A Coupla Sore Knees Talkin'

As you have read here, my long-afflicted right knee has been joined in the Brotherhood of Arthritis by my left knee.  The recent six-week flare-up made me think what these two joints have been yakking about in light of my new hobbleness.  The right knee is "RK."  The left knee is "LK." 

RK:  Nah nah nah nah nah.  If I had a tongue, I'd stick it out at ya.

LK:  Hold on, I'm overdue giving another sharp jab.  Ah, there we go.  Another crack of bone where cartilege used to be.  God, I love being the center of attention for a change.

RK:  Don't you think you're being a little extreme?  You've never given our guy any trouble before.

LK:  Yeah, well, I've been holding up the whole body for decades.  You checked out when this schmuck was in high school.  For years, I had to do everything while you lumbered along, giving him a little creak and some swelling every now and then.  It's my turn now, baby.

RK:  Hey, it wasn't my choice to screw up this clown's life all this time.  Nobody told him to do that deep knee bend in gym class. 

LK:  Yeah, but he did and I had no say in the matter.  I was the one all these years.  Slaving to help him walk.  Down the stairs at Dodger Stadium.   Up the hill at the Hollywood Bowl.  And what thanks did I get?  Bupkus.

RK:  You're a little angry right now.

LK:  So he starts up with a personal trainer to do what?  Strengthen the muscles on your side.  Did he give one single thought to my end of the body?  But, no!!!!!  I have to work even harder with those fucking stretches and squats.  P.S., no knee likes to deal with somebody who does squat exercises.  I'm just sayin'.

RK:  Tell me about it.  That's what did me in.

LK:  Wah, wah, wah.  Cry me a river.  Stop singing the blues.  You've had it easy.  In a few years, you'll get yourself some new metal parts and be as right as rain.  Me?  I'll still have to pick up the slack.  I'm not doing it anymore.  That's why I hooked up with Mr. Arthur Writus.

RK:  Arthur Writus?

LK:  That's what the guy's grandmother used to call it.  Like it was some idiot who lived in the apartment building across the street.  Well, he's no month-to-month tenant over here.  He's settling in with me like he just bought a two-bedroom condo.

RK:  So this is what how you react?   You screw this guy over all of a sudden? 

LK:  I'm going at it big time.  Nothing's working.  That Chinese guy with the needles?  Puh-leze!  That cute little personal trainer with the happy hands and all that massage?  Next. 

RK:  Isn't he taking some medication now?  I'm getting that word over here on my side.

LK:  Yeah, Celebrex, Schmelebrex.  I let him think it was working.  But, then on Super Bowl Sunday, I sent a big ole message.  I'm still here.  Take that, Stupid!

RK:  Twice over the years, I took in some cortisone.

LK:  He better not bring that shit over here.

RK:  That'll really be the police invading your riot.  That will kill your Occupy days for a while.

LK:  Oh, yeah.  Maybe for a while.  But I'll be back.  I ain't never going away completely. 

RK:  You're a real asshole.

LK:  No, that's the dude in the back.  He's fine.

Dinner last night:  Ravioli at Maria's Italian Kitchen.

Monday Morning Video Laugh - February 6, 2012

I wasn't one of those clowns who tuned into the Super Bowl just to watch the commercials.  But I saw this one on-line and thought it was the cleverest of the clever.  Welcome back, Bueller.



Dinner last night:  Antipasto salad.

The Sunday Memory Drawer - Gotta Dance...or Not

With arthritis now landing squarely on both of my knee joints, I'm already thinking about things that I won't be able to do when I'm 70.  Dancing will be likely be one of them.

Now, looking at the photo above of me as a kid getting whirled around the dance floor of some family party by some faceless chick that I don't even remember, you would think that I wouldn't miss the art of dancing one single iota.

Well, that may not be the case.  I may just long to cut a rug.  Enough to let them cut my knee.  There may be moments yet when I want to dance.

Who knew?  Certainly not me.  Certainly not in the snapshot above.  Certainly not in my teen years when I didn't know how.

When I was a kid, my dabbles into choreography were as misguided as it looks up at the top of this entry.  There was always impromptu dancing at family parties and I provided the perfect photo opportunity/comic relief.

"Here, have Lenny do the polka with __________."

"Put your cheeks together like you're doing the tango."

"Awwww, it's like you're Fred Astaire and _________ is Ginger Rogers.  How cute!"

How f-ing mortifying.

At wedding receptions, it was even worse.  I was thrown together with either a relative that was either much, much younger or much, much older.

"Come on, Lenny, dance with me a little."

You walk with a cane, you're a little drunk, and your dress smells like moth balls.  Umm, no thanks.

I'd sit in a corner.  Feet motionlessly dangling off the chair.  Wondering what the Mets were doing and, oh, yeah, pondering what all this fuss with dancing was all about.

Once I got to high school, I was even more confused.  Dancing was less formal and certainly more gyrations than anything else.  I think there might have been dances in school, but I never went.  I was convinced that I didn't know how.  Was there a right way to do this?  Were these dance steps communicated in back rooms and in alleys?  Did somebody whisper to you in secret just how to dance? 

Self esteem headed to the basement floor.  So, I retreated to my usual comfort zone.

I'd sit in a corner.  Feet motionlessly dangling off the chair. Wondering what the Mets were doing and, oh, yeah, pondering what all this fuss with dancing was all about.

Fordham University followed and the added horror of a college mixer entered my world.  Well, at least, I could be bored and drink beer to ease me through the torture of standing idly around the Ramskeller, which was the name of the Rose Hill campus' flesh co-mingling establishment.
 
And, still, I looked at this dancing thing and was convinced that there was something carefully organized to its every movement.
 
And, then, a visit from an angel.  Well, actually, my good college friend, Lorraine, who was as socially adept and in-tune as one could be. 
 
One Saturday night, I was hovering over the Ramskeller dance floor with some friends.  Emphasis on the "hovering."  Lorraine was out there.  A-bumping and a-jiving to some cover band that had its musical roots in some garage on Katonah Avenue.  Lorraine saw me languishing on the sidelines and waved to me.
 
"Come on and dance."
 
I looked behind me.  Who was she talking to?  Oh, crap, do you mean me?

In pantomine, I let her know that I didn't know how to do what she was doing. 

Lorraine pouted.  And pointed to the floor in front of her.  This was apparently an order to appear.

I gingerly stepped onto the dance floor and waited for buzzers to go off from my mere presence amongst the twisting and turning sophomores.  I told Lorraine that I didn't know how to dance.

"Like I do?  Just move around and do whatever makes you comfortable."

I turned to the left.  I turned to the right.  I turned to the left.  I turned to the right.  I put in a little bit of a sway.

"You're doing great, Lenny."

Oh, really.  Because I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

Except, after about two minutes of my flailing like a mosquito dying on a car windshield, I made a startling realization.

I liked what I was doing.

And I was out on the dance floor for the rest of the night. 

Missing out on a campus mixer suddenly became an alien thought to me.  Once I knew there were no rules, I danced like...well, there were no rules.

Of course, becoming a semi-fixture at these events would have its potholes.  Take, for instance, the evening I was dancing with one girl who had a crush on me.  The feeling was not, as one would say, mutual.  But, she was open to dancing so why not?  I could easily be out on the floor, gyrating with her but also looking around and checking out the other "talent" available that evening. 

What do you want?  I was a guy.

Suddenly, the dance of sheer and rapid frenzy morphed into a sudden and unexpected slow song.  Ummm, okay, moving on....

But, before I had the chance to go over the prison wall, her hands were quickly on the back of my neck and her arms draped over me like shoulder pads.  This was the slowest of the slow dances.  My partner had seized the opportunity for some close and personal contact.

Okay, so I need to modify how I do this dancing stuff and make sure that I'm not left wide open for these sneak attacks.

Over the years, there are some dancing memories that samba to the forefront of the supper club in my mind.

There was the best New Year's Eve I have ever had.  Dateless and dancing to oldies at a New York City club with a few friends and a whole lot of strangers.

There was the evening when a friend and I decided to go listen to what is now passing as the Glenn Miller Orchestra.  The whole place was decked out to resemble a dance hall during World War II.  A couple of the folks there even showed up in their old military garb, albeit with a button or two missing.   It didn't take long for us to figure out that this was not the venue for two casual dancers to hit the boards.  We were the youngest people by about twenty years and those dancers were serious about their jitterbugging.  I spent the evening as if I were back in high school.

Sitting in a corner. Feet motionlessly dangling off the chair. Wondering what the Mets were doing and, oh, yeah, pondering what all this fuss with dancing was all about.

Even slow dancing could be tolerated in later years.  Well, as long as it was with the right person.  I remember going to the wedding of a female friend in Connecticut.  I was invited with a "plus one" and this one was legit for a change.  A girl I actually was dating fairly seriously.  Except it didn't exactly become serious until that very day.  In the middle of a slow dance at the reception. 

Once again, I was blindsided by the sudden move of my date.  Oh, we're going to do that?  Here?  In the middle of all these people????

Yeah, I guess so.

I glanced over to the sidelines where the bride's mother sat.  Eyeing me suspiciously and likely wondering why I had brought a brazen hooker to her daughter's special day.

Indeed, though, my very favorite dancing memory was of an evening when I didn't move an inch onto the dance floor.  I zip back to a summer night between junior and senior year in college.

The school year had ended but fun had not subsided.  In the middle of it all once again was my pal Lorraine who loved to organize social outings.  She was a perfect conduit.  Lorraine had lots of girlfriends.  My guy friends and I didn't have a lot of girlfriends.  Mix and match.  Hanging out in a group and there were actually two genders represented.  Ideal for grinding it out to music in some Long Island disco.

As luck would have it, I now was on the offensive line of a crush.  One of those girlfriends struck my fancy.  Like an anvil.  This would be an ideal venue to, umm, get together.

And, going back to the very spot and reference where this blog entry started, disaster!

It was the first ever flare-up of my right knee, which I had originally injured during the very first gym class of my senior year in high school.  Dance?  Shit, I could barely walk.  My jeans fit around my right leg like a watermelon would fit into the eye of a needle.  So much for the disco night.  And perhaps even getting into the car to get there.  I envisioned being strapped to the hood like a dead deer shot on opening day of the hunting season in the Adirondacks.

I should have stayed home.

But, still....

Well, love will do that sort of thing to you.  Actually, in this case, like would do that sort of thing to me.

Somehow, I shimmied into my clubbing clothes and I might even have ridden there in somebody's car trunk.  But, I went.  And, as I lumbered into another world of strobe lights and crappy music, I pondered my next move.  I would be relegated to an evening of watching everybody else dance.

Suddenly, I was back in high school again.

Yeppers.

Sitting in a corner. Feet motionlessly dangling off the chair. Wondering what the Mets were doing and, oh, yeah, pondering what all this fuss with dancing was all about.  Especially when all my friends would be out there doing it while I sat there alone, watching the ice cubes in my drink melt.

"I don't need to dance.  I'll sit here and keep you company."

It was my crush-ee.  The object of my intended affection.

Suddenly, I melted faster than the ice cubes.  And the pain in my right knee disappeared instantly.

Dancing is fun.  Not dancing also had its rewards.

Dinner last night:  Turkey burger at the Pig N'Whistle.

Classic TV Commercial of the Month - February 2012

Mom says "it's pure and good."  What will the family dentist say?



Dinner last night:  Chicken salad sandwich and broccoli salad.

Ground Mug Day

Unless you see the shadow of your lawyer, there'll be six more week of jail time.

What's with the wink?   This is an arrest, not an audition for an updated version of "That Girl."

A police department trying not to have heads roll.

The hair color alone should lock her up for at least ten years.

Oh, my God!  They've arrested Rhoda's mother!

I guess you could call these "advertising billboobs."

No words....

And there goes another vote this November, Barry.

Cry me a river.  Well, cry me "up the river."

A bar fight or perhaps the worst Bozo the Clown impersonator ever.

It's tough to be jailed right after you get the mumps.

Dinner last night:   Firecracker chicken and lo mein noodles from Panda Express.

Hello, Indeed

When you see a good documentary, you are liable to be leaving the theater a little bit angry. Or a little bit more educated. Or a little bit more impassioned about an issue.

It's the rare documentary where you leave the cinema a whole lot happier than when you walked in. That's what happened to me when I saw "Carol Channing - Larger Than Life" last weekend.

Now, granted I was a sucker for this movie as soon as I heard about it.  There's the whole Broadway thing.  And I always make it a policy to see a documentary if its subject is someone I almost worked for.  If you don't remember that particular saga, simply go back to this blog on the date of Sunday, November 14, 2010 and you'll read the whole grizzly tale.  Yes, I had a job interview with Carol Channing cancelled by a hotel fire.  Doesn't everybody?

Well, any snootch, if a documentary filmmaker like Dori Berinstein  follows the legendary Carol Channing around for a year, how can that not be even remotely interesting?  To Dori's credit, it is a whole bunch interesting.  And funny.  And heartwarming.  And, because of what I know happened several weeks back, heartbreaking.

In some circles, Carol Channing is really nothing more than a two-trick pony.  Singing about diamonds in one show and then dancing with the Harmonia Garden waiters in another.  That's almost the sum total of her career.  But I dare you to try and look away from any TV screen that is showing either of those miraculous Broadway moments.  Tell me that, whenever you saw Carol turn up on a game show like Password, you could easily flip the channel.  It's impossible.  She grabs you in like a magnet.  There is something so real and infectious about every single move she makes and every single word she utters.

Filmmaker Dori Berinstein is fast becoming one of this country's best documentarians, especially when it comes to capturing the world of Broadway.  Her paean to the Great White Way was spectacular in "Show Business - The Road to Broadway" where she followed the development of three new Broadway productions.  And then there was "Gotta Dance," which gave us the delightful tale of that senior citizen hip hop dance team that the New Jersey Nets used at their games.

"Carol Channing - Larger Than Life" is even better.  Because its focus is one person who is still performing (well, sort of) at the young age of 90.   And when that person is one Carol Channing, your subject is gift wrapped with a ribbon for your audience.

Sure, there is the requisite life history you always get in a documentary like this.  The childhood.  The mystical force pulling someone into show business.  And the eye popping success of a magnificent career on the stage.  The cameras follow Carol for a year as she toddles from one event to another.  The annual Broadway Gypsy charity event.  The Kennedy Center where "Hello, Dolly" composer Jerry Herman is honored.  Even a junior high school seminar.  Both old and new stories are juxtaposed seamlessly. 

And yet there is something else that is connecting all the pieces.  The plasma of a film.

Carol talks about it herself.  When "Hello, Dolly" was in its pre-Broadway tryouts, there was something missing in the show.  Another showstopping number was sorely needed.  In the middle of a midnight hour, Jerry Herman sat down and composed "Before The Parade Passes By."  He then roused Carol out of her hotel bed to hear it.  The show's star relates the "a-ha"
moment.  At that instant, "Hello, Dolly" had found its spine.

Indeed, this documentary itself has a spine.  You see it clearly as Carol bounces from current day to current day.  Walking the streets of her old hometown San Francisco or her adopted hometown Broadway or her current hometown Palm Springs, she is never alone.

Harry is with her. 

Because, at the core of this movie, is a beautiful love story.   Carol and Harry were sweethearts as teenagers.  He gives her the very first kiss.  Shuttled off to high school and then the military, the young lovers are separated.  For decades and decades and decades.  He has a long marriage to somebody else.  Carol has a long and ultimately unhappy marriage to somebody else. 

About twelve years ago, Carol writes an autobiography and talks fondly about Harry in the second chapter.  Word gets back to him and, as only storybooks could imagine, they are married shortly after.  It took only about sixty or seventy years for them to find their soul mates.

There is a moment in the movie where Carol and Harry are sharing a cab ride around Broadway.  He spots a theater she was appearing in while he was on leave from the Korean War.  Having not seen her for years, he tells her, perhaps for the first time, he waited outside her stage door for a reunion that was not to come.  He wishes he had made more of an effort to connect that evening.  When Carol hears the story, her reaction is raw, organic, and emotional.

"I wish you had, too."

Simply stated.  Sentiments that could not be crafted by the most adept of all screenwriters. 

You can almost touch the love between these two as they share one golden moment after another.  As the movie ends and the credits roll, I waited for the postscript which never came.  I had just read in Variety that Harry had passed away last December 26.  Perhaps too late for the filmmaker to even include its mention. 

I wondered how many of the other folks in the audience knew what I did.  Did they know that the happy ending was certainly and most recently not one?  Did it matter?

Probably not. 

Because, for ninety minutes on the screen, the love of Carol and Harry was alive for all to enjoy.  A movie about a big and incredibly brassy broad reduced to the most intimate and touching of all love stories. 

So, yes, despite it all, I left with a grin that reached all the way across Santa Monica Boulevard.  As it always does when a movie is that good.

Dinner last night:  Pasta shells with sausage, red pepper flakes, and tomatoes.

This Date in History - February 1

February 1 is officially "mumm-ified."

1327:  TEENAGED EDWARD III IS CROWNED KING OF ENGLAND, BUT THE COUNTRY IS RULED BY HIS MOTHER QUEEN ISABELLA AND HER LOVER ROGER MORTIMER.

The first ever dysfunctional royal family.

1662:  THE CHINESE GENERAL KXOINGA SEIZES THE ISLAND OF TAIWAN AFTER A NINE-MONTH SIEGE.

It took nine months to take over an island?  What were they using for weapons?  Spitballs?

1709:  ALEXANDER SELKIRK IS RESCUED AFTER SHIPWRECKED ON A DESERT ISLAND, INSPIRING THE BOOK "ROBINSON CRUSOE" BY DANIEL DEFOE.

I once got lost in a parking garage, but nobody wrote a novel about that.

1790:  IN NEW YORK CITY, THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES MEETS FOR THE FIRST TIME.

They probably hit a lunch recess twenty minutes later.

1793:  DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS, FRANCE DECLARES WAR N THE UNITED KINGDOM AND THE NETHERLANDS.

As I write these historical entries Wednesday after Wednesday, one thing becomes crystal clear---France is annoying.

1796:  THE CAPITAL OF UPPER CANADA IS MOVED FROM NEWARK TO YORK.

Since when are New Jersey and Pennsylvania part of Canada???

1835:  SLAVERY IS ABOLISHED IN MAURITIUS.

It's a little island off Africa in the Indian Ocean, if you're wondering.  The good news for me is that American Airlines doesn't use it as a hub.

1859:  COMPOSER VICTOR HERBERT IS BORN.

He wrote Babes in Toyland, but I don't think he envisioned just how bad the Disney version with Tommy Sands and Annette would be.

1861:  DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, TEXAS SECEDES FROM THE UNITED STATES.

There are some Texans who think they never came back to the union.

1884:  THE FIRST VOLUME (A TO ANT) OF THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY IS PUBLISHED.

Gee, that must have been one slow rollout.

1893:  THOMAS A. EDISON FINISHES CONSTRUCTION OF THE FIRST MOTION PICTURE STUDIO, THE BLACK MARIA, IN WEST ORANGE, NEW JERSEY.

I thought they called the wind Maria.

1894:  DIRECTOR JOHN FORD IS BORN.

Did you know he used to shtupp Kate Hepburn?  Saw it on a documentary.  Who knew?

1901:  ACTOR CLARK GABLE IS BORN.

And I don't give a damn.

1920:  THE ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE BEGINS OPERATIONS.

And when did Guy Lombardo take over the orchestra?

1924:  THE UNITED KINGDOM RECOGNIZES THE USSR.

Previously, they had no idea who they were.

1942:  THE VOICE OF AMERICA BEGINS BROADCASTING WITH PROGRAMS AIMED AT AREAS CONTROLLED BY THE AXIS POWERS.

I wonder if their ratings were better than Radio Free Europe.

1954:  ACTOR BILLY MUMY IS BORN.

He was lost in space with that fox Angela Cartwright.  Yeah, I wish.

1958:  EGYPT AND SYRIA MERGE TO FORM THE UNITED ARAB REPUBLIC, WHICH LASTED UNTIL 1961.

Three years?  That's not long enough to syndicate the reruns.

1966:  GOSSIP COLUMNIST HEDDA HOPPER DIES.

Let's take a poll.  Buried with or without a hat?

1966:  COMIC BUSTER KEATON DIES.

The stone face finally crumbles.

1968:  LISA MARIE PRESLEY IS BORN.

She was married to Michael Jackson.   If Elvis had lived, this news would have killed him.

1968:  THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD MERGE TO FORM THE ILL-FATED PENN CENTRAL.

Ill-fated means the system was a complete mess.

1978:  DIRECTOR ROMAN POLANSKI SKIPS BAIL AND FLEES THE UNITED STATES TO FRANCE AFTER PLEADING GUILTY TO CHARGES OF ENGAGING IN SEX WITH A 13 YEAR-OLD GIRL.

Years later after all the scandals we have seen since, this is really no big deal.

1979:  CONVICTED BANK ROBBER PATTY HEARST IS RELEASED FROM RPISON AFTER HER SENTENCE IS COMMUTED BY PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER.

How is it she has yet to turn up on "Dancing with the Stars?"

1979:  THE AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI IS WELCOMED BACK TO TEHRAN, IRAN AFTER NEARLY 15 YEARS OF EXILE.

Didn't John Sebastian write a song about this?

1988:  POLTERGEIST CHILD ACTOR HEATHER O'ROURKE DIES.

They're here....and she's gone.

1998:  REAR ADMIRAL LILLIAN E. FISHBURNE BECOMES THE FIRST FEMALE AFRICAN-AMERICAN TO BE PROMOTED TO REAR ADMIRAL.

It was either this promotion or a stool in the Inglewood post office.

2003:  SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA DISINTEGRATES DURING REENTRY INTO THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE, KILLING ALL SEVEN ASTRONAUTS ABOARD.

And, yet, space travel is still safer than driving around South Central after 6PM.


Dinner last night:  Pork chops with apple chutney and broccolini.