog.” Well, damn it, if there was no Internet, I could have gotten at least a weeks’ worth of entertainment value out of that line.

And then when you try to cover yourself and before you tell the same anecdote say to another friend “Have you read the blog this week?”, only to have them look at you with pity and say “…I’ve been really busy…”, which leaves me feeling as if I am Norma Desmond from the movie “Sunset Boulevard,” asking which of my movies they want me to screen for them. I don’t need validation! I don’t want your love! I just want to make sure I’m not repeating material!

For me the most uncomfortable part of blogging is when I’ve found myself resenting close friends who don't read my blog for whatever reason. I have gradually learned to not take it personally when someone I know very well has absolutely no interest. There are many people who enjoy this form of writing, and many, many people who do not. If I was walking by a total stranger who was giving the URL of his blog to another stranger, I know that I’d make a mental note of it and look it up later that day. I am pathologically curious when it comes to that kind of thing. But in the few cases where I found myself asking someone to read my blog, I ended up feeling like Narcissus on a bender, or, as Quinn says, Norma Desmond forcing passersby into her screening room that only shows her silent films. The saving grace of blogging for me is that I can usually cut through the neuroses and write for myself, without obsessing on who may or may not be reading it. If that means writing about obscure topics that no one I know is remotely interested in, so be it. On the other hand, thanks to powerful search engines, I’m usually able to attract like-minded freaks with similar obsessions. To prove my point, here are some Google search terms that have led strangers to my blog during the past ten minutes:
• sigourney weaver six feet under
• charles nelson reilly brett somers
• old high school crush
• mortal storm margaret sullivan
• jeff tweedy brother-in-law
• scarlet johannson jew
• mary ellen walton
• wilco vw ad
• julie newmar robot housewife tv
• come on people now smile on your brother

Nothing makes me more self-conscious than writing about blogging so why am I doing it? I know it will force me to write again soon just to get this post off my front page.

In closing, I apologize to my swiftly diminishing Wilco readers that I have no desire or ability to write incisive commentaries about the current music scene. Unless, that is, you can transport yourself back 80 years and view people like Irving Berlin as part of the current scene. This post made me think of one of my favorite Irving Berlin songs:

Listen to me, honey dear
Something's wrong with you I fear
It's getting harder to please you
Harder and harder each year
I don't want to make you blue
But you need a talking to
Like a lot of people I know
Here's what's wrong with you:

After you get what you want, you don't want it
If I gave you the moon, you'd grow tired of it soon
You're like a baby
You want what you want when you want it
But after you are presented
With what you want, you're discontented.
You're always wishing and wanting for something
When you get what you want
You don't want what you get!