Letter From Milo: And The Award Goes To...

This is our post for Monday, February 23, 2009 - ignore the default post date indicated above

I've lost interest in the movies over the years. I don't go as often as I used to and when I do plop down ten or more bucks for a movie I always lament the fact that I could have bought a good paperback for less.

There are several reasons for my lack of interest, but I suppose the two main reasons are the actors and special effects. The biggest male stars in cinema today, in my opinion, are little more grown-up child stars, pretty boys who lack the necessary gravitas to carry off some of the roles they play. Actors like Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, etc. seem to have stepped off the pages of Seventeen magazine and onto the big screen, without having lived any sort of life other than in front of the camera. Their faces don't betray any signs that life has been anything other than sweet to them.

I don't mean to seem like a curmudgeon, but when I think about actors like Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, or Clark Gable, I think of faces that reflect the realities of life. I can imagine sharing a foxhole with Bogart, working on an assembly line with Tracy, or having a shot and beer with Gable. The only thing I can imagine doing with Brad Pitt is asking if he would care to swap wives for the weekend.

Special effects have also ruined the movies for me. Everything seems to be done by animation, computerized wizardry, or some other devilish technology. Car chases, bombs blasts, entire cities destroyed by meteors, terrorists, or aliens from distant galaxies, are all generated by coffee-fueled geeks sitting in front of computer monitors. I don't even know why they use actors anymore. As for stunt men, they're a dying breed, spending more time in unemployment line than in front of movie cameras.

That said, my wife and I are preparing to go to an Oscar party tonight at Simon and Beth's house. It's an annual affair with plenty of great food, an overabundance of alcohol and good company. As much as I grouse about going to this party, I actually enjoy attending. I don't get out as often as I used to and this party is a chance to socialize, renew acquaintances, and make new ones.

The only thing I don't like about the party is that there is a mandatory Oscar pool. Everyone puts in five bucks and fills out a form picking the winners in a dozen categories. The person who picks the most winners collects all the money. I've never even come close to winning and I don't expect to do any better this year. I've only seen one of the nominated films and wasn't impressed with it. I can't even remember who was in it, what it was about, or whether it was in black and white or color.

As we get ready ready to go to the party, my lovely wife and I have our traditional pre-party discussion.

"Do me a favor, don't drink too much tonight."

"I'll try to restrain myself."

"Last year you got drunk and pinched Sarah on the ass."

"I was hoping you'd forgotten that."

"And don't tell any of your dirty jokes, either."

"Some people enjoy them."

"Just you and Steve, and that's because he's usually drunk, too. Everybody else is just grossed out."

"Jeez, why don't I just stay home."

"One last thing, don't start any arguments, please."

"When did I start an argument?"

"Last year and the year before."

"God, you've got a hellacious memory."

"And stay away from that slut, Sarah."

"Anything you say dear."

What surprises me is how seriously some of the people at the party take the Oscars. The immortal wit, Oscar Levant, once said that ballet is like baseball for fairies. The same can be said for the Oscars. It's like the Super Bowl for cinemaphiles. God forbid I make some remark, which I probably will, denigrating the occasion. I'll get ugly looks from half the people in the room and insults from the other half, which will not bother me in the least. I enjoy provoking people.

Still, I have to be careful. If I get completely out of line or offend too many people I might not get invited back to the party next year. And, as I mentioned earlier, I don't get out as often as I used to. I'd hate to cross Simon and Beth's Oscar party off my social calendar.

Big Mike: Franny's Life

Written Saturday, February 21, 2009

Good old Franny. My sis. Died a little more than a year ago. A day like today makes me think of her.

It's windy, snowy, and cold. The lawns are turning white. Louisville drivers are slipping and sliding all over the road as well as any environs within 30 yards of the pavement. Franny loved winter. This weather would have made her smile. She'd wrap herself in a comforter, slip an old movie into the DVD player, and act as though she were appearing in a Swiss Miss cocoa commercial.

I, on the other hand, despise winter worse than all the other ills that have plagued humankind since the dawn of recorded history. I'd tell Franny that I dream of moving to California so I won't have to put up with snow and ice and the hour and half of daylight of a typical January day. I'd tell her I crave spring and summer.

"Oh no," Franny would say. "You can't really enjoy spring unless you've experienced winter." Which, to me, is like saying I can't wait to serve a 10-year prison sentence because I'll be elated the day I'm released.

Franny took her pleasures wherever and whenever she could. She came from that generation of women who were, well, screwed by society and the times. She was born in 1938 and attended St. Giles elementary school and Notre Dame high school for girls. She was the kind of schoolgirl the nuns loved to hate. Sassy, rebellious, free with her opinions, she listened as more than a few nuns predicted a dire future for her. The women of the habit were certain she was on a one-way ride to cigarette-smoking, hot-rod-riding, liquor-guzzling, girl-gang membership, and, for all I know, membership in the communist party.

Funny thing was, they weren't so far off the mark. She was among the first of her peers to light up, go drag racing down North Avenue near Skip's Fiesta Drive-In, and drink alcohol. She didn't join a girl gang only because she couldn't find any. As for the communist party, she didn't care one way or the other.

Despite her teenaged moral turpitude, Franny got married when she was 20 to a nice boy named Bob. All Bob wanted was a comfortable home and the company of scads of children. By the time Franny was 24, she and Bob had four of them. They added another four years later.

With enough progeny to field a basketball team, Franny entered the 1970s harried, exhausted, and feeling a profound sense of emptiness. She was smart and ambitious enough to have gone to college and made a career for herself. But that option was as anathema to her neighborhood and the nuns who schooled her as if she'd become the Premier of the Soviet Union. Maybe worse.

Franny yearned to be well-read. She began to admire Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, women who spoke up and did things. She found herself disgusted by the Vietnam War and racism. Only she was too busy wiping snotty noses to do anything about them.

When bright, accomplished women who were five and ten years younger appeared on TV, women who were able to take advantage of all the new freedoms of the era, Franny would sigh audibly. She wanted so much more than what she had.

Eventually, that longing morphed into a desire for change of any kind, no matter the repercussions. And believe me, there were repercussions when she took a part-time job as a bartender at The Foxy Lady on Madison Street to help pay the mortgage on a new home. The bar was in Chicago's all-black West Side. One night, a man named Julian walked into the joint as Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" played on the jukebox. Franny fell for him instantly.

Oh yeah, repercussions. Her affair with Julian cost her a husband, much of her childhood family, most of her friends, her neighborhood, and quite nearly her life. Soon after Julian had moved in with Franny on Marmora Avenue just off Grand Avenue, her home was shot up with high-powered rifles. It's 50/50 whether the shooters were local racists turned rabid by the presence of a black man on the block or the kin of the wife Julian had left behind in Cabrini-Green.

Franny and Julian got married across the street from City Hall in 1978 by a preacher wearing a white suit, white shoes, and a wide brimmed white hat with an enormous red feather in it. His "chapel," a cramped, dusty office in a building slated to be demolished, was wall-papered with aluminum foil and had immense pictures of Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King, Jr. on the front wall. A hidden tape deck played Marvin Gaye in the background. I was the best man.

Julian was gone by 1981. In the weirdest of ironies, he excelled in every vice that Franny's appalled, petrified family and friends had told her black men were known for. Franny never let on that he was a drunk, a philanderer, couldn't hold a job, and that he punched her like Sugar Ray Leonard when she displeased him. She never wanted them to think that they'd been right. She even hid it all from me.

She somehow rid herself of Julian even after he'd held her hostage at knifepoint one harrowing night. After that, Franny swore she was finished with men. She devoted the rest of her life to her kids and grandkids. She baked pies, cakes, and cookies enough to feed armies. She worked for days to prepare seafood gumbo, fried calamari, shrimp scampi, caponata, homemade bread and more on Christmas Eve and lasagna, ham, and lamb on Easter. She spent every dime she had on presents. Anybody who wanted could stay overnight. She was atoning.

When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer six years ago, she began to wonder if there's a heaven. If there is, I hope it's windy, snowy, and cold for her.

Benny Jay: Can't Sleep

I wake at 2:45 in the morning. Can't sleep. Go to the bathroom. Come back to bed. Still can't sleep. Think about a conversation I had seven hours ago with a 61-year-old man whose father used to be a Congressman. He's going through his dead father's papers, thousands and thousands of papers. He's got them in a storage facility on the south side of Chicago.

I think about -- what else? -- the Bulls. They won tonight -- or last night. Beat Denver. 117-99. Or was it 116-99? I think about who scored what: Gordon 37, Thomas: 22. Or was it 21?

I look at the clock. It's three. Seems like an hour's passed, but it's only ten minutes.

There's two kinds of sleeplessness. The kind where you can't fall asleep. And this....

The dog's restless. Her tags rattle as she licks her paws. Sounds as loud as a snow plow in the dead of night. I hear my Wife gently breathing. Who can sleep with this racket?

I get out of bed, find my slippers and head downstairs. My throat's parched. I need some water. Must have been that barbecue sauce we had at the Korean restaurant. Too salty. Gotta cut back on the salt.

There's a stack of newspapers on the kitchen table. I read about the acquittal of three men in Moscow for killing a journalist. I read about Obama's housing bailout. I read about the budget crisis in the state of California.

I look out the window. It's starting to snow. My Mother told me we were gonna get snow. Said we'd get 12 inches. She knows all about the weather cause she watches cable TV. Everything I know about the weather I learn from conversations with my mom.

I read a book about Reconstruction called Capitol Men. I think about that journalist in Russia. Can't get her out of my mind. I look her up on the Internet. Her name is Anna Politkovskaya. She covered war, crime, and corruption. Someone shot her in the head as she was leaving her apartment building. It might have been a hit ordered by the Russian mob or maybe the government.

I look out the window. Snow's falling faster. It's 4:45. My day officially starts in less than two hours. Got to drive my Younger Daughter to a track meet.

That's the worst part about sleeplessness. It haunts you all day....

To be continued....

Big Mike: My Head Hurts

One of the most emotionally powerful scenes I've seen in a movie features Philip Seymour Hoffman and Mark Wahlberg in "Boogie Nights." Hoffman plays the pudgy, nerdy, effeminate Scotty J. and Wahlberg is Dirk Diggler, possessor of a titanic asset most cherished in the porn industry.

The two are at an LA party. Scotty is emboldened by alcohol to express his secret feelings for Dirk. Outside the party, Scotty tries to kiss Dirk and is rebuffed. The camera lingers on Scotty for the next few minutes as he deals with his humiliation. He pounds the steering wheel of his car. He calls himself names. He sobs. Finally, he yells out, "Why am I so stupid?"

How many times have you wanted to yell out the same line? Not many of us have suffered unrequited love for a human tripod, as Scotty did, but time and again all of us have wanted to hit ourselves over the head with a skillet because we've done something spectacularly idiotic.

That was your humble blogger Tuesday night. See, I normally have a rule: don't get into political arguments in bars. Arguing with guys who are half in the bag is a fool's endeavor. And political discourse today has been transformed by TV and talk radio into a professional wrestling match where your guy is the upholder of all that is righteous and good while the opponent is a comic book character bent on the destruction of America. Yelling and personal attacks are de rigueur.

It was Trivia night and Team Gorlock was cleaning up. Here's one I'll bet you didn't know - which country is the world's largest producer of bananas? (The answer is at the end of this post.) Skip the Trombonist and I got that one wrong but not too much else.

We were feeling pretty good about life when in walked Captain Billy, fueled by his normal rage and, perhaps, a libation or four. The Captain generally is angry about illegal Mexican immigration, Indians and Pakistanis who are swiping IT jobs from good Americans, and, in his own inimitable words, "all those fuckin' towelheaded bastards."

His dudgeon lies just beneath the surface at all times. Mention the words poblano peppers to him and he'll launch into a screed about how the best way to stem the tide of illegal immigration is simply to pick off Mexicans one by one with high-powered rifles as they scuttle across the deserts of the Southwest.

Captain Billy's heroes are few but he's in thrall to the bilious Lou Dobbs ("Now there's the man who should be president.") and the mad Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County ("He doesn't give a shit about all the scum.")

Now you might think I'd be smart enough to refrain from matching wits with such a thoughtful observer of the human condition. And usually I am. Captain Billy operates under the notion that I'm always eager to hear his opinions. He'll catch me early on a Monday morning, say, when I'm rolling the garbage can out to the roadside. As the cardinals and the mockingbirds begin to announce their presence, the Captain finds it necessary to dash out of his house and explain to me that the best way to get politicians to become responsive to their constituencies is to have dedicated patriots sneak up behind a few of them as they leave their homes in the morning "and put bullets in their heads. Then we'll see 'em start listening."

Naturally, I do not offer counterpoint because, well, what am I gonna say? Golly Captain Billy, maybe we oughta try the ballot box first?

So, the Captain lugged his steamer trunkful of grievances into Dick's Pizza midway through Trivia. He ranted loudly about the world in general, then the French, then his wife - his favorite bullseye. At one point, he slammed his palm down on the bar and declared Andy the Trivia-meister "an incompetent fuck."

By this time, Skip and I, in a futile effort to ward off the onslaught, were huddled together like early-20th Century immigrants on the deck of an ocean liner entering New York harbor.

It was between the second and third rounds of the game when I forgot my own rule. A clip of Barack Obama flashed on the big TV screens. He was explaining one or another plan to delay financial armageddon. The mere sight of the president's face drove the Captain to an even higher level of fury. "Look at 'im," he barked. "This no-good, messianic, narcissistic asshole. He's worse than all the rest of 'em!"

This was followed by a string of garden-variety pejoratives and expletives. Then, as if a light bulb had flashed on above his head, the Captain delivered his biggest indictment of Obama. "He's lettin' that crazy bitch from California run all over 'im!"

He meant, of course, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is telling Obama what to do. A man allowing a woman to tell him what to do is the foulest entry in Captain Billy's list of abominations.

Here's where I said, Screw it! I launched into a defense of Obama that for sheer volume and spirit matched the Captain's own retorts. Diners lowered their heads and began eating faster. Skip did his best to shush us. Eventually, the bartender came around and warned us to keep it down.

The Captain still had to get in the last word. "Your problem," he said to me, "is that you try to make everybody who disagrees with you look like they're crazy."

Give me credit. I caught the words, No, only you, before they could escape my lips. After a few minutes, the Captain offered me a ride home. I quickly came up with an excuse not to go with him. Later, Andy the Trivia-meister drove me home. Poor guy. Through the whole ride he had to put up with me hitting my forehead with a fist and repeating the words, "Why am I so stupid?"

Trivia answer: India! Who knew?

Benny Jay: A Night At The Club

At eight o'clock I drive over to the health club. I'd been planning to go there all night. But the phone kept ringing and one call led to another and by seven I didn't have the energy to move. I thought about skipping my work out. But I figure -- I'm paying for this membership, might as well use it.

To tell you the truth, I'm not really a health-club kind of guy. Usually just run in the park. But my Younger Daughter needed a track to run during the winter and they were offering a deal and so in November, in the midst of the worst economic breakdown since the Great Depression, I signed up. If there's a dumber man in America, I haven't met him....

It's nearly empty when I get there. All the yuppies have gone home. I drag myself up to the running track and push myself through a mile and a half. I pick up the dumbbells and go through the motions of lifting them. And that's it. I'm so freaking tired I can barely keep my eyes open.

I walk to the locker room and head to the back to wash up and there's this fat, hairy naked guy blocking the ways. He's standing at the center mirror, his faced lathered with shaving cream, and he's talking on the phone. He's really loud, too. He's talking to some guy named Larry. He's going: "Larry, Larry -- listen to me, Larry...."

I don't want to listen but he's so loud I have no choice. I don't want to stare. But I can't resist. It's not often you see a guy this fat and that naked talking on the phone while shaving.

I take my shower. I put on my clothes and I'm heading for the door when I pass the big-screen locker-room TV and I see some guy is interviewing Craig Ferguson, the late-night talk show hows. So you have one talk-show host interviewing another talk-show host. I look closer at the interviewer and I think: Isn't that Michael Eisner? Yes, that is Michael Eisner. What's he doing with a cable-TV talk show? And how did I not know that he was doing this? I'm usually up on these things. And why would he even want to host a cable-TV talk show? You figure a big shot like Eisner -- former head of Walt Disney and all -- would want to do the talking, not the listening. I mean, Ferguson should be interviewing Eisner; that would make a lot more sense. And you can see that Eisner looks impatient, almost irritated, like it's a deal-pitch meeting and he can't wait for Ferguson to get to the point.

I sit in the big, soft, comfy leather chair to listen. The camera keeps zooming in and out focusing on Ferguson's hands. Sometimes it focuses on Eisner's hands. It's starting to annoy me. What's with the camera zooming in on the hands.....

I must have drifted off. I snap awake to see that Ferguson's gone and Eisner's interviewing Stan Lee, the old comic book artist. He's got to be like, I don't know, a million years old. But he's all peppy and full of big ideas. He's telling Eisner that he's got about a zillion projects going at once, including a comic-book movie featuring Paris Hilton. Eisner keeps asking these patronizing questions, like where does a man your age find his energy to have so many deals, like the old fart should be in a nursing home or something. I can see Eisner's really envious of Lee, like he's thinking: What the hell am I doing hosting this stupid cable-TV talk show? I should be making deals with Paris Hilton. I'm Michael freakin' Eisner!

The fat guy walks by. He's still talking on the phone -- talking to Larry -- but at least he's dressed.

Then and there I decide that I'm gonna be like Stan Lee as I grow old. I'll have a million projects, including deals with starlets, going at once. I feel a burst of energy -- my first burst of energy all day. Forget the economic depression -- my life's just getting started.

Letter From Milo: A Boy Named Who?

(posted Wednesday, February 18, 2009)

I once knew a boy named Sue. He was an Asian kid who went to my high school. His actual name was Soo, but I'm proceeding phonetically here.

There were a lot of funny names in my school. Many of the students were immigrants or children of immigrants, whose names consisted of odd combinations of consonents and vowels, strung together in ways that the Anglo-Saxon mind had trouble deciphering. I don't have a copy of my high school yearbook but, if memory serves, the roster of students' names would have baffled a Harvard linguist. I doubt if William Safire could pronounce half of the names correctly.

My name, Milo Samardzija, was near the top of the list of tongue-twisting appellations. It wasn't the worst, by any means, but it was close. There was only one teacher that ever got my name right on the first try and that was because she was descended from the same part of the Balkans that my family escaped from. The rest of the school's staff mangled my name for weeks or months before getting it right. One old fart, a drunkard who to tried to teach English, never got it right. He eventually gave up, resorting to saying Hey you or pointing at me when my participation was required.

It was during high school that I grew to hate my name. I envied people with names like Smith, Jones, or Johnson. Wouldn't it be great, I thought, to have a name with only one or two syllables? I had a distant relative in Milwaukee who changed his name from Rade Samardzija to Rudy Summers. I remember asking my dad if he had ever considered changing or shortening our last name. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, "That's a stupid fucking question if I ever heard one."

As bad as I felt about my own name, I felt almost as bad for other students who had unpronounceable or awkward names, like Aphrodite Baffalukis, Predrag Bielopetrovich, Shlomo Finklestein, Scotty Queerman, and George Shitz. We were brothers and sisters united in humiliation, fellow travelers on the road to ridicule. How we got out of high school with our sanity and self-esteem intact is beyond me. In my case, I don't think I did.

Things only got worse when I was drafted into the US Army. If educated high school teachers couldn't pronounce my name then what could I expect from barely literate drill instructors? But, again, I wasn't alone. There were plenty of others in my basic training company with terrible names. I remember one guy in particular, an Armenian, with a name so complicated that it took the combined efforts of two sergeants and a Second Lieutenant to just come close to pronouncing it. In the end, they resorted to calling him Alphabet. The poor kid was so traumatized that he eventually deserted, defecting, I believe, to Huimanguillo, Mexico, Ikaluktutiak, Canada, or somewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I caught a huge break a couple of years ago when the Chicago Cubs drafted a young pitcher out of Notre Dame named Jeff Samardzija. When he made it to the big leagues last year and radio and TV announcers began broadcasting his name, it changed my life. Suddenly, people began pronuncing my name correctly - on the first try. I was no longer a Hey You, Alphabet, Whatchamacallit, or That Guy. I was a somebody, with a real name, a name that, at least on the North Side, was not so strange after all. It was a life-changing experience, liberating me from the purgatory of the bad-name-afflicted. I hope Jeff Samardzija has a long and successful career with the Cubs and never does anything to dishonor the noble name of Samardzija. After all, if someone with the fine, upstanding name like Bartman can be brought down, it can happen to anybody.

One thing about having an odd name is that it made me appreciate other odd names. In fact, I've become a connoiseur of awkward appellations. I've even compiled a short list of some of my favorite names, in various categories, that I take pleasure in hearing and saying. I'd like to share them with you.

• Politics: Dick Devine
  
• Football: Terdell Middleton
  
• Baseball: Pete LaCock
  
• Exotic Dancing: Ineeda Mann
  
• Statesmen: Zbigniew Bzrezinski
  
• Rock 'n' Roll (tie): Howard Futterman and the Amish Playboys and Skid Marx and the Excrementals

If you, faithful readers, have any favorite odd names, feel free to suggest them in the comment section of this blog. We just might post them someday.

Big Mike: The In Crowd

Which version of the song did you like? More than a dozen artists have covered "The In Crowd." If you're our age, you'll remember the chart hits done in early 1965 by Dobie Gray and later in the same year by the Ramsey Lewis Trio. Acts as disparate as the Ventures, the Mamas and the Papas, Bryan Ferry, Joe Jackson, and Quincy Jones have also recorded the tune.

I'm in with the in crowd and I know what the in crowd knows....

Now's your chance to become part of the new in-crowd. Our crowd. Be a permanent member of The Third City gang. Don't miss a single post.

Anytime of the year, don't you hear? If it's square, we ain't there....

Here's what you do - scroll down below the Who We Are blurb and find the Follow This Blog link. Click it. That's it! You're in!

I don't care where you've been, you ain't been nowhere till you you've been in....

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Other guys imitate us, but the original is still the greatest - in crowd!