Jew Eat Yet?

You Are Not Alone

 

Of all my brother-in-law Jeff Tweedy’s projects, what could possibly be more exciting than his collaboration with gospel legend Mavis Staples? He produced her new album, which will be released in September, wrote the title tune, and sings on several of the tracks. 71-year-old Mavis all but adopted my two nephews during the recording (which took place at Wilco’s Chicago loft) and I’m hoping her honorary grandmother status extends to Charlie and Leah. Here is a just-released video featuring Mavis and Jeff:

What a love fest! “I don't know where Tweedy's been all my life!” Oy, this from a woman who sang with Aretha, recorded two albums with Prince, and was proposed to by Bob Dylan. She didn’t pursue that relationship because she was worried what their close family friend Martin Luther King, Jr., would have thought of her being with a white man. Mavis’s dad, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, scoffed at that worry.  “Haven’t you been listening to what that Dylan kid is saying?” Pops asked his daughter. “Don’t you see all the white people marching with us?” Mavis speculated on what it would have been like if she and Dylan had married and started a family. “They’d be some poetry-writing, singing kids, wouldn’t they?”

 

“I’m so happy to be connected to the Wilco band, period,” Mavis said in a recent Guardian interview. “Most of the time when the session is over, you just take a deep breath and you’re grateful that everything went right. But this one, I hated to see it wrap up. I would have loved to do one more song…I told Jeff, ‘It’s cartwheel time for me. I can’t do it, but I’ll get one of my nieces and nephews to do a cartwheel for me.’”

Here’s a clip of Mavis with her family, the Staple Singers, singing one of their biggest hits at the 1973 Grammy Awards. Hot damn, that woman can sing. Welcome to the family, Mavis!

Don't Ask, Don't Kvell

 

The Pentagon recently sent out a survey to hundreds of thousands of troops asking them about the possible repeal of the United States’ ban on Jews in the military. Copies of the poll were leaked on the Internet. It included questions such as the following:

1. What is your biggest concern about the possibility of serving with Jewish
    servicemen?
     a.  They would try to “Jew down” the price of Kevlar vests.
     b.  Their noses would be too big a target for the enemy.
     c.  They would spend too much time talking to their mothers.
     d.  Army-issued cheeseburgers would be outlawed as “treyf.”

2.  If Jewish women are allowed to enlist, how do you think your military
     experience might change?
     a.  Troops will be forced into multiple viewings of “Yentl.”
     b.  Officers will have to show proof of medical school enrollment before a
          first date.
     c.  Jewish servicewomen would go into enemy territory to help the locals
          accessorize their burqas.
     d.  The new troops would try to bedazzle our camouflage fatigues.

Okay, we’ve established that I suck at current events parody, but is the ACTUAL survey that was sent to over 400,000 active duty, national guard, and reserve forces regarding the possible repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” any less insane? Here are some questions from that gem:

1.  If a wartime situation made it necessary for you to share a room, berth, or field tent with someone you believe to be a gay or lesbian service member, which are you most likely to do?
     a.  Take no action.
     b.     Discuss how we expected each other to behave. 
     c.     Talk to a chaplain or mentor. 
     d.     Talk to a leader to see if I have other options.

2. If “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is repealed and you are assigned to bathroom facilities with open bay shower with a gay or lesbian service member, which are you most likely to do?
     a.  Take no action.
     b.  Use the shower at a different time.

There are a bunch of other such questions in this absurd document that was sent out a few weeks ago and a similar survey is planned for family members of (straight) military personnel. What a colossal waste of time and taxpayer money (the price tag of the survey is a whopping $4.5 million!). Were the troops surveyed in 1948 when President Truman ended segregation in the military? You can bet many people were upset about that change but the military didn’t stop and provide a forum for their racist attitudes. Nor was there any survey in 1976 when service academies were opened to women. The Pentagon is defending the survey as a necessary step in getting ready for the possible integration of gays and lesbians into the armed forces. Um…guess what, guys? 

THEY’RE ALREADY THERE! (And they always have been.)

Is there any policy in our country's history more mind-numbingly absurd than “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?” The compromise of the Clinton Administration is one that will stun future generations for its sheer idiocy. Have you ever read the actual language of the law? The policy prohibits anyone with a propensity to engage in homosexual acts from serving in the armed forces of the United States because “it would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards or morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.” Oh, but wait. You CAN be gay, the misguided compromise states, you just can’t disclose your sexual orientation or speak about any homosexual relationship. If you do admit to it, or if someone rats you out, then you will be kicked to the curb no matter how admirably and bravely you've served your country, as over 14,000 people have been since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” went into effect in 1993. Revealingly, the number of gays and lesbians booted out decreased dramatically after 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began. Good fodder, after all, but the policy is still the cause of outrageously unfair persecution. The comic above (click to enlarge) is from a surreal army handbook explaining the intricacies of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to the troops.

There are many stories of heartbreak and misery caused by this policy—a few can be found here. Incidentally, did you know that most countries around the world allow gay troops to serve in their armed forces? Of all the NATO countries, only Turkey and the United States prohibit gays and lesbians from serving openly. Other countries, from Albania to Canada to Germany to Israel to Uruguay allow it. The United States can be proud to be part of an illustrious group that includes Cuba, China, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. 

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Happy Birthday, Kendall Hailey!

 

Above is a baby picture of my wife Kendall, who was born 44 years ago today. She's with her impossibly young parents, Betsy and Oliver, looking about the age Charlie is now. Kendall shares this special day with an appropriately eclectic group that includes Henry David Thoreau, Pablo Neruda, Oscar Hammerstein II, Milton Berle, Van Cliburn, Bill Cosby, Richard Simmons, and Cheryl Ladd. Now there’s a dinner party worth attending!

Over the years I’ve heard from many people who are fans of Kendall’s book, “The Day I Became an Autodidact,” published when Kendall was only 22 years old. They are all eager to read more of her work and I wish they could read some of the amazing stuff she’s written since then. At the moment Kendall and her mom are hard at work on a joint memoir that I’ve only seen bits and pieces of but which I can’t wait to read in its entirety (and I hope you’ll be able to as well). They get together three times a week, write on their own, and then share their work with each other, all the while Charlie climbs around on the bed and floor, soaking in the literary vibes. Sometimes he seems intensely focused, as if he’s already working on his own pre-verbal novel.

As I’ve mentioned, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Kendall’s book. If I hadn’t just finished it when I ran into her at a friend’s wedding 21 years ago, I never would have gone up to her and asked “Are you Kendall Hailey?” I would never have started a relationship that would take many twists and turns before eventually leading to our marriage in 2004 and the birth of our sons last year.

 

Charlie woke up this morning smiling broadly, eager to celebrate his mom’s birthday, the first one he’s celebrating at home. To mark the occasion, I read him some of my favorite passages from his mother’s book. As I read, I was amazed at the wisdom Kendall already seemed to possess at such a young age.

The book begins when Kendall is the age that Leah is now. She is attending the high school that Leah is now attending but Kendall takes issue with many aspects of formal education and decides to graduate early and educate herself instead of going to college. A few months after her departure from academia, she contemplates her decision.

I have been given the chance to live my own best life, but no instructions were included with the chance. So I haven’t been exactly sure how to do it or if my efforts have been any good. I certainly don’t know who I am the way I did in school. I don’t suppose one is ever as secure as one is in school because there are such easy standards. An “A” is the best and if you get an “A,” then you’re the best. And if you get all “A’s,” then you couldn’t possibly be doing ore with your life. In the life I’ve been living, it hasn’t been as clear as that.

There was no way for Kendall to grasp all of the challenges and tragedies that she’d have to face in the coming years, but she seemed aware that the richness of life was not all sweetness and light.

I’ve seen too much of life, and even if I haven’t loved all I’ve seen, I’ve loved being able to see so much. I don’t ever want the days to slip together in some terrible way and I’ll look back and life will be gone. I want to feel something every day, even if occasionally it happens to be a little misery. Even if at times I feel a little lost, I want to find my own way.

I love reading about Kendall’s hopes for the future and her growing awareness of her own strengths and quirks. Throughout the book, she purloins a lot of wisdom from her favorite writers and movie stars. We both still find ourselves quoting these influences in our lives. Why not?

Most of my dreams are pretty silly, but I will not let go of one of them, no matter how much of what is laughingly referred to as “real life” gets in the way. As Ruth Gordon said, the key to success is: Don’t Face Facts.

 

The best part of the book, in my opinion, is experiencing the eccentric and wonderful Hailey family, all of them like characters out of one of Kendall’s favorite screwball comedies. I’m grateful that I got to meet Kendall’s dad, who died in 1993, and that I got to know and love her grandmother Nanny and her Uncle Thomas before they left us. It was especially poignant for me to read this passage Kendall wrote in which she expressed her appreciation for family togetherness, knowing it would not last forever.

Dinner tonight was worth all the trials and tribulations, all the fights, all the grunts, all the everything of family life.

At our table Mom and Dad sit at one end and Nanny and Thomas sit at the other with Brooke and me more or less center. And Nanny and Thomas, though they refuse to acknowledge it, are both quite deaf, so that news announced at the beginning of dinner by Mom and Dad is usually brought up as fresh news during the middle of dinner by Nanny and Thomas, who have not hears a word that has been said at the other end.

Tonight we decided to root out just where the trouble was. We played that game where someone makes up a message and you pass it along the whole line and then see what shape it is in when it reaches the original whisperer.

Dad whispered to Brooke, who whispered to me, who whispered to Thomas (he had to turn completely around so I could get his good gear, which didn’t help much), who whispered to Nanny so loudly the neighbors heard, who whispered to Mom, who whispered to Dad a sentence pretty much the same disregarding things like subject and verb. After analysis, we detected Nanny as the troublemaker.

These are such precious days, before any of us dies, or leaves home (which to my father is nearly the same thing). To have us all six gathered around the dinner table is the true ripening of a family. We are at our best. We finally know each other, have almost stopped hating each other, and come close to valuing each other, at least from six to six-thirty every evening.

How lucky am I to be able to hear this unique voice every day. Here is a video clip that I posted one year ago today of Charlie wishing his mother a happy birthday. Oh my, how he’s changed since last July 12th, but the love going both ways was already strong and constant:

Riding the Gravy Terrain

 

When I found out that the good people at General Motors were lending me a GMC vehicle for a week, I had a fantasy of becoming a trucker and traveling southern California in my rig. I’d stay in touch with my family on my CB radio and pull into lonely Mojave truckstops whenever I felt a hankerin’ for a plate of flapjacks.  Then I realized 30 years have passed since Lee Majors drove his big ol’ GMC pick-up on “The Fall Guy” and that the company has come a long way since then. The onyx GMC Terrain that I received was as fun and durable as Majors’ two-tone 4x4, but my 2010 crossover SUV was as cushy and smooth as James Bond’s most luxurious set of wheels.

I wasn’t completely crazy in my fantasy—GMC was certainly known for its trucks and commercial vehicles for most of its long history. The company was founded in 1901 by Max Grabowsky and it developed some of the earliest commercial trucks ever made. Grabowsky was Jewish, his parents had emigrated from Germany at the beginning of the Civil War. I wonder what Max's virulently anti-Semitic contemporary, Henry Ford, thought of him and his success. In 1909, Grabowsky sold his company to General Motors. By 1922, GMC was producing 22,000 trucks a year. During World War II, the company manufactured 600,000 trucks for the U.S. military. GMC vehicles were used in countless movies and TV shows, from "The Grapes of Wrath" with Henry Fonda to the streets of Mayberry in "The Andy Griffith Show." 

 

GMC’s entry into the SUV market is fairly recent, starting with the Acadia and continuing with the supremely comfortable Terrain. The starting MSRP for the 2010 Terrain is $24,995 and it has the best fuel economy of all of GMC’s models (22 city/32 highway). The car passed the Charlie test with flying colors, he loved the Terrain and once again enjoyed being liberated from his car seat when we were parked and crawling all over the vehicle. 

Perks were a-plenty, from a great GPS system and screen (that prevented me from missing a fancy wedding in Montecito when I got confused on the unmarked mountain roads), fancy sunroof, ultrasonic rear parking assist, USB port for iPod, Bluetooth for my cell phone, great Pioneer 8-speaker audio system to go along with the XM satellite radio (we are all mourning the loss of “On Broadway,” the all-showtunes station we listened to most of the time, along with classic radio broadcasts and even several French stations). There were so many airbags I was tempted to ram the car into a wall just to see them in action (but I didn’t!). The 18-inch tires were so huge I felt very macho hoisting myself into the vehicle (as opposed to my low-slung car that makes me feel like Fred Flintstone using my own feet to get the car moving).

Like all of the GM cars I’ve driven, this car had OnStar but I’ve yet to use it properly. I’m thrilled that it’s there in case of emergency, but I was told the OnStar operators could answer all sorts of questions. I tried it once looking for a movie that my daughter wanted to see and they said they didn’t have that kind of information. I fear I acted a little like the following OnStar customer:

The Terrain was gorgeous to look at, inside and out. Kendall was particularly impressed by the two-tone leather seats with fancy stitching. She said it reminded her of a 1920s gentleman’s spats. Her one complaint, sitting in the back with Charlie, was that there were no separate air conditioning vents for the back seat and that it took a while for her to be sufficiently cooled. (We’re all singing a different tune now that we’re back in my Honda with no air conditioning at all!) 

I would urge anyone looking for an economical and comfy crossover SUV to consider the GMC Terrain. We managed to get a lot of use out of the car, I put 700 miles onto the Terrain during our brief but fulfilling relationship. My daughter Leah got her driver's permit while we had the Terrain but wasn't allowed to drive it. Still, she was very inspired by the smooth ride and the classy features of this car. When she gets her license in December, we will definitely be saying sayonara to our Japanese friends and looking towards Detroit.  

Happy Birthday, Olivia!

 

Actress Olivia de Havilland was born 94 years ago today in Tokyo, Japan. Along with 100-year-old Luise Rainer, who I saw recently at the TCM Film Festival, and Olivia’s 93-year-old sister, Joan Fontaine, de Havilland is one of only a handful of movie stars from the 1930s who are still with us. I wrote to the actress in the early 1970s and a few months later received a lovely handwritten letter in return. The letter came from Paris where she still lives.

My favorite de Havilland films include “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “Hold Back the Dawn,” “The Dark Mirror” (in which she played twins, one good, one evil), “The Snake Pit,” and “The Heiress.” I also enjoyed her later work in horror films such as the creepy and terrifying “Lady in a Cage” and “Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte.” And, of course, along with Ann Rutherford, she is one of the few remaining stars of “Gone With the Wind” and was as perfect for the part of Melanie as Leslie Howard was unsuited to play Ashley. 

Olivia burst on the scene in 1935 when Max Reinhardt discovered her and put her in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Hollywood Bowl. He cast her in the film version of that production and she was quickly signed for a long-term contract at Warner Brothers.

From a May 1935 article (a whopping 75 years ago!) heralding Olivia’s arrival in Hollywood:

Ever since the movies were weaned away from the old nickelodeons, Cinderella tales have been written about pretty young screen actresses. But never before has there been one which quite equals that of Olivia de Havilland. Here is more than just the story of an extra girl leaping into fame overnight. It’s the story of a girl who left Saratoga, Calif., a village of about 800 population, and grabbed one of Hollywood’s choicest roles the first time she ever stepped in front of the movie camera.

That happened six months ago. And Olivia still is an unknown, unseen quantity as far as the public is concerned. Take my word for it, however, she’s going places.

When Olivia got her break, her mother and 17-year-old sister, Joan, moved to Hollywood. The three share a comfortable apartment in an exclusive quarter here. And now Joan is being tested for a contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The mother and two daughters are a remarkable trio, really like sisters, all having the same likes and dislikes.

Although only 18, Olivia already has decided to be an old maid—well, for the next 10 years, anyway. “Romance doesn’t seem to mix with a career in pictures,” she told me. “Our hours of work are so irregular that it frequently is necessary to break dates. Boys don’t like that. So I’m not even going to think about romance until I’m finished in pictures.”

Of all the things which might happen to an aspiring film star, there’s only one that really annoys “Bunny.” That’s to have the taller and blond Joan taken for her older sister. Some day she probably will cheer such an error. But right now she’s awfully proud of her 18 years.

I always thought Olivia was a much better actress than her sister, Joan, and that Joan was the prettier sister. But it is exactly such comparisons that helped to create the sad feud the sisters have been engaged in for more than half a century. Their Oscar night snubs are legendary. Both were nominated for Best Actress in 1941 and when Joan won, she allegedly walked by Olivia without acknowledging her. Olivia returned the favor a few years later when she won. Oy. They supposedly have not spoken to each other since 1975 and some say Joan is estranged from her own children because of their contact with Aunt Olivia. What a shame. Two women who have the good fortune to live so incredibly long and they squander all that time with their pettiness. It’s been written that their mother started the rivalry by favoring Olivia and forbidding Joan to use the family name when she became an actress. Who knows—maybe their feud is partly responsible for their longevity as each refuses to be the first one to die.

There’s no question that Olivia de Havilland was a great actress. Her parts were very serious and she didn't hesitate to tackle difficult and unglamorous subjects such as mental illness. Here’s a birthday clip that represents anything but the serious side of her.

Olivia de Havilland was the first actress to successfully sue a Hollywood studio for their unfair contract system that made many actors feel like indentured servants. The De Havilland Law is still in effect today. Wishing you a wonderful 94th birthday, Olivia. And Joan…CALL YOUR SISTER!