An Annoying Autobiographical Interlude, Part III: The Dude is West

So, New Yorkers often ask about the people in Southern California.  I could think of no to better way to illustrate the tenor of the place than through the following vignettes.  Please note that in each and every one of them, I’m speaking to a very young man … say, 20-to-24 years old.  That, in and of itself, is extraordinary, as young people in New York do not acknowledge that people over 39 even exist.  That prejudice seems nonexistent here in Huntington Beach, and there are no barriers in striking up conversations with strangers.

The Scene:  A barbershop in Huntington Beach, where Your Correspondent is getting a much-needed haircut.

Young Man:          So dude, where you from?

Me:                      New York.

Young Man:          Dude, move to Cali.  You’ll live longer.

Me:                      Are you from around here?

Young Man:          No.  Chicago.

Me:                      What brought you here?

Young Man:          Dude – I’m in Southern California.  I’m living the dream.  You oughtta come.

Me:                      Sold.

The Scene:  A Trader Joe’s in Huntington Beach.  We are on line, with one customer ahead of us.  The store is otherwise empty.  A Young Man leaps to another cash register to accommodate us.

Young Man:          Sorry for the crowds, dude.

Me:                      Crowds?  You couldn’t get a game of solitaire going here.

Young Man:          This place.  It’s too crazy.  The pace is too fast.  I’m going to move.

Me:                      To a cemetery?  Seriously, where is the pace slower?

Young Man:          New Mexico.  They’re really happy over there.

Me:                      Well, we’re from New York, and think Huntington Beach is paradise.

Young Man:          New York?  Dude, I got to get there.

Me:                      (Looking around) Not if you think this place is crowded….

Scene:  Huntington Beach, on the beach itself.  We are walking along the beach and come across a young man fiddling with an enormous drone.  This thing is roughly the size of a human torso, equipped with a camera on a gyroscope in the lower body.  We stand apart, watching as he prepares it.

Young Man:          Dude, come over.

Me:                      OK.  That’s quite a drone.  Can you tell me about it?

Young Man:          (Provides considerable detail on how it works.)  Using it to shoot some B-roll. 

Me:                      Thanks.  Well, I’ll be off; don’t want to be in your way.

Young Man:          Dude.  Hang out.

Me:                       [Gobsmacked.]

Scene:  Once again, on the beach itself.  I am alone, and walking along the famous pier.  There are three young men with palm fronds, twisting them into the shape of roses.  Before them is a sign:  FREE OR LEAVE ONE DOLLAR.

Me:                      [Taking one and leaving one dollar.]  Many thanks.  I’m getting this for my husband.

Young Man:          Your husband?  Dude – that’s so cool!

After just a few short weeks, what I find amazing is not that people live in Southern California, but that anyone would dream of living anywhere else.

Next week:  We return to our regular reviews and overviews.

An Annoying Autobiographical Interlude, Part II: Getting Settled in Southern California

Huntington Beach Library!

New Yorkers walk.  They walk everywhere.  They walk every day and they walk a lot.  In just a few weeks here in Huntington Beach, we have clocked dozens of miles … and have been the only pedestrians on the sidewalks.  Oh, yes, we have seen people getting in-and-out of their cars, but walkers in Southern California are regarded with something curiously like suspicion. 

So, clearly we need a car to live here successfully.  We sold our Old Reliable in New York before heading West (a painless operation thanks to Craigslist), and are on the hunt for new transportation.  We also needed to change our New York drivers licenses from East to West Coast, and our AirBNB hostess graciously took us to the nearest Department of Motor Vehicles.  What can I say, other than all DMV offices are much the same, even in paradise?

The office was clean and airy (at least), and having an appointment got us to the front of the line.  But, the fellow who initially waited on us learned all of his ninja techniques from an extinct sloth with sleeping sickness.  When we were through with that fellow, we moved on to another window to have our photos taken.  Thanks to our new license photos, my better half now looks like a wax figure slightly melted, while I look like a morose basset hound. 

Finally, we get to the window to take the written test (now done at computer terminals).  I have been driving for more years than I can count, but the thought of taking the written test again frankly terrified me.  My mood was not improved when I arrived at the testing area.  This was commandeered by an officious dominatrix with anger management issues.  She barked at me for standing on the wrong line and screamed at my better half for checking his cell phone --- after taking the test. (“I’m going to fail you!”)  I finished first, and when my better half arrived at her desk two people later, where she wanted to know, “Why did you come back?”  When he explained that I was myself, and he only himself, she demanded to know why we looked alike.  It’s impossible to make this stuff up.

Following that ordeal, we went to the Huntington Beach library.  This place is paradise!  We got new library cards from a lovely and gracious clerk … who loaned me a scissor so that I could demolish my New York card.  (Done with relish.)  It would be hard to imagine a more beautifully appointed library: the HB branch has three stories, elaborate fountains and grounds, ample study space, and more than enough books to keep even myself happy.  Better yet, they do a brisk business in used books, so if bibliomania should ever overtake me again, I can do it inexpensively.

To celebrate, we walked on the beach to watch the sunset … because we can.  And, by jingo, we will do it again today.

Tomorrow:  The Dude is West

An Annoying Autobiographical Interlude, Part I: We Leave New York

We left here....

Well, last week marks a three-month absence from these pages.  Concerned readers have asked, where have you been?  Where, indeed.

Your Correspondent has spent the last three months in an epic move from Gotham to Southern California.  The move was a long time in coming, and completely necessary.  However, amassing a 40 year (and counting) collection of books, autographs, historical documents, pictures, paintings, art materials and curiosa for selling or packing and shipping was no easy task.  (We won’t even begin to talk about packing 50 hats…)  We have been safely ensconced here for three weeks now, and things have settled down to the usual state of fevered activity.

Nor are our adventures over.  While we have settled into Huntington Beach for the next few months, that is only the first step prior to finding a new, permanent home, exploring professional opportunities, reaching out to the various artistic communities, and generally getting on with life.

During the past few months, I haven’t been able to give The Jade Sphinx the attention it so richly deserves.  However, I’m delighted to find that my readership has inexplicably increased (some 12,000 reads in July alone!), and that the total number of reads has reached an impressive 363,512!  That number amply demonstrates that the public is hungry for an in-depth examination of great books, theatre and art.  To each and every one of you who regularly reads these pages, I thank you.  For those of you who are new here, keep coming – there is more on the way.  (Or, better yet, start reading earlier posts.  This blog has covered a broad array of topics, and there is something of interest for most everyone.)

.... For here!

In the coming weeks, we will return to book reviews, art analysis, and thoughts on our current culture (or lack of it).  We will also make a comment or two on the efforts of two hard-bitten New Yorkers to become laid-back West Coasters.  The change in lifestyle, quality of life, and overall enrichment of experience is staggering.  When people in New York ask what Southern California is like, I say, “remember the view outside my window, and imagine the exact opposite.”  It is quieter, cleaner, the people friendlier and more polite, there are no undercurrents of anxiety and aggression, and the endless stream of perfect-weather days provides a sense of timelessness.  I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.

So, while my life has fundamentally and happily changed, The Jade Sphinx will be providing the mixture as before.  Let us know what parts of this blog you most enjoy, and what needs work.  Remember that while The Jade Sphinx largely exists as a mode of developing and exploring my intellectual and aesthetic appreciations, it is an experience that I want to share with you.   

Tomorrow: Getting Settled In Southern California

Bill Cunningham New York, a Film by Richard Press (2011)

Photographer Bill Cunningham (born 1929) loves clothes.  He initially started as a hat maker, a trade he happily plied until he was drafted.  Back in his civvies, he worked as a fashion photographer until he grew unhappy with the demands upon his vision and editorial policies that he saw as unkind to average people who wore designer clothes.  Without regret, he left for different (if not greener) pastures.

Instead, he started taking pictures of New Yorkers as they were on the street – a fascinating record of how Gothamites have dressed and looked since 1978.  His New York Times column, On The Street, is a weekly collection of the trends or looks he noted each week, for which he also does the layout and a brief commentary.

Filmmaker Richard Press created a documentary about this illusive figure in 2011, Bill Cunningham New York.  The film tracked Cunningham breezing through Manhattan on bicycle and living in his tiny apartment in the Carnegie Hall building – an apartment with no closet, kitchen or private bathroom.  The apartment was furnished only with filing cabinets (holding hundreds of thousands of his photographs), a mattress propped up on some books and boxes, and many books.  Cunningham lived there happily until the Carnegie Hall Corporation evicted him in 2010 – an artist, a living New York institution, and a man well into his 80s.  Think of that the next time you want to spend your hard-earned ticket money.

Cunningham, who never married, lives a life of Spartan simplicity.  His home is, for the most part, on the streets of New York.  Cunningham is not interested in celebrities, models or people paid to wear the latest fashions.  His art is akin to stealth warfare – he sneaks onto the teeming streets of New York, gets his shots, and retreats to the Times to do his column.  His has very little life other than this.

Though Press’ film does an admirable job of shedding light on Cunningham and his life, the artist’s natural reticence renders him a somewhat opaque figure – even his closest friends know little of his private life.  In the few instances in the film where Cunningham is asked direct questions, his answers are more evasive than luminous.  In the final analysis, Cunningham comes across as a sad, rather stunted man.  His palpable sense of joy at both photography and clothes is a delight – but other than that sense of freedom and joy, there seems to be little else to him.

Disquieting too is the New York depicted in the documentary.  We are given snippets of commentary from people as diverse as Tom Wolfe (born 1931), Anna Wintour (born 1949),  Patrick McDonald (who strikes us as rather ridiculous), Kenny Kenny (who seems to be some kind of drag performer), and Harold Koda (1950) – and Your Correspondent’s takeaway is that New York is rather a squalid, provincial, intellectually challenged little burgh.  The City of this documentary seems insular, incurious, uninteresting and rather dirty. 

Now, despite its fecundity, New York is a blank canvas – people mostly see what they bring to it, and not how it really is.  I think the problem for me is that this is not my New York and, frankly, the idea of being stuck in this version fills me with something akin to dread.

Still, for people who have a taste for big city street vibes, New York eccentrics, the world of fashion or even the triumph of free spirits, then Bill Cunningham New York is a safe viewing bet.  It’s available at Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble nationwide.

Christmas Carols, Part II: Twas Night Before Christmas (A Visit From St. Nicholas), by Clement C. Moore

Though certainly not a carol in the traditional sense, Clement C. Moore’s wonderful Twas Night Before Christmas (originally entitled A Visit From St. Nicholas) has often been set to music.  There are several delightful musical renditions of the poem, and perhaps our favorite here at the Jade Sphinx is that of Christmas Cowboy Deluxe, Gene Autry (1907-1998), recorded with Rosemary Clooney (1928-2002).  If you don’t believe us – listen and see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TaQPg10OmA.

(Before moving on to Mr. Moore and Mr. Claus, a quick word on Gene Autry.  The very best Christmas present one could get is the classic cowboy’s Christmas album.  Autry introduced Frosty the Snowman, as well as Here Comes Santa Claus and Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, and his recordings of these numbers are definitive.  In addition, the other songs on the album – including Santa, Santa, Santa and the lovely and evocative Merry Christmas Waltz – are seldom-heard gems, and they have become a tradition in our household.  They should become a tradition in yours, as well.)

Clement Moore (1779-1863) lived with his beloved wife, Elizabeth, and their nine children in a large, comfortable Georgian manor house in what is now the Chelsea section of New York.  The estate, called Chelsea, rested on 96 acres of farmland, which hopefully illustrates that, if nothing else, Manhattan is constantly changing.

Early one Christmas Eve, in his carriage en route to Washington Market to buy a holiday turkey, he began composing a Christmas poem for his six-year-old daughter, Charity.  Back home in his study, he consulted Henry Irving’s History, and finished the poem in three hours.  That night, at supper, he read it aloud to his family – it was the first time Twas Night Before Christmas was heard by an audience.  It was an instant hit.  Charity brought it to her Sunday School class, and then friends had the poem published in the Troy, New York Sentinel the following Christmas in 1823.  Moore, a scholar and serious educator, was initially reluctant to admit authorship.

It was more than 40 years later that the political cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) created the modern Santa Claus when illustrating a republication of Moore’s poem.  As cartoonist for the influential illustrated Harper’s Weekly, for each Christmas issue he drew a Santa, which he claimed was a welcome relief from his usual round of political cartooning.  One wonders how he would feel now.

One of the many interesting things in Santa’s evolution is that Moore originally conceived of Santa as elf-sized.  This somehow got lost in the details, as Nast’s Santa was republished everywhere: calendars, cards, posters and wrapping paper.  Between Moore and Nast, the modern Santa Claus was born.

Here’s the original poem:

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds;

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly

That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

We Go To the Movies

Or, rather … we don’t.

We here at The Jade Sphinx must confess that we rarely go to the movies.  (I hear they talk now.)  There are several reasons for this, and I’m sure I am not alone in my feelings on them.

Let us not even discuss the simple, depressing fact that the majority of major American films are not fit for adult consumption.  If your idea of cinema is Pacific Rim or The Avengers, you have problems beyond the scope of this blog to fix.

No, instead, let’s talk about how unpleasant it can be simply to go to the theater.

At one time (and certainly in the living memory of many readers), going to the movies was simple and a joy.  It did not cost much, and if one got caught seeing a bad or indifferent film, it was not too much of an investment to simply leave and go to another theater and see a different film.  With ticket prices upwards of $15 here in New York, that course of action is a little less likely.

Also, theaters were not always so sold out in advance, so there was no need of getting there 15-to-20 minutes in advance to ensure a good seat.  Better still, there was no need to sit through 15 minutes of commercials.

Yes – commercials, not trailers for other films.  How often have you been trapped in a theater and subjected to commercials for Coke or other revolting products?  If I wanted to watch commercials with little-or-no intrinsic merit, I would stay home and look at them for free.  To pay top dollar and get stuck with commercials is adding insult to injury.

And the trailers are no better.  Either they provide all the major plot points in advance (or all of the laughs), or they show that the film to come will be so horrific as to save us the trouble of going.  But we still have to sit through them.  Think we are kidding?  Look at the trailer for the upcoming Avengers film.  It has science fiction and comic book fans salivating – when actually, it is a coarse, ugly and noisy piece of work.  (You have been warned.)  You can see it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk24PuBUUkQ.

Who in heaven’s name would see rubbish like that?

Worse still, since the rise of the multiplex and the thudding, eardrum-bursting event film, it is almost impossible to see a smaller, more introspective film without hearing the latest mindless blockbuster through the wall of the neighboring theater.  Somehow, the sound of gunshots, explosions and various fart jokes do not improve all movies.

However, the very worst aspect of going to the movies today is the people in the theater with you.  Raised on television, raised without simple manners or even common human decency, one goes to the theater today with people who talk back to the screen, discuss the movies with their friends, and who text or make phone calls during the film.  Finding someone in New York who actually bathes before going to the movies is always a pleasure – and an increasingly rare one. 

The last time we visited the cinema was to see The Lone Ranger – which, because it was an (undeserved) flop, the theater was empty except for my friend and myself.  And it was the Ziegfeld, one of New York’s flagship theaters.  All theater visits should be so pleasant.

New York revival houses are no safer – to “sophisticated” New York audiences, anything more than 15 minutes old is camp.  It is nearly impossible to enjoy films from the 1920s-through-the-1950s without witless catcalls and derisive hoots from unwashed hipsters.  For the cineaste, digitization and the Internet have been a blessing – it means we can catch rarities without the hipsters.

Perhaps, really, the problem isn’t going to the movies, but going to the movies in New York.  The city is a teeming, seething, pulsating mass of putrescent offal, malodorous and greasy by turns, and unfit for civilized human habitation