Jew Eat Yet?

Stalker

Here’s a very L.A. question: When you run into celebrities you admire, do you approach them and say something, or do you play it cool and act as if you don’t know who they are?

As I’ve written about (incessantly) on this blog, it’s hard to go long in Los Angeles without running into celebrities of one ilk or another. Having known a fair number of famous people in my life, I am well aware that they are just regular folks with the same issues and dysfunctions (more?) as the rest of us. The last thing I’d ever want to do is to act like some fawning sycophant, and yet, when I encounter certain people, I still find myself fighting the urge to gawk and stare.

In the old days, the relationship between celebrities and fans was more clearly defined. Big movie stars had huge studio publicity machines behind them arranging for public appearances, so-called dates, all sorts of positive press, even fake marriages if they thought it would help the person’s image. There were no Smoking Gun, TMZ, or Go Fug Yourself websites exposing these people at their worst, and most scandals, arrests, ugly divorces, or any other indications that the celebrities were real human beings were quickly suppressed. Sure, there were a few sleazy tabloids such as “Broadway Brevities” and later “Confidential” and others that printed salacious gossip, but these were not considered mainstream publications and were nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are today.

For their part, most of the old-time stars understood the role of their adoring public in maintaining their fame. Joan Crawford may have been a sociopath in her personal life, but she was the epitome of the gracious Movie Star, acting like royalty but always kind and generous to her fans. She answered much of her mail by hand and never missed an opportunity to lap up the adoration or bestow gifts on the “little people” who were lucky enough to cross her path.

Even today you can see the difference between the stars who grew up in the old studio system and younger actors in the way they respond to public attention. Kendall and I have always marveled at how people like Debbie Reynolds (who we just saw last weekend at the Hollywood Bowl), the late Ann Miller (we must have seen her at more than a dozen events around town), and other actors from those bygone days cater to their fans. It’s in marked contrast to the celebrities who (understandably) don’t want to be bothered when they’re in a restaurant or a theatre and sometimes, when confronted by cloddish fans, become incensed and angry. I remember seeing MGM star Cyd Charisse at a screening a few years ago and hearing her say that whenever she and her husband Tony Martin are out and about in Los Angeles, she is aways touched and honored when people come up to them and tell them how much they have enjoyed their work. She urged everyone in the audience to approach her no matter where they happen to see her. I obviously don't expect people like Sean Penn to make such a remark.

Not that I have any desire to accost celebrities in public. Still, I have to admit that I always notice them when they're there. Reviewing celebrity encounters is practically a parlor game here in L.A. and usually it’s just a fun aside, not the focal point of your day. When I stopped at a coffee shop yesterday after dropping my daughter at school, I realized I was sitting next to William Shatner. I immediately found myself assessing how the actor has physically changed since he was at the height of his fame (thank God no one compares me on a daily basis to how I looked in my 20s!) and I briefly thought about “Star Trek” and some of my favorite Captain Kirk moments (I don’t watch his current show). Leah goes to school with a slew of actors’ children and when I meet those parents I rarely acknowledge their work. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going too far the other way. If I met a novelist I admired in that situation, wouldn’t I be likely to mention how much I enjoyed their books if that was the case?

When my brother-in-law Jeff was here last month, he was recognized on several occasions in restaurants or on the street. A few people came up and told him how much they loved his songs. It was always sweet and respectful but also a little uncomfortable and awkward. Jeff is kind to his fans and appreciates the fact that they enjoy his music, but it’s still a little weird when people recognize him during his off-stage life, especially if they approach him in places where anonymity is preferred like in a bathroom or locker room!

Why am I even writing about this meaningless and L.A.-centric topic? Last night Kendall and I were watching “Mad Men,” our favorite new show, about people working in an advertising agency in 1960. Fantastic series with a great cast including the always good John Slattery (also a regular on “Desperate Housewives” this year). I started thinking about Slattery’s role on one of my favorite TV shows of all time, a series called “Homefront” from the early 1990s that detailed the lives of a group of small-town people just after World War II. It only lasted two seasons but it covered a lot of ground in its depiction of those tumultuous post-war years. In addition to John Slattery, the excellent cast included Wendy Phillips, Kyle Chandler, Hattie Winston, Mimi Kennedy, and a young British actress named Sammi Davis. Davis’s character Caroline was my favorite and, in my opinion, the most challenging. She played an English war bride who married an American G.I. to escape Europe’s post-war devastation and, once safely ensconced in America, still suffered from the trauma she went through during the war. This made her act in ways that were anything but sympathetic. I loved Davis in this role, just as I had admired her in great films such as “Hope and Glory” and D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rainbow.” I started wondering what had happened to this wonderful actress who I hadn’t seen in almost ten years (except for a brief appearance in a “Lost” flashblack last year as Dominic Monaghan’s mother).

Imagine my surprise when I walked into my favorite La Brea Avenue coffee shop this morning and there sat actress Sammi Davis with two friends, chatting amiably in her distinctive British voice. I couldn’t believe the coincidence and I thought I should say something to her. I sat in full view of the actress, listening to her talk about current projects (including a new scary-sounding movie called “The Double Born”) but I never said a word. Sammi survived my lack of attention quite well, believe it or not, but I found myself wondering if I was throwing the baby out with the bathwater in my quest not to appear like a celebrity stalker. Maybe she would have enjoyed hearing from an admiring fan in that situation. Refusing to acknowledge her presence felt silly and ungenerous.

Why am I so self-conscious about this? Is it because of the time, nearly thirty years ago, when the attention I paid to a celebrity nearly sent her to a mental institution?

“Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” was the surprise hit of the year. A Norman Lear parody of soap operas, this nightly foray into high camp pushed all the envelopes. (I remember seeing the names of a married couple in the show's credits, never dreaming at the time that the story editors were my future in-laws, Kendall's parents.) The star of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” was Louise Lasser, who was mostly known back then as Woody Allen’s ex-wife and the neurotic spouse in a series of Nyquil commercials. Now she was the darling of the avant-garde and hanging out with the likes of Andy Warhol and Gore Vidal.

Lasser was coming to Chicago in a one-woman show that would capitalize on her new fame. I cut a few college classes to wait in line in the frigid midwest winter to purchase one of the sought-after tickets. Mission accomplished, I threw the ticket into my ever-present backpack. As the date of the show neared, however, rumors circulated that Lasser was crumbling under the weight of her newfound celebrity status. Less than a week before the engagement, the show was abruptly cancelled. “Ms. Lasser is experiencing minor health problems,” the notice read. An opportunity came up for me to visit New York the following weekend. Since my plans had changed, I decided to go.

The very night that I would have been in the Park West Theater in Chicago watching Lasser’s act, I found myself in a Broadway theater. As the lights came on at intermission, I spotted a familiar shock of red hair two rows in front of me. There, paging nervously through her program, sat Louise Lasser! I followed her to a small hallway where she went to have a cigarette. She looked wide-eyed and frightened. I was so stunned at the irony of the situation that against my better judgment I ran up to her and shouted, “Louise Lasser! Louise Lasser! I was supposed to be watching your show tonight in Chicago!” She responded as if I had caught her red-handed. As I reached into my backpack to find the ticket to her show, she lurched backwards against the wall, as if she feared I might be pulling out a gun. The more I tried to appear nonchalant and non-threatening, the more agitated she became. Still, I was so taken with the strange coincidence of our encounter that I wanted to record it. I whipped out my camera and asked her if I could snap a quick photo. Lasser backed further into the wall, her eyes darting. “Take the picture, take the picture,” she whimpered in a staccato monotone. Looking as if she wanted to die, she wrapped her purple shawl around her red hair and stared off into the distance. I took the photo.

And here it is, decades later, her Danny Miller-induced terror recorded for posterity. Later that month, I heard that Louise Lasser had checked herself into a mental hospital. “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” continued for a while without her and was eventually cancelled. I’m not saying that I caused the actress’s nervous breakdown, but I clearly was responsible for her panic on that particular day. Is it any wonder why I hesitate about approaching celebrities? And I haven’t even told you about the time I followed actress Ellen Burstyn for six city blocks.

Some Enchanted Yom Kippur

As Jews around the world are busy getting ready for the solemn Day of Atonement that begins tonight, I naturally have only one thing on my mind: Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals.

Okay, maybe it’s not the best preparation for the most important holiday in the Jewish calendar, but it’s meaningful to me. I’ve been attending the Rodgers & Hammerstein film festival that’s been going on at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and continues on for three more weeks. And, watching these films again as an adult, I find myself re-evaluating them in a Jewish context.

On the surface, can you think of a more goyishe set of stories than Rodgers & Hammerstein’s film canon? You’re about as likely to find a Jewish character in these musicals as you are to find Nellie Forbush singing that she’s gonna wash that “mensch” right outta her hair before donning her sheidel, the wig that orthodox women wear. It ain’t gonna happen. And yet, despite their total lack of Chosen People, the six films in this series—“Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I,” “Oklahoma!” “Flower Drum Song,” and “The Sound of Music,” are rife with Jewish themes.

Because of their names, I grew up thinking that Richard Rodgers was Gentile and Oscar Hammerstein II Jewish. Turns out it’s the other way around…sort of. Rodgers was born in Queens to a prominent Jewish doctor who had changed the family name from Abrahams in an attempt to blend more easily into his world of privilege. Rodgers’ mother was born Mamie Levy, the daughter of Jewish immigrants. Oscar Hammerstein’s father came from a non-religious Jewish family but his mother Alice was the daughter of Scottish immigrants and Hammerstein was raised as a Christian. Yet the weight of the assimilation and intermarriage both boys grew up with had a profound effect on their work.

Only two films have been screened so far in this series and I went to both of them. It’s always exciting to see these high quality studio prints in a big theatre with an appreciative audience. I was especially excited about seeing “Carousel,” the 1956 musical starring Gordon MacRae as ne’er-do-well carnival barker Billy Bigelow, and Shirley Jones as his pure-as-the-driven-snow gal, Julie Jordan. I loved this movie as a kid and always remembered it as the first movie that made me cry from its sheer poignancy, especially during the last scene in which we see how much the deceased Billy, visiting from the hereafter, really does love his wife and troubled daughter.

Rodgers & Hammerstein adapted “Carousel” from the 1909 play “Liliom,” written by Hungarian Jewish playwright Ferenc Molnar. The original play was set in Budapest and featured several Jewish characters, including the successful businessman who would become Mr. Snow in “Carousel” and the robbery victim Linzmann who would be transformed into wealthy mill owner Mr. Bascombe. Dick and Oscar changed the locale of the story to Maine, possibly the least Jewish state in the Union, added an authentic New England clambake and a lot of dancing, and disappeared all overt references to Jews. Still, they retained the dark tone of Molnar’s work and succeeded in creating the first musical with a tragic theme. “Carousel” opened on Broadway in April 1945, a few days before Adolph Hitler’s suicide in his bunker just prior to Germany’s defeat in World War II. It took over 10 years to get the movie to the screen. While still presented as a tragedy, several key points from the play were “cleaned up” for 1950s audiences, especially how Billy dies. In the play, he kills himself rather than get caught during a botched robbery attempt. There is almost a noble aspect to his suicide. He knows that he has screwed up his life and is causing Julie too much pain so he decides to end it all rather than drag her down any further. But in the movie, he accidentally falls on his knife during the robbery and dies from his wounds. Much weaker, but I guess the censors at the time couldn’t handle the idea of putting a positive spin on a suicide.

On the other hand, the film does romanticize Billy and it presents his relationship with Julie as a tragic but beautiful love story. Watching “Carousel” as a kid, I cheered when Julie willingly let herself be fired from her job at the mill so she could stay out late with that rascal Billy. “You go, girl!” I thought. “Take the risk and go for your dreams. You and Billy are meant to be together!” Watching the film as an adult, I wanted to shout something else at Shirley Jones’ lovely Julie Jordan. “ARE YOU NUTS?!” Billy Bigelow is clearly a dangerous sociopath with the maturity of a seven-year-old and the ethics and morals of a back alley criminal. Julie’s devotion to him is certifiable, clearly a side effect of the abusive relationships she must have had with her father and the other men in her life. The fact that we’re supposed to cheer for this ill-fated union makes my skin crawl today. There is not a single scene in which Billy Bigelow shows anything to Julie other than out-of-control narcissism and male bravado. He is selfish, spoiled, physically violent, and emotionally crippled. When Julie gets pregnant and Billy finally starts thinking about his responsibilities as a husband and father, his only solution is to hook up with his sleazy friend Jigger Craigin and commit a dangerous crime.

When I saw the film years ago I cried when Billy died, wondering how Julie and their baby daughter could possibly make it in the world without him. This time I felt relieved that they were free of this maniac. I used to buy the redemption scene at the end of the film hook, line, and sinker. Now I just rolled my eyes. Sure, Billy comes down to earth (after expressing great reluctance) and ultimately helps his wife and child at the girl’s high school graduation. How does he do so? By hearing the principal’s inspiring speech about faith, leaning down to both of them, and saying, “Listen to him! Believe it!” Big deal. I realize I’m being terribly judgmental and unforgiving, not exactly what Jews strive for in the hours before Yom Kippur. Perhaps my perspective on Billy has changed so much because I can imagine how I’d feel if my daughter were to be attracted to someone like that. A lot of our culture still glorifies the sexy and dangerous “bad boys” while making fun of the so-called boring dependable types. I just hope Leah learns to see through the surface charms of people like Billy Bigelow and can instead appreciate the dependability and kindness of a Mr. Snow. “Carousel” has many beautiful Rodgers & Hammerstein songs. It was the duo’s favorite collaboration and Shirley Jones’ favorite film. Still, Shirley’s biggest number is like a Codependents Anonymous cry for help:

Common sense may tell you
That the ending will be sad,
And now’s the time to break and run away.
But what’s the use of wond’ring
If the ending will be sad?
He’s your feller and you love him,
There’s nothing more to say.

Oy, run, Shirley, run! I’ve seen Shirley Jones around town with her on-and-off-again husband Marty Ingels and frankly, more than fifty years after “Carousel,” I’m not sure she’s learned her lesson.

I was far less excited about seeing “South Pacific,” the 1958 film starring Rosanno Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor. As a kid, I always found this film to be a bore and the decision by director Joshua Logan to place monochromatic colored filters over the camera lens whenever the characters broke into song drove me crazy. Like most Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, the film version followed a successful stage production, and my assessment had always been that while “Carousel” represented a highly successful stage-to-screen transfer, “South Pacific” was a huge miss, including the replacement of Broadway star Mary Martin with young Mitzi Gaynor. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found that I could barely sit through the infuriating “Carousel” and yet I was riveted to every frame of “South Pacific” which I found timely and expertly done. I thought that Mitzi Gaynor’s performance was nuanced and delightful—why had I dismissed her all these years?

“South Pacific” was adapted by Rodgers & Hammerstein from James Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Tales from the South Pacific.” The musical, which opened on Broadway in 1949 and dealt with the nearly taboo subject of racial prejudice, also won the Pulitzer Prize as well as 9 Tonys including the never repeated feat of winning every single acting award that year. The number of songs from this show that have become standards is mind-boggling, “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Younger Than Springtime” among them.

The story takes place on an island in the Pacific during the throes of World War II. A young U.S. Army nurse from Arkansas named Nellie Forbush is stationed there and falls in love with Emile de Becque, a French plantation owner who lives on the island. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Joe Cable of the U.S. Marine Corps arrives to plan a secret spy mission that might turn the tide in the war with Japan. While on the island, he meets and falls in love with a young Polynesian girl named Liat. As the story progresses, Nellie and Joe’s latent prejudice rears its ugly head. Nellie finds out that Emile’s late wife was Polynesian and his two children are biracial. For an Arkansas girl, the idea of becoming stepmother to these two half-breeds is abhorrent and she backs away from Emile. Oh, Mitzi, Mitzi, we hardly knew ye! Although in love with Liat, Joe can’t fathom marrying his dark-skinned girl either, even if it means saving her from a loveless match to a much older man. Though they both feel bad about their bigotry, neither Nellie or Joe think they have a choice in the matter. Cable then sings a provocative song that the censors tried to cut from the play and film because of its sensitive nature. Luckily, Rodgers and Hammerstein fought for the song and it remained.

Youve got to be taught to hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught from year to year,
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

Pretty damn daring for that time and I’m guessing a song that resonated with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Jewish backgrounds. I found this film to be challenging and profound and wildly entertaining, even with the damn filters that, to his credit, director Logan later said was the worst mistake of his entire career.

Tonight, as we gather in our synagogue to hear the haunting Kol Nidre prayer, the museum will be screening “The King and I,” another tale of bicultural relations and prejudices. Tomorrow they’re showing “Oklahoma!” featuring repeat performances by Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones. Macrae’s Curly is just as arrogant as Billy Bigelow but has other redeeming characteristics, thank God. None of the characters in “Oklahoma!” would have recognized a Jew if he slapped them in the face, although the traveling Persian peddler, the exotic and slightly shady Ali Hakim, might as well have been Jewish. In the Broadway version of the play, Hakim was played by a well known star of the Yiddish theatre while in the movie, the odd decision was made to cast the Aryan-looking Eddie Albert in the role. The dangerous Jud, played by Rod Steiger, also evoked the Jew’s outsider status in this country. Professor Andrea Most, writing about Jews and the history of musical theatre, maintains that Rodgers & Hammerstein's “Oklahoma!” symbollically pitted Jews against African Americans even though there were no Jews or blacks in the show:

But there are two outsiders who need to be assimilated: the peddler, Ali Hakim, and the threatening farmhand, Jud…The peddler ends up marrying into the extended Oklahoma family, while the “bullet-colored” Jud—described in the stage directions as singing “like a Negro at a revivalist meeting”—must ultimately be expunged. While Ali represents Jews’ hopes of moving into white America, Jud personifies the qualities that Jews feared would make them black.

Next week the festival will be screening “Flower Drum Song,” yet another tale of the benefits and pitfalls of assimilation, and “The Sound of Music,” a story about Nazis and World War II without a single mention of Jews (but with plenty of hidden Jewish content).

And now I must get ready for our services tonight in which my list of transgressions may come close in length to Billy Bigelow’s. Surely, the Rodgers & Hammerstein song that is the focal point of Billy’s redemption scene at the end of “Carousel” is the pair’s most Jewish song of all. It could almost be considered an anthem for Jews everywhere.

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone,
You’ll never walk alone!

Happy 100th Birthday, Sam Karoll!

Someone light the candles and call the fire department: today is my father’s 75th birthday and my grandfather’s 100th! What does it say about my mom that she married a man with the same exact birthday as her dad? Issues? I wish I knew the story behind the above photo (my grandfather is in the middle, right next to Henny "Take My Wife…Please!" Youngman) but the image reflects how I love to think of my Zaid—smiling, happy, and with a little bit of mischief in his eyes.

I’ve been dipping into the family archives quite a bit lately but you’ll have to forgive me if I pull out a few items to commemorate my grandfather’s centennial. This is the only photo I’ve ever seen of my grandfather as a boy. He was still known as Shmuel Korolnek when this picture of him and his older brother was taken in Toronto in 1916. My grandfather was born in Staszow, Poland. He emigrated with his parents Itshe Meyer and Alta Toba when he was three years old but for some reason his passport and other official papers always said he was born in Canada. I don’t know if that was a deliberate move on the part of my great-grandparents or if my grandfather rejigged his birth as an adult to avoid red tape when he came to the United States. I don’t know that much about my grandfather’s childhood except that he and his six brothers and sisters grew up at 35 Baldwin Street, then one of the focal points of Toronto Jewry. Why oh why oh why didn’t I ask him more about his early years when I had the chance? I deeply regret that I never sat him down with a tape recorder for an extensive interview. I did do that with my father and I have over nine hours of those conversations recorded.

The next photos that exist of my grandfather jump completely over World War I and the 1920s to the time when he left Canada with his two brothers, Herb and Dave. Here is a photo from back then that I’d never seen until my recent scanning fest in Chicago. My grandfather is 25 years old. His red hair is already thinning, as mine was at that age (thanks to male pattern baldness which passes down from the mother). He had just married my grandmother, Anita, who is 23 in this photo, and they are standing with their friend Gloria Ehrlich, a woman I knew as a child but could never have imagined as a young woman in this stylish garb. Of all the pictures I’ve seen of my grandparents, I am particularly struck by how young and in love they seem here. They had a great relationship but their affection on display in this image seems so unabashed and innocent. My mother was born the following year but in this photo they seem like kids.

Because my great-grandparents lived until the early 1970s, I remember what a devoted son my grandfather was. How I envy that he had both of his parents until he himself was almost 70. Here’s a photo of the three Chicago brothers, my Uncle Herb, my grandfather, and my Uncle Dave, with their revered father. I have often wondered what Itshe Meyer, born and raised in the lost world of the shtetls, thought about three of his sons changing their name and moving far away. Did he support this decision? The three brothers ran Karoll’s Red Hanger Shops for decades. As you can see, all were natty dressers which is not really a surprise considering their lifelong careers as haberdashers. Did Itshe Meyer worry about his sons’ religious practice in the States? Though my great-grandfather retained many aspects of his Ger Chasidism until the day he died, his sons were all clean-shaven and they dressed in a very modern style. My memory of my family’s ethos back then was to devote themselves to Judaism while at the same time blending in with the society at large in order to achieve greater success.

When I was little I thought my Zaid owned Chicago’s State Street. Watching the annual Christmas Parade from my grandfather’s office at Karoll’s, just across the street from Marshall Fields’ flagship store, I felt like the Roman Emperor Titus gazing down at my subjects in the Colosseum. Or at least Titus’s grandson! My grandfather seemed to know everyone in Chicago, from columnist Irv Kupcinet and Lyric Opera maven Danny Newman, to baseball player Willie Mays, golfer Arnold Palmer, and famed Chicago sportscaster Jack Brickhouse, seen here riding with my grandfather in some parade down “that Great Street.” Below that is a magazine ad my grandfather appeared in with the headline “There’s excitement in knits!” I may have inherited my grandfather’s baldness but I sure didn’t get his sense of style. Always dressed to the nines, I sometimes wish I had the Karoll menswear gene instead of my current jeans-only fashion sense which still evokes my sophomore year in high school. I loved going into work with my grandfather. Karoll’s was housed in the landmark Reliance Building, the Daniel Burnham skyscraper that has been beautifully restored and now survives as the classy Hotel Burnham. When I worked there during various adolescent stints, I would often have lunch with him at the still delicious Jewish steam-table restaurant called Manny’s. I loved my grandfather very much and I know he loved me, but I wish we had been closer, I wish I had been mature enough to take more of an interest in his life and beliefs.

We went to Shabbat dinner at my grandparents’ Lake Shore Drive apartment every Friday. As a kid I would often sleep over and accompany him to his orthodox synagogue on Saturday morning. It’s taken me 48 years to say this but I would so love the opportunity to discuss religion with my grandfather. I’d love to understand what he got from his devout faith. Because of his tendency to believe his orthodox way was the only way, I spent a lot of time when he was alive avoiding such conversations like the plague. He knew my siblings and I weren’t into his brand of Judaism and I’m sure that was a disappointment to him. This morning I found a letter that he wrote to me when I was going to school in Paris during college. He went to a lot of trouble to have a letter he wrote to the Chief Rabbi of France translated into French. He wrote me back telling me that arrangements had been made for me attend all of the 1978 High Holiday services at the historic Grande Synagogue de Paris on rue de la Victoire. I would LOVE to do that today but back then I ignored all his efforts and never followed through, idiot that I was. “Thank you very much for your birthday card,” he wrote in his typed letter on Karoll’s stationery. “I enjoyed the sentiment in it.” He then went on to give me some advice about the year ahead. “You tell me that you love the work but it is very hard, but anything that is good is generally not easy. Just stay in there pitching, and everything will work out.” Classic Sam Karoll.

My grandfather died in January 1995, just a few weeks after Leah was born. My mother was out here in California meeting her new grandchild. She had cared for my grandfather since my grandmother had died five years earlier and spent so much time with him it seemed unfair that she missed his final moments. She felt guilty about it but maybe he waited to be alone to die. My grandparents were so dependent on each other during their 58-year marriage that my grandfather was never really the same after she died. I have so many memories of the vibrant, funny, charismatic, kind man I knew as my Zaid. I miss him so much and as I mark his 100th birthday, I am endlessly grateful for the presence of my own wonderful father on his 75th.

Brett Somers

We were so sad to hear a little while ago that Brett Somers died this weekend. I haven’t seen any obituaries yet but I’m sure, coming on the heels of Charles Nelson Reilly’s death, there will be plenty of hackneyed references to Brett joining Charles in that “Match Game in the Sky.” Still, it’s hard not to imagine Charles, newly robust in the afterlife, welcoming Brett with some fabulous sarcastic line (I can hear him deadpanning something like, “What took you so long?”) and the two of them catching up on all the Hollywood dirt. As I mentioned when Charles died, Brett was Kendall’s godmother and just last week Kendall’s mom unearthed some home movies of the Haileys at Brett’s house with Brett acting characteristically insane. I wish I could digitize that and include it here. I also wish I could show you the “Match Game” segment in which Brett wrote “Happy Birthday, Kendall!” on one of the cards and then explained to Gene Rayburn that it was her young friend’s birthday.

Why have so many hysterically funny people left us this year? Was there anyone better at doing what Brett did? I remember watching her on “The Match Game” and laughing until it hurt. It was all so real and good-natured and bawdy and fun. Even if some of their bits were planned, they always seemed so spontaneous. I enjoyed watching Brett Somers on “The Odd Couple” with her ex-husband Jack Klugman and I remember when she played Rhoda Morgenstern’s aunt on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Too bad she was rarely given the chance to sink her teeth into meaty dramatic roles, I bet she would have been superb.

Here are Brett and Charles appearing on CBS a few years ago talking about those crazy “Match Game” days.

Update: And now word comes just a few days later that actress Alice Ghostley has died, yet another talented friend of my wife's family. Ghostley starred in one of Kendall's dad's plays in the 1970s. Sigh. We last saw Alice at one of her famous Christmas parties at a wonderful Swiss restaurant in the Valley. She was a delight—generous, kind, and funny. As a kid I mostly knew her as the bumbling supernatural maid Esmeralda on "Bewitched" and she also made an impression in her short scenes in "The Graduate" with "Bewitched" castmate Marion Lorne. A few years ago Charles Nelson Reilly was asked where he got his trademark “huh-huh” noise. He said, “I stole it from Paul Lynde, who stole it from Alice Ghostley.”

Days of Repentance

“Your actions during Rosh Hashanah set the tone for the entire year ahead, so act accordingly,” our rabbi said yesterday during services for the Jewish New Year. “Oh my God,” I thought, squirming in my seat, running through a list of my recent actions that I desperately hope will not define my upcoming year.

Kendall and I are going to see singer Rufus Wainwright next week at the Hollywood Bowl. I like Rufus very much but I’m even more familiar with the rest of his folksinging family: father Loudon Wainwright III, mother Kate McGarrigle, and sister Martha Wainwright. All day today I couldn’t get one Loudon Wainwright song out of my head. It’s called “Father/Daughter Dialogue” and was written and performed by Loudon and his daughter Martha. The song came out of an actual fight the two were having in their frequently rocky relationship. Both being songwriters, they decided to put their raw, brutally honest feelings about each other into this song:

Martha Wainwright:
Dearest Daddy, with your songs
Do you hope to right your wrongs?
You can’t undo what has been done
To all your daughters and your son
The facts are in and we have found
That basically you’re not around
Dearest Daddy, try as you might
All you are is just uptight.

You sing of my mother and me
Somewhat sentimentally
You sing about a father and son
When all you do from him is run
You’d like to think that things are okay
By singing things that you should say
Dearest Daddy, with your songs
Do you hope to right your wrongs?

Loudon Wainwright:
Darling daughter, can’t you see?
The guy singing the songs ain’t me
He’s someone people wish I was
What I can’t do, this dude does
And if the songs seem slightly pat
I know life’s messier than that
They’re just songs and life is real
They’re just my version, how I feel.

And you don’t feel the same I know
How it went down or it should go
My mistakes you label wrongs
I expiate my guilt with songs
Why I’m uptight or not around
Those whys continue to confound
Darling Daughter, can’t you see?
The guy singing the songs ain’t me.

God, I love that song. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more honest dialogue between two family members. The issues I'm dealing with lately have nothing to do with my daughter but I so admire the truth that is present in the song and I can relate very strongly to Loudon Wainwright’s ruminations about how his "sins" intersect with his "art." Here would be my revised version of his poignant verse:

Hey blog readers, can’t you see?
The guy writing the blogs ain’t me
He’s someone I sure wish I was
What I can’t do, this dude does
And if the blog posts seem slightly pat
I know life’s messier than that
They’re just blogs and life is real.
They’re just my version, how I feel.

I’ve heard Loudon Wainwright’s moving songs about his ex-wife and his children, and this reaction from Martha provides a fascinating glimpse into the "truth" behind his art. While I understand and agree with Loudon’s explanation, I would also suggest that his songs and my blog posts ARE real, they are one of the primary ways we are able to make sense of our feelings, even if the people we’re writing about see it all very differently. Have I been trying to expiate some of my guilt with blogs? You bet I have—it’s better than becoming a heroin addict!

The Jewish and secular New Year holidays have little in common, except for one thing—both holidays encourage a lot of introspection. During the High Holidays, or High Holy Days, or more properly, the “Days of Awe,” Jews meditate on their lives and ask forgiveness of people they have wronged. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah (today), Jewish people observe a ritual called “Tashlich” in which they cast their sins into a body of water such as an ocean or lake. When I was little we used to go with my grandfather to the banks of Lake Michigan and throw hay into the water, the hay representing our sins of the past year (most Jewish people use bread). I used to rebel against this idea but now I love it. Perhaps this blog acts as my virtual Tashlich on occasion. Casting sins onto the water does not mean we are automatically forgiven or redeemed, but if we acknowledge the ways in which we have transgressed with humility and purpose, perhaps we can finally proceed down the path towards true repentance.

Wishing you all a sweet, happy, and healthy new year.

Sshh! Family Secrets

When documentary filmmaker Doug Block began interviewing his parents several years ago, he thought he was just making a family record of their 54-year-old marriage. The Blocks lived in a suburban home outside of New York and seemed a fairly typical Jewish family. Doug and his two sisters had always assumed their parents had a happy marriage, but when Doug’s mother died suddenly, and then three months later his father married the secretary he supposedly hadn’t seen in 35 years, all sorts of questions about their family history bubbled to the surface. As the father made plans to sell the family homestead and move to Florida with his new wife, Doug began sifting through decades of accumulated memories in his attempt to ferret out what really happened in his parents’ troubled marriage. He hit the motherlode when he found boxes of journals that his mother, Mina, kept for many years; thousands of pages of her innermost thoughts, fears, and hopes. Block debated whether he should read the private journals and ultimately decided to dive in and share portions of them in his moving documentary called “51 Birch Street.”

I just watched the DVD of this film and don’t know how on earth I missed it during its theatrical run. If ever a film had my name on it, this one did. One of the things I love most about the documentary is how we first think we are going to learn about the duplicity of Doug’s father, Mike. Was he carrying on with his secretary all those years? Was he the bearer of all the family secrets? I won’t give it away, but suffice it say that after Mina’s diaries are found, the story changes dramatically. Isn’t that often how family secrets go—we think we’re chasing one lead and then we’re slammed with something we never expected?

The tagline for this film is “Do we ever really know our parents?” I say no, we do not, especially not as the complex and flawed human beings that they are. I suppose as kids we desperately need our parents to play the roles of omnipotent protectors, seemingly without any needs of their own. As we get older, getting to know what made our parents tick can be an illuminating, maturing, troubling, and ultimately poignant journey of discovery.

How I envy Doug Block for finding his mother’s voluminous diaries. If my mother had kept journals, would I have read them after her death? No question about it. As with Doug, no matter what complexities and struggles they revealed, I think that reading my mother’s words would only make me feel closer to her, and it would help me better understand the more difficult chapters of her life. Would I share my mother’s diaries with the public as Block has done? Probably not. At least not passages that I felt my mother would not want known. Does that sound hypocritical coming from me, Mr. Public Family Archivist? I already got into serious hot water with my clan earlier this year when I printed excerpts of letters between my grandfather and uncle that were written during the 1960s. My “defense” at the time was that they were fascinating relics of another time and place and therefore I did not need to check with my uncle regarding their public dissemination since I was only including them as sociological artifacts. Oy, was I wrong, and I would expect people to get MY permission before uploading any of my own personal documents. But what about the dead? Block’s family members came to view his documentary as having a positive impact on their family but his sisters still wonder whether he should have included excerpts from their mother’s diaries. After thinking about it, Mina’s best friend Natasha, who is interviewed in the film, decides that Doug’s mother would have approved since she was so desperate to be truly understood by her family and the world.

Unlike Mina, who spent many years in analysis, my therapy-fearful mother was not eager to share her dirty laundry with anyone, she was far too guilt-stricken about many of her choices. I’m sure she’s quite relieved that she did not keep a written record of her life for us to pour over now. She died before blogging reared its ugly head and I’ve often wondered how she would have reacted to some of the things I’ve shared about our family. I think she would have enjoyed my blog, but there are probably topics I would have avoided entirely (like this one) if she were alive. My father, on the other hand, LOVES talking about painful episodes from the past, so he is on board with any online revelations. Lately he keeps threatening to write a book, or at least talk into a tape recorder about his life, and I hope he does it.

People say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I get just as excited when I discover any fragment of paper written by my departed loved ones. This morning I found three random pages of a draft of a letter that my mother penciled to an event planner in the Catskills when she was planning my brother’s 1967 Bar Mitzvah. What could be less intimate or revealing than such a sterile, 40-year-old document, right? Au contraire—my mother’s words from this long-ago time provide a rare and treasured window into who she was. Reading these pages I am amazed at her attention to detail, her humor, and the fact that she wrote a draft of this letter which I assume she later copied over and mailed. There are funny passages about what Jews like to eat, amusing digs at my relatives, and countless details about the plans for the event that I would’ve sworn my mother had nothing to do with. My brother’s Bar Mitzvah was a combo celebration, a sideshow to my great-grandparents’ Itshe Meyer and Alta Toba’s 65th wedding anniversary. I had always assumed that we were an add-on to this momentous occasion and that my parents had little to do with the plans. And yet here is my mother going into endless details about the flower arrangements, the tablecloths, making sure there are people around to greet the guests as they arrive at the resort, even her worries about the color of the drapes in each room to make sure everything matches. Huh? That just does not reflect my image of my mom at that time, more proof that our memories are not a hard disk of truth and accuracy.

My favorite passage involves the presence of kids at the event:

…I hate to keep bringing this up but there will be lots of kiddies present (get the tranquilizers ready, Mel) and although I don’t intend to aim this Bar Mitzvah at seven year olds, an unhappy seven year old is notoriously more vocal than an unhappy fifty year old (except for a few of my aunts who shall remain nameless). We adults were all content with the meals on our last trip to the Pioneer but I distinctly remember moaning and groaning from assorted juveniles (my own included, I’m ashamed to say). There are many solutions to this problem—everyone could leave their kids at home (count one vote right here) or we could set up tables at Grossinger’s for the kids, or we could tell them there are starving people all over the world who would be more than happy to eat vegetable goulash and creamed spinach (that never works for me—my kids always want to pack up their spinach and liver and send it to India!). However, I think our motto should be ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’ I think if you have something as simple as PB and Jelly or cream cheese and jelly, and tuna fish or egg salad sandwiches available for the kids and cupcakes and cookies included with the desserts, that should take care of the lovey-doveys.

I am fascinated by my mother’s tone in this blurb. As a parent I can so relate to everything she said, including the good-natured jabs at her unruly offspring (and since I was the only one of her kids who was seven years old at the time, I can’t help but think her comments were aimed at me). Still, even forty years later I have to admit it’s a bit shocking for me to think of MY mother expressing anything other than total joy at being in our presence 24 hours a day. The crack about leaving us at home is obviously a joke. Reading it as a parent, I laughed out loud. Reading it as her child, I winced. Why does it take something as benign as a letter to a caterer to make me fully appreciate the fact that my parents were terribly young and were probably often stressed out by their roles and responsibilities? I remember what one of Doug Block’s sisters said about their mother in the documentary. “That she loved us there was never any doubt. But perhaps she shouldn’t have had three kids in four years.”

I wish I could have seen my parents as real people back then. Maybe it would have made all the awful times that were to come a few years later during their divorce a little more understandable. Maybe I wouldn’t have spent a lifetime ignoring all of my own feelings in my attempts to “defend” my mother from criticism and instead just have accepted that we are all flawed individuals. I think we show more of our true selves to kids these days than our parents did in the 1950s and 60s. But would I go so far as to say that children today know who their parents really are? Probably not—and perhaps that’s as it should be.

Death, Betrayal, and Insanity: Another Birthday Post

Today is my 48th birthday. For the past two years I’ve been looking at my birthday through the lens of the Best Picture Academy Award winners from the year of my AGE. In other words, I talked about the 1946 winner, “The Best Years of Our Lives” when I turned 46, and I ruminated on 1947’s “Gentleman’s Agreement” last year on my 47th birthday. In 1948, the Best Picture Oscar went to Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet.” Yawn. Not that it wasn’t a great film, but I’m a little reluctant to look at my upcoming year in the context of murder, revenge, madness, jealousy, and Oedipus complexes. Oh wait, maybe that IS the perfect description of my life…

Is it a bad omen for the upcoming year that all of the 1948 Best Picture nominees were so rife with dysfunction? Besides “Hamlet,” the films honored that year were “Johnny Belinda,” detailing the brutal rape and torment of a deaf mute, “The Red Shoes,” a Powell and Pressburger film about the ultimately tragic obsessions of a prima ballerina, “The Snake Pit,” a portrait of a woman fighting her way back from severe mental illness, and “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” a story of greed and lawlessness in post-revolutionary Mexico. Not exactly “Singin’ in the Rain” but the films do seem to reflect some of my underlying anxiety and fears. I know I didn’t “choose” which films were nominated in 1948 but if my therapist were to see that I was discussing films such as the dismal “Johnny Belinda” on my birthday, she’d ask irritating (but important) questions such as “What aren’t you hearing in your life? How are you feeling mute? In what ways do you feel raped or brutalized?” Ugh, maybe I should stick to that happy-go-lucky family in Denmark.

To be or not to be, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

1948’s “Hamlet” was the first British film ever to be given top honors by the Academy. Olivier directed and starred in the film and remains the only actor ever to win an Oscar for playing the tormented prince. But though the Academy members showered the film with awards, Shakespeare purists were horrified by Olivier’s decision to cut nearly two hours of dialogue and eliminate some characters entirely including the always popular Rosencrantz and Guilderstein. Still, many regard Olivier’s version as the definitive cinematic treatment.

I was probably 17 or 18 when I first saw this film. I remember Eileen Herlie’s expert turn as Queen Gertrude. Herlie was only 28 years old when she played 41-year-old Olivier’s mother, but proved she had the chops for the role which she reprised in the 1964 Richard Burton version, Today Herlie rarely gets to exercise such acting skills on “All My Children” where she’s played former carny woman Myrtle Fargate for decades. The other actress who made a big impression on me was Jean Simmons. I remember getting her wonderful Ophelia confused with the character of Morticia Addams’ crazy sister Ophelia on “The Addams Family.” I’m guessing Carolyn Jones based her parody on Simmons’ performance. I always liked Jean Simmons but I think she had her best roles when she was very young, most notably the vicious 16-year-old Estella in David Lean’s “Great Expectations” and then playing Ophelia in “Hamlet” for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar at the age of 19. When Simmons became a full-fledged superstar in the 1950s, she was constantly shoved into bloated costume dramas, rarely getting a chance to shine as brightly as she did in her earlier work. In 1948, Simmons lost the award to Claire Trevor in “Key Largo” for a part written by Jean Simmons’ future husband Richard Brooks. Trevor deserved the accolades she received for her role as the boozing and reviled ex-lover of Edward G. Robinson, but the other nominees that year were also worthy and hold special places in my TV-saturated heart: Agnes Moorehead (Endora on “Bewitched”) was nominated for her excellent performance in “Johnny Belinda” and both Ellen Corby (“The Waltons”) and Barbara Bel Geddes (“Dallas”) were nominated for “I Remember Mama.” The Best Director winner that year, John Huston, could have renamed his film “I Remember Papa” since his dad Walter Huston won the Best Supporting Actor award for his appearance in John’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”

But let’s get back to ME. Who among the acting nominees that year do I most identify with? Not really Larry’s Hamlet, despite his angst, or any of the other Best Actor nominees with the possible exception of Montgomery Clift who played an American G.I. in “The Search” who finds a little boy who survived Auschwitz. Clift tries to sift through the burned-out hell of postwar Europe to find the little boy's mother. Auschwitz? Missing mothers? I’m in! The rest of the nominees that year seemed surprisingly lackluster: Clifton Webb for his first turn as the prissy babysitter Mr. Belvedere in “Sitting Pretty,” Lew Ayres as the kindly doctor in “Johnny Belinda,” and Dan Dailey as an alcoholic vaudeville performer in the forgotten Betty Grable vehicle, “When My Baby Smiles at Me.” And yet the Academy overlooked Humphrey Bogart’s gritty performance in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre?” Go figure. Do you think this was the first Best Actor roster in history that boasted three closeted homosexuals (Olivier, Clift, and Webb) and one known crossdresser (Dailey)? Was that a marker of the increasingly repressed Cold War era?

No, I have to admit that as I turn 48, the nominee with whom I resonate the most is Olivia de Havilland in “The Snake Pit,” the harrowing tale of a woman who finds herself in an insane asylum but can’t remember how she got there. This is basically my biggest fear in life—that I will suddenly and unexpectedly lose it to the point where I end up in a mental institution. I completely identified with de Havilland’s performance and thought her natural vulnerability made her perfect for the role (can’t you just see Melanie Wilkes from “Gone with the Wind” ending up in the loony bin?). All of the 1948 Best Actress nominees played on-the-edge characters with the exception of Irene Dunne’s Norwegian matriarch in “I Remember Mama.” Barbara Stanwyck was nominated for her role as a bedridden heiress in “Sorry Wrong Number” who comes to believe that her husband is trying to have her murdered. I could well relate to Stanwyck’s level of paranoia, even though I don’t think Kendall has any contracts out on my life. Another nominee that year was Ingrid Bergman for “Joan of Arc.” I remember loving Ingrid and hating this movie but I’ve only seen the butchered 90-minute version. I hear the UCLA Film Archive recently restored the film to its original length, well over two hours, and I’ve got to get my hands on that DVD. This was Ingrid Bergman’s dream project, she fought long and hard to make it, but as luck would have it, the film was released just as news of her adulterous affair with Roberto Rossellini hit the papers. Fans stayed away in droves and the film tanked. The public just couldn’t handle the disgraced actress playing a saint even though the Academy voters were more charitable. Did Ingrid/Joan really hear those voices or was she yet another candidate for Olivia’s Snake Pit? The Best Actress winner that year was Jane Wyman, aka Mrs. Ronald Reagan, for her role as a deaf mute who is misunderstood by her relatives and brutally raped by an outsider who then torments her endlessly. This is one of the most depressing, misery-filled, hopeless films I’ve ever seen. In other words, I loved it. When Wyman won her award she gave the shortest Oscar speech on record: “I won this award by keeping my mouth shut and I think I’ll do it again.”

Nominee Ingrid Bergman died on her own birthday, but Irene Dunne died on mine, on September 4, 1990, so maybe I should end this post with her. I loved all of Dunne’s performances, not just her kindly Norwegian mama. I could watch movies like “Magnificent Obsession,” “Theodora Goes Wild,” “The Awful Truth,” and “My Favorite Wife” over and over again. Despite Dunne’s real-life devotion to the Republican Party, it wouldn’t hurt for me to try to emulate her positive and realistic outlook on life as I head towards 50. She once commented that she lacked the “terrifying ambition” of other actresses. She said, “I drifted into acting and drifted out. Acting is not everything. Living is.”

Lessons from Wilco

I’ve been listening to my brother-in-law’s music for the past 17 years but I don’t think I ever appreciated it as much as I have during this past week tagging along on the southern California leg of Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky tour. I can’t/won’t/ shouldn’t comment on Wilco’s music as if I know what the hell I’m talking about but as an attendee of the past three gigs in Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Los Angeles, may I slip on the hat of an erudite music journalist for just a moment and offer my capsule review of the current tour? Here it comes—you may want to grab a pencil and take notes.

Jesus fucking Christ, those guys are good!

I should leave it at that but I feel compelled to add how blown away I am by the artistry of the six musicians in the current Wilco line-up.

I think in past years I was focused mostly on Jeff’s amazing lyrics but watching three shows in a row I was riveted by so much more this time around, not the least of which was Jeff’s killer guitar playing and singing which have never been better. I’ve always admired bassist John Stirratt’s huge contributions to the band (it doesn’t hurt that he’s one of the nicest guys on the planet) and I’m such a fan of drummer Glenn Kotche, surely one of the best percussionists alive, that I’m practically a groupie. I like to watch parts of every show from the side of the stage just to get a better view of Glenn’s furious sweat-soaked sets. But how have I gone this long without paying adequate attention to the genius of guitarist Nels Cline? Having barely recovered from a ghastly case of adult chicken pox, Nels was ON FIRE at every show that I saw, often spinning off on intense and unexpected explosions of sound that contrasted perfectly with the other musicians and secured Wilco’s reputation as one of the most exciting live acts out there today. Particularly effective was the moving ballad “Via Chicago” which the band begins playing as its heard on the “Summerteeth” album except in their live shows the song is punctuated by alternating aggressive freeform riffs by both Glenn and Nels while Jeff continues singing in his slow, soulful style, apparently oblivious to the violent interludes. This song interpretation evokes the turbulent back thoughts we all experience but are often unable to express out loud. In lesser hands, such musical risk-taking might sound like a lot of pretentious noise, but as performed by Wilco, these innovations are so thrilling they never failed to bring tears to my eyes. I laughed when I saw the photos I tried to take during the shows—even when I was able to get the rest of the band members in clear focus, Nels Cline always appears as a red blur, a whirling dervish who plays that guitar with such skill and force that I wondered how he got through a show with all his fingers intact.

One of the coolest things about Wilco, and I’m guessing one of the reasons why the band is able to feature such brilliant musicians, is that all of them are free to pursue other creative projects in addition to their main Wilco gig. I’m looking forward to catching up on John Stirratt and Pat Sansone’s (who plays guitar and keyboards in Wilco) band, The Autumn Defense. Keyboardist Mike Jorgensen is a former sound engineer who used to create computer sound tapestries for the band during the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot tour. Mike has a band out of Brooklyn called Pronto. Nels Cline records with many artists including his own Nels Cline Singers and he was named by Rolling Stone this year as one of the “Top 20 Guitar Gods.” Glenn Kotche has three solo albums and has also recorded with Jeff for Loose Fur and Scott McCaughey’s The Minus 5, and Jeff has a lot of projects going on including his participation in the supergroup Golden Smog. I loved spending time with these guys during the past week and seeing their collaborative creativity in action. Traveling in their tour bus from San Diego to L.A. was a blast, especially watching an old Loretta Young movie while debating our choices for the hottest movie stars of all time. How can you not love a band who would come up with such great examples as Kate Winslet, Charlotte Rampling, and Dominique Sanda?

It was also very moving watching the fans at the different Wilco shows. Forever frozen in my mind is a young couple who stood in front of me during the San Diego show, the man behind the woman, his arms tightly around her. They remained like that during the whole show, swaying in closed-eye ecstasy while mouthing the words to every song. I saw people of all ages with huge smiles on their faces for over two hours as well as fans openly sobbing during poignant songs such as “On and On and On,” “Jesus, Etc.,” and “I’m the Man Who Loves You” which Jeff always dedicates to my sister. Lots of fun people came to the shows, from Citizen of the Month’s Neil Kramer to insanely funny Fred Armisen to our rabbi and her wife as well as a spattering of Wilco-lovin’ celebs including James Spader, Catherine Keener, Sandra Oh, and Mandy Moore. A highlight of the L.A. Show at the Greek Theatre was when Jeff scooped up my slightly terrified nephew Sammy and brought him out onto the stage to the roars of the crowd. I really loved every minute of these three shows and was sad when they came to an end. Everyone in the band as well as the Wilco management and crew were great to be around. To end my fawning with the most unhip reference I can think of, I felt like the Margaret O’Brien character in “Meet Me in St. Louis” who remarks to older sister Judy Garland, “Wasn’t I lucky to be born in my favorite city?” My version is “Wasn’t I lucky to be related to my favorite rock band?”

On Thursday we had the added fun of going with Wilco to “The Tonight Show’s” NBC studios in Burbank for a taping. It was Leah’s first time in a TV studio and she was thrilled, especially when she got to meet the orangutan and baboon that were guests on Thursday’s show as well as the three current stars of the move “Superbad,” Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. We haven’t seen the film yet (even the “Superbad” guys recommended waiting until our kids were 14 or 15!) but the actors couldn’t have been nicer. We loved Michael Cera on “Arrested Development” and it turned out the talented Jonah Hill was a big Wilco fan, very excited to take a picture with Jeff and making my sister promise to email it to him. How amazing that these three very normal young guys are suddenly huge stars, in the middle of an international tour for the film. Jonah told us that he’s already made plans to attend Rosh Hashanah services at a synagogue in Rome and he talked to Spencer, who is beginning Hebrew School in a few weeks, about his own Bar Mitzvah. Wilco performed “Either Way” from Sky Blue Sky which was great and there were a bunch of Wilco fans in Jay Leno’s audience but a TV studio performance can’t hold a candle to seeing them perform live in a concert setting. The guys got on the Wilco bus after the taping and were off to tonight’s gig in Denver as they continue their tour. My sister and nephews left yesterday, ending three weeks of family togetherness.

Now I’m back at Farmers Market, wearing a Wilco T-shirt (oy!) and eager to return to my normal life, as soon as I remember what that is. It's definitely time to throw myself back into my work. While I’ll never have the experience of being a rock star, God knows, I will carry with me the memory of being around such exciting, fulfulling artistic collaborations and I will work hard to simulate such a feeling in my own life as a writer and editor.