Rant #1,701: Dark Shadows

The year 1966 was an incredible one for television.

Not only had color finally pretty much permeated television--with more and more shows getting away from black and white and moving to the color spectrum--but television itself was being more colorful, more inventive and more fun for viewers.

Four shows debuted during 1966 that became among the biggest cult shows of not only their time, but today too. All these years later, "Batman," "The Monkees," "Star Trek" and "Dark Shadows" have incredible followings.

"Batman" remains the template for the mod, colorful, pop art medium of the day, and to some, Adam West is, and will always be, Batman.

"The Monkees" is in a category by itself, not only beloved as a TV show, but whose music has lived on 50 years later, and whose popularity has translated to a long-awaited new album that rose to No. 14 on the charts with even loftier placement around the world.

"Star Trek" is also in a category of its own, as one of the most popular movie franchises ever, with a new film coming out in a few weeks.

And then we have "Dark Shadows," the gothic horror/romance/soap opera that expanded the boundaries of where television shows could go back then, and forever changed the landscape of the soap opera genre.

The show ran only about five years, but during those years, it set television on its carcass, exploring fantasy areas that probably had only been touched on before, using a mix of science fiction, time travel, romance, gothic horror and vampires to capture younger audiences who had never watched soap operas before.

Anyway, here we are 50 years later, and the "Dark Shadows" cult continues, and this weekend, my family and I attended the latest "Dark Shadows" convention, in Tarrytown, New York.

The conventions not only focused on the show--with various forums dedicated to different aspects of the show--but it gives fans a chance to meet many of the stars of the show up close and personal.

Jonathan Frid--who came onto the scene in what everyone thought would be a short story arc about a vampire but ended up becoming the force that not only kept the show on the air, but made it the cult item that it is today, passed away a few years back, but many of the other cast members were there, including David Selby, Lara Parker, Nancy Barrett, Jerry Lacy, John Carlin, James Storm and Kathryn Lee Scott.

It really was an incredible occasion, and the more than 1,000 people who attended (my estimate) seemed to have lots of fun meeting the stars, participating in the forums, and talking about their 50-year obsession with the show with others.

Yes, there were people of all ages there, but the bulk of the attendees were the Baby Boomers, those kids who rushed home every afternoon from school to watch this show.

My mother used to watch the show on our old black and white Dumont TV in our living room, and during that half hour, you could not interrupt her. She made it dark in that room, adding to the eeriness of the occasion, and she continued to watch it in black and white during its entire run--even when the show switched over the color--because that is the only type of TV we had until the early 1970s.

I watched an episode here and there back then, but I really got into the series when it was rerun on New Jersey public television in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then, I have watched in on outlets including the SciFi channel--where it ran in its entirety for a good 10 years--and on DVD.

So yes, I am a "Dark Shadows" fanatic, as is my wife, and my son grew up watching the show, even though he hasn't seen the episodes in years. He, too, enjoyed himself, meeting the stars and seeing the mass of fans who love the show.

So sometimes, you have to do something out of the ordinary to just set things on their ear, and that is what my family and I did this weekend.

Don't worry, I won't bite you like Barnabas would if you disagree with me, or roll your eyes at all of this folderoll, but it really is nice to revisit things you did during your childhood, and do it up close and personal like this.

And since this was the 50-year celebration, I don't know what the future holds for "Dark Shadows" conventions, but I will tell you that if this is the last one of its kind, they went out with a bang. It was fun, everyone seemed to have a good time, and most of the stars looked like they were enjoying themselves, too.

Having fun ... that is the basic premise of any good TV show, and "Dark Shadows" provided that type of escape for millions of fans way back when, and still does this to many fans today.

What more can you ask for?

Classic Rant #346 (October 4, 2010): My Little Town

I received a terrific surprise over the weekend. Getting my mail on Saturday, I found a cardboard envelope in my mass of bills and garbage. I opened it up, and lo and behold, the book about my old neighborhood had come to me, about a month and a half early.

"Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City's Great Experiment in Integrated Housing" (Cornell University Press) is the 323-page hardcover book that I, and many of my fellow former Rochdale Village residents, have been waiting to be written for decades. The story of Rochdale really is the story of New York City in the 1960s and early 1970s, and using a broader stroke, it is a microcosm of the history of urban America during that period.

Written by Peter Eisenstadt, who, among other things, is the editor of the Encyclopedia of New York State--and whose brother, Eric, I used to play ball with--this tome takes the reader from the earliest proposals for such a massive development--20 buildings of 13 floors each, at the time, the largest cooperative housing development in the world--to all the trials and tribulations of its construction, its population, and how it changed the urban landscape.

My family was one of the 6,000 families that lived there, and in our seven years there, we personally went from thinking that this place was something of a Garden of Eden to our belief that we were in a living hell there, and everything in between.

Rochdale Village--named after the first cooperative development in England--was an experiment in urban living that might never be duplicated ever again. It was designed to provide affordable housing to middle income families, and it was the largest experiment in integrated housing in New York City--and maybe even the entire country--in the 1960s.

Built on the site of the old Jamaica Racetrack, it was a development that was plunked right in the middle of one of the most famous minority areas in the United States, with the idea that blacks--as well as whites--would live together in such a development, with whites having the largest portion of the population. Add to that test tube that a majority of the whites were from an oppressed minority themselves--a high proportion of the population was Jewish--and you get a mix that was both energetic and volatile.

The site was a virtual city within a city. Not only were the streets interconnected so that you never had to cross a street to get to any one of the sites in the development, but it had its own shopping areas--two malls--and its own power plant. During the 1965 Blackout, it was one of the few areas with even a scant amount of electrical power.

The experiment worked beyond the creators' wildest dreams in the mid-1960s. Blacks and whites did live together in harmony within the development. However, those living outside the development were never comfortable with such a massive project in their neighborhood, and due to a number of factors, there were problems between the insiders and the outsiders from about Day One of the project.

Not getting the project off on the right foot was that early on, minority laborers and construction people were not allowed to work on the project, which got the goat of the surrounding community. There were many other confrontations, but what some--including myself--thought was the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back" happened in 1968.

With the schools starting to move in a downward spiral due to a number of factors, including an extremely bitter school strike, another major blow to the experiment was the assassination of Martin Luther King. This unfortunate incident led to much malice between those inside the community and those on the outside, and the "white flight" of the late 1960s and early 1970s was a result, at least in part, of this and many other incidents that galvanized around the death of the civil rights leader and how that impacted the Rochdale Village envionment.

Today, Rochdale Village continues to stand, with an almost entirely black population.

I am simplifying the whys and wherefores of this community, but I can tell you that for the Baby Boomer kids like myself who grew up there, we truly lived in a Nirvana. As a little kids, there seemed to be a million of us who lived in the development (really thousands), and you didn't have one friend, you had many, many friends--black, white, Jew, non-Jew.

I lived there from the age of seven to 14, and I can tell you that the racial aspect only reared its head during our last years there, and certainly after King died.

Nobody cared about race--we just wanted enough kids to play punchball or touch football.

But when King died, everything changed. It just wasn't the same place anymore. It was if the heart and soul of the community died with King.

The amazing thing is that 40 years after I left there--and most of my fellow baby boomers left there too--there is an extremely active social community revolving around our old neighborhood, and I am proud to count myself as part of this.

It started out on something called Delphi Forums and moved over to Facebook, but lots of former kids that I grew up with--we're all in our fifties, many of us have our own kids, and some of us are grandparents--regularly speak to each other about the old neighborhood as well as a variety of other subjects.

It is truly amazing, and one of my personal most amazing events revolving around this social networking was held this summer, when I had a whole bunch of people I hadn't seen in decades over to my house for a barbecue, one of the numerous events this group has had over the past 15 years or so. It was so much fun seeing my old friends and acquaintances--it's as if we never left the old neighborhood.

Was Rochdale Village a success or failure? The jury is still out on this, but Eistenstadt's book crystallizes the events and circumstances that will allow the reader to reach a conclusion himself.

The book is fully footnoted, and I am proud to say that I am quoted several times in the book and my name is in the book's extensive index.

It is a wonderful, insightful read, and anyone interested in urban culture will be interested in this book.

And I am proud to have been a part of both Rochdale--the greatest place for a kid to have grown up in--and this book.

It is a legacy that I--and countless other fellow Rochdale Village baby boomers--don't take lightly.

Rant #1,700: March 4, 2009

That date will live in my personal history as the date I took "the plunge."

Some people will claim that it is a date that will live in infamy, but to me, it is a very special date on the calendar.

On that date, I started the original Ranting and Raving Blog--the first post was placed on that day, although the numbering of the Rants started afterward.

I don't exactly remember the actual reason that I started the blog, although I can tell you that more than seven years ago, I felt the same way I do now--I write about the same topics over and over in my real job, and I needed an outlet to write about what I really wanted to write about.

And Ranting and Raving allowed me to do that.

Whether it is writing about politicians, or someone's birthday, or myself, this blog has given me the forum to do just that.

You cannot imagine how good that makes me feel.

Remember, I am the guy who has written the same articles 100 times over at my actual job, so writing over here really gives me the freedom in my writing that makes me a better writer, whether doing it for pay or doing it over here for fun.

And I want to affirm that. Unbeknownst to a lot of people, I don't make a dime off this site. Yes, it is monetized, but so few people click on the ads that I don't get any payment from this site at all.

And I do mean nothing.

But I do get a lot of solace, which you can't put into dollars and cents, or sense to some of my adversaries.

Ranting and Raving is fun to write every day, and gets me in the writing mood each and every day that I write something here.

It hasn't all been fun and games, though.

A while back, you might remember that the original Ranting and Raving site was hacked. Google did nothing about it, and I had to decide whether I wanted to continue to write this blog.

I did, started fresh and new with Ranting and Raving II, and I am slowly trying to get everything off the original site and move all those posts here, hence the Classic posts each and every day.

It will take me years to do that, but I will do it, you can bet on that.

And thanks to you guys for reading what I have to say.

I know that a small group of you read this blog each and every day, and all I can say is thank you, and please continue to post your yeas and nays here.

I never said I am right about anything and everything, but I put on this blog the way I feel, and if you have an issue about what I am saying, please, let me know about it.

Whatever the case, we have reached 1,700 posts here, and I think I have been successful in keeping this blog moving, putting up a maximum of five posts a week to stir you, to make you laugh, to make you roll your eyes, and most importantly, to make you think.

At this rate, we won't reach Rant No. 1,800 until sometime near or even slightly past the end of 2016, probably going into early 2017, and who knows what you will find here in the coming months?

Thanks again for giving me a chance, and on Monday, we will start the cycle again with Rant No. 1,701.

Again, thanks for being here, and have a great weekend.

Classic Rant #345 (October 1, 2016): Rest In Peace, Bernie

Now, back to Tony Curtis ...

Tony Curtis was an icon in the 1950s. For me, a kid born in 1957, when I look back at the decade where I made my debut, there are some iconic figures from that era that literally are the 1950s. Like other decades, they could not have existed in any other 10-year period.

The list includes Marlon Brando, James Dean, Victor Mature, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Rock Hudson ...

And one Bernard Schwartz, from the Bronx.

Young Bernie was taunted about being Jewish, and the legend has it that one of the only places that he could find refuge from these attacks was the local movie theater. Continuing the legend, when he saw screen icons like Cary Grant doing their thing, he decided that he wanted to do it too, and become a movie star himself.

And by the 1950s, this well-chiseled, incredibly good-looking hunk had made the big time.

He starred in a number of high-profile, often controversial films during the 1950s, including "The Defiant Ones," where he earned his only Oscar nomination, "Operation Petticoat," and in his most famous role, as the guy who had to cross-dress to become a member of the band to get close to Monroe in "Some Like It Hot."

He was married to one of the screen's great beauties (and great bodies) at the time, Janet Leigh, and he became a dad during this period, fathering Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis, the latter kid later becoming quite a big movie star herself.

In the early 1960s, he starred in a number of standouts, especially "Spartacus," but to me, his greatest starring role was as Stony Curtis on "The Flintstones," where he did a parody of himself. This performance still stands up all these years later.

As he got older, good roles came few and far between, although he did star in "The Boston Strangler" and gave maybe his best performance in that film.

But the 1950s icon fell to 1960s vices--wine, women, song, drinking, drugs--and he never returned to prominence on the big screen.

But he was a holdover from another time period, the last surviving member of that group I mentioned earlier.

R.I.P., Bernie, you've earned it.

Rant #1,699: Have Faith

Today is the 175th day of the year, so we are approaching the mid-point of 2016.

This has been an interesting year thus far, with a lot of highs, a lot of lows, and a lot of in betweens.

For me, it has been a very interesting year, with the second half of 2016 promising to be extremely memorable, what with my trip to Korea pending.

But now, for a brief few minutes, I am going to ask you to have some faith in what I am going to write about today.

And that faith has to do with Adam Faith, the British singer who passed away 13 years ago at 73 years of age.

Today would be his birthday if he were still alive, and looking at his career shows that not every act is the Beatles, and there have been some singing acts who are popular across the pond in Europe who simply never could translate that popularity to American soil.

Faith was the first British singer--not Cliff Richard, and not the Beatles--to put his first seven singles in the Top 5 on the charts over there.

He became a quick pop star in the pre-Beatles era, years where pretty much nothing being done over there was being heard over here.

He was to British shores what Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell and the like were over here: safe pop idols that even your grandmother could love.

Driven by his good looks, which really translated well to his numerous TV appearances in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Faith had numerous hits in the pre-Beatles era, including "What Do You Want" and "Poor Me," two No. 1 hits in 1959 and 1960.

Through 1966, he placed 24 singles on the British pop charts, with this last major hit being "The First Time," which cracked the Top 5 in 1963.

"When Johnny Comes Marching Home," the old Civil War tune, was re-imagined as a British beat staple back then, and it also became a hit in Europe, and is on the record whose sleeve I ran at the top of this Rant.

But his success simply did not translate to U.S. shores.

He recorded for a few labels here, but it was only after the Beatles became an international phenomenon that he was able to crack the charts in the U.S.

He placed two hits on the Hot 100 in the U.S., "It's Alright," which hit No. 31, and "Talk About Love," which hit No. 97, both in 1965.

He later focused on the stage and screen, and acted in numerous British productions through the early 2000s and up to his death.

He also became a well-known financial advisor, and became a financial journalist, but he later, himself, had numerous financial problems.

He returned to the stage, but had numerous health problems. Faith became ill during a stage production, and the next morning, on March 8, 2003, he died.

Adam Faith was a huge star in Europe, but was virtually unknown on these shores. Like I said before, not every British act could be like the Beatles, and while his Britishness did get him a look here, that was pretty much about it.

Classic Rant #344 (September 30, 2010): How Can People Be So Cruel?

Yes, I know Tony Curtis passed away. Being in "Some Like It Hot" made him a superstar in my book.

But I wanted to talk about something else today, a story that I heard about that really, really rubbed me the wrong way.

It seems that two Rutgers University students illegally taped one of their male schoolmates having a sexual encounter with another man and broadcast the images via an Internet chat program. The schoolmate became distraught, and allegedly committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

In this almost eerily modern retelling of Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe," the dead student, prior to his death leap, left a message on his Facebook page that read, "Jumping off the gw bridge, sorry."

The two perpetrators, one who was the now dead student's roommate and one who is a female, both 18 years of age, have been charged, and could be looking at five years in prison for their actions.

What motivates supposedly civilized human beings to craft and then carry out such a heinous act?

I wish I knew, but I don't.

The deceased student was a musician, and by all accounts, he was a good student and a fine human being.

But even if he wasn't, why would fellow students--his own peers--even think of committing such an atrocity?

Did his homosexuality bother them? Did his skill as a musician threaten them? Was he somebody that everyone picked on?

Who knows, but it is incredible in this day and age, where political correctness often overshadows right and wrong, that an incident like this could actually happen--and on a college campus yet.

At this juncture, the authorities are still trying to determine whether the body they found is actually the student, and a lot of the information about the case is pretty sketchy.

But if everything ties in together, then you really have to ask how something like this could happen.

Ironically, the campus was in the process of holding seminars related to behavior on campus that are open to students, faculty and employees of the school.

How I wish these two alleged tapers had gone to the seminars. Maybe they would have changed their ways.

But who knows--all we know is that a young man is gone, and simply because two people decided that his privacy was not enough reason to leave him be.

It just does not make any sense at all, does it?