Classic Rant #981 (June 11, 2013): Super Curse?

This has been something of a strange morning already.

Woke up, got ready for work, and found that the Internet was down and our phone didn't work.

But after a while, everything came back to normal.

It must be those rains I was talking about yesterday.

Anyway, have you ever heard of the Superman "curse?"

The "curse" that every actor who has played Superman has been cursed, died early, never progressed with his career?

It's sort of like the Little Rascals "curse"--so many young kids in that series died early, it belies the fact that several of the kids, including Jackie Cooper and Spanky McFarland, lived long, productive lives.

Yes, the Superman "curse" is a bit of balderdash, just like the Little Rascals "curse" is.

Let's see ...

Kirk Allyn, the original Superman in the movie serials, didn't have a long movie career, but he lived to a ripe old age.

The "curse," if there is one, actually was fermented with George Reeves. The actor, who as a young man was in "Gone With the Wind," was very typecast in the Superman role, couldn't get much of anything else to do, and killed himself in the process.

Of course, there is much, much more to that story than I can talk about here.

He had become a B actor way before Superman, he was a carouser, an adulterer, a heavy drinker, and fraternized with wives of mob members.

Did he kill himself or was he rubbed out? The question remains more than 50 years after his death.

I remember his death very well. It is one of the first memories I have as a human being. I could not understand, as a two year old, how Superman could be dead, but he was.

He remains as my favorite Superman, and the template from which all succeeding Superman actors were drawn from.

Now we move to the case of Christopher Reeve. He helped to create the Superman movie franchise, and he was probably the best actor ever to play the role. His series of movies was like printing money, and he was so talented that he didn't allow himself to be typecast, taking on a variety of roles during his brief career.

But he had a penchant for riding horses, which led to the "curse," if there is one, being extended.

He fell off a horse, became paralyzed, and later passed away. His wife passed away soon after.

Again, there is much more to the story than I am going to speak about here. But Reeve was one of the most courageous people around, and he is well remembered.

The movie franchise died itself until Brandon Rouse took over the role in "Superman Returns," and well, he returned all right, but Rouse's career never took off at all.

And there have been others in the interim, including Dean Cain, who played the character on television. His career never really took off, either, although his co-star, Teri Hatcher, became something of a TV phenomenon later on "Desperate Housewives."

Now we have the rebooted "Man of Steel," which in early previews, has gotten mixed reviews. This movie hopes to do with Superman what the recent reboots did with Batman: make him a more sincere, believable, and "human" character, even though this son of Krypton isn't really human at all.

Will there be any residual effect of this "curse?"

I doubt it, because you have to ask yourself if this "curse" actually exists.

I don't think it does. The previous actors were victims of various, unrelated circumstances, joined at the hip by them all being Superman sometime in their careers.

Henry Cavill, the new Superman, will do fine. Will he have a long career, will he by typecast, will his name be part of nothing more than a trivia question?

Who knows?

So, no matter how Superman does at the box office, there is no "curse," much like there is no Little Rascals "curse."

Maybe Alfalfa would disagree, but people make things of circumstances that they don't know anything about, and this "curse" thing, well, it does not exist.

Or at least I keep telling myself that it doesn't exist.

Rant #2,332: Video Killed the Radio Star

Yes, that was the old, old Buggles song, the song that was the first video ever shown on Music Television, what became known as MTV, a bastion of music and controversy for a generation of kids and younger people that debuted in 1980.

It is still on, still on all the cable and satellite packages, but it certainly does not have the cultural significance that it had in the 1980s and 1990s.

But today's column really is not about MTV; it is about how older musical acts, acts that have been consigned to the scrap heap called "oldies," continue to keep on giving.

Last Saturday night, at the stately Beacon Theater, my family and I were part of a nearly packed house that saw the Monkees perform.

Hey, yes, we know, there are just two Monkees left on this earth, but Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith ARE the Monkees at this juncture, so my family and the crowd just took it all in.

And if you think that this was just a perfunctory two hours of two old guys singing at their microphones with a backing band in tow, think again; the two singer/musicians can still carry a tune, can still hit the high notes pretty much, and yes, they can play their instruments and play them very well, thank you.

They went through a virtual glossary of Monkees hits, album cuts, newer music from their excellent and universally acclaimed "Good Times!" album of a few years ago, and Nesmith did a heartfelt rendition of the only hit record he had for himself outside the Monkees' pantheon, the beautiful "Joanne."

And yes, time was given to the late Davy Jones and Peter Tork, with the intermission given over to Tork, who did a spot-on rendition of the old Mills Brothers' chestnut "Till Then," in a video performance from a few years back.

I have tried to put up a couple of videos here, so you can see and hear for yourself that these guys just didn't mail it in; they gave their all, with nothing that I could see being held back, but for whatever reason, they will not upload. Sorry about that.

Sure, the memory of songs we have heard thousands of times--and that they have performed thousands of times--clicks into our brain cells, and hangs on like glue, and this is an advantage that these older acts have over newer ones.

But they still have to go out and do it, and when you are in your mid to late 70s, I am sure it is not as easy to do as when you are 25. Nothing is.

Tonight, my family and I are going to take in another so-called "oldies" show, as we are going to the NYCB Theater--or whatever they call the old Westbury Music Fair nowadays--to see a show with the Grass Roots, the Box Tops and the headliner, Tommy James and the Shondells.

The Grass Roots are holding on to that legacy, and while they aren't the guys that made the records or sung the hits--there were about three or four Grass Roots outfits way back when, and the band was finally settled by the Rob Grill-led group--they do a good job recreating the classic band and their bundle of hits.

Grill gave his blessing to this version of the band before he died, so at least we have that to hold on to.

The Box Tops are comprised of a few members of the old group, but lead singer Alex Chilton passed away several years ago, so again, this is kind of a shell of the old band, but I expect a really good show from them, because their hits do hold up pretty well 50 years after the fact.

And then we have James. There have also been dozens of Shondells bands, but they have all pretty much served as a backup band to James, who I have a new appreciation of after finally reading his book about his years at mob-run Roulette Records.

And again, he does not mail in his performance either. The likable James, who has his own show on satellite radio, takes the audience through a whole gamut of hits, one after the other after the other, and even when you get to "Crimson and Clover"--one of the best live performances of a single song that I have ever seen or heard--you still want more.

No, these musicians are not just there to do perfunctory performances. They really give it their all, and that is why people keep coming back to see them.

Heck, I have personally seen the Monkees probably 20 or 25 times now, and I have seen James maybe 10 or 15 times, and neither act ever goes through the motions.

So yes, I expect a great show tonight.

Call them "oldies" acts if you like, but their music is as new today, because of these top-flight performances, as they were when they were actually new.

Speak to you again on Monday. Have a great weekend.

Classic Rant #980 (June 10, 2013): Super Soaker

I often talk about the weather at this blog, because the weather impacts so many things that are part of our lives.

This weekend, in my neck of the woods, the weather was pretty much picture perfect.

It was warm without being absolutely sweat inducing, the sun was shining, and it was shorts weather outside.

But getting to that point was another matter altogether.

On Friday, we got soaked with rain, the likes of which I hadn't seen in years.

Brought on by the last remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea, this storm was the fiercest one I have seen in these parts maybe ever.

After leaving work, I drove home to buckets and buckets of rain coming down from the sky.

It wasn't only cats and dogs, it was probably a variety of animals not seen since Noah's Ark that pummeled us.

It was very hard to see, and there were not only puddles, but mini-lakes, on the roadways that you had to be aware of.

I drive on the highway much of my destination home, a two-lane highway that was originally built with a lesser volume of traffic in mind.

Now, with so many people taking their cars to work during the week, the roadway is normally bumper to bumper at this hour anyway, but with all the rain pelting us, this was like each car was still bumper to bumper, but separated not by space, but by raindrops.

When I exited the highway, I got onto the major road leading to where I live, and it, too,was bumper to bumper, but traffic was moving as the raindrops continued to fall rapidly.

I thought everything was clear sailing, but boy, was I wrong.

I was about a half mile away from where I live, and traffic pretty much stopped dead in its tracks.

I couldn't see what was up ahead, but being so close to home, it was getting very frustrating to me that I was seemingly so close, yet so far from my destination.

I saw numerous cars making U-turns off the road I was on, and then it pretty much hit me: there must be some newly created rivers up ahead, and people don't want to take a chance of driving their cars through this mess.

And that is exactly what it was.

By the park that we live opposite of, there was a river formed on the road that must have been at least two to three feet deep, which means that if you drove through it, it would be up to at least the middle of the doors on your car.

We received such an amount of rain in such a short period of time--some places got more than five inches on Friday--that even though there was drainage at this part of the road, it could not withstand such a load of rain, so a mini-ocean formed.

I decided to wing it, figuring two things: one, that I was so close to home that I didn't want to veer off elsewhere and have it take me even longer to get to my destination, and two, that my car performed well in other weather conditions, including snow, so I believed it could do well here, too.

So I drove my car through the ocean, all the while holding my breath, and lo and behold, it worked!

Once past there, I was able to get home pretty easily, since so many cars turned around before getting to this mess.

I parked my car, and I saw that our little street was being used as a through street by numerous cars. Evidently, on the other side of the park, another mini-ocean had formed, and it was the safest way for these drivers to get from point A to point B.

But it was just rain, and in a few hours, pretty much everything was back to normal.

I don't remember seeing rain like this where I live ever, and I have been living in this area for more than 40 years.

I have driven in worse, though.

On one of our vacations to Florida, actually coming home from the vacation, I remember that two or three years ago we hit the most massive rainstorm I had ever seen, before or since. It was in the Carolinas on I-95--I think it was South Carolina but I really don't remember for sure--and it lasted for hours.

You could not see in front of you pretty much at all, and I remember that the guy ahead of us for miles and miles also had a New York license plate, and we pretty much followed him through it, at a distance of course.

That was the worst I have ever seen, but this thing on Friday was pretty close to it.

And the forecast today? More rain, but not of the super-soaker type, I am happy to say.

Rant #2,331: That Old Black Magic

Yes, I did oversleep pretty badly this morning.

I just passed out last night at about 9:20 p.m., and it was one of those sleeps where I kind of knew that I would be out for quite a while.

And I was. Out. Completely out.

So that is why this column is late today, so sorry if I missed your morning coffee.

I know my sleeping late threw my hundreds of thousands of daily readers for a loop, but well, it happens--even if it only threw my dozens of readers out of sync.

But let me tell you about an occurrence yesterday that did throw hundreds of millions of people completely out of sync.

Starting at about 11:30 a.m. and lasting until about 6:30 p.m., Facebook was off line.

There was no message to prepare Facebook users for such a thing to happen, but it just did.

Facebook said it was doing "regular maintenance," and it would be back up and running in a few minutes, but first off, they would never do such "maintenance" without some type of warning, and secondly, why in the middle of the workday like that--and it wasn't for minutes, it was for hours.

Yes, I do believe that Facebook was hacked. That is my own opinion, but why would such a thing happen if it wasn't?

You just don't shut down a social network as popular as Facebook--and Instagram, too, since they are related--without warning.

I could be entirely wrong, but Facebook and Instagram were shut down for a very valid reason, and the company can call it what it wants, and yes, it was "maintenance" in one regard--to weed out whatever and whoever hacked the network.

I first discovered this at my work lunch time, which begins at 12:30 p.m.

I tried to go onto Facebook as I usually do during lunch hour, and lo and behold, I could not get on.

A box came up that said they were doing "maintenance," and that they would be back up and running in a few minutes.

In the meantime, as I ate my lunch, I went onto a couple of other sites to bide my time, and intermittently went back to Facebook, but I continued to get the same message.

At one point, nearer to the end of my lunch time at 1:30 p.m., I actually got onto the site, but I really couldn't do much of anything, and my new messages were not updated.

I went on my phone, and I was able to get onto the site, but again, I could not do much of anything, and I had zero new messages.

So I went back to work, checking the site from time to time, but nothing. Zip. Zero. Nothing was happening, and that infernal box continued to come up to tell me that they were on "maintenance."

It was at this point that I figured that yes, they were doing "maintenance," but it was a bit more than just that.

Or at least I think it was.

I went through the rest of the workday, went home, my wife and son both said they could not get on, and then when I finally settled down into my evening activities, I decided to go on, and finally, I was able to get on around 6:30 p.m. or so.

I had a few new messages, but only a very few, dating from the previous hour, and that is, of course, because nobody could get onto the site.

I have not looked at Facebook today at all, but I am sure everything is back to normal.

Let me check as I write this ...

Yes, it is back to normal, although I had to log in, which is somewhat unusual from my home computer, but otherwise, I have plenty of new messages and everything is A-OK.

We don't really understand how important Facebook is to us until we lose it like we did. It is the perfect time waster for me, but it does allow me to put up what I consider to be interesting things, voice my opinions on matters large and small, and promote this blog.

It has also allowed me to attach to past friends, and that makes it very worthwhile to me.

So again, when you lose it, you finally realize what you have lost.

I wish Facebook well, and if it was shut down because of a hack, I hope that they found what the problem was and fixed it so it presumably will not happen again.

Classic Rant #979 (June 7, 2013): Awards Week

This was a pretty big week for my family.

Not only did my wife and I celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, but our son received two sports-related awards over the past two days.

On Wednesday, he received an award for participating in the Police Boys Club Saturday Afternoon Bowling League.

This is not just any bowling league. This league is specifically geared to those who have learning disabilities, and physical and emotional problems.

It provides an opportunity for those kids who normally shunned athletics to get into sports as much as anybody else, to be themselves, and to act like typical teenagers ... which they are, through and through.

My son enjoyed this league. He is very quiet, doesn't show his emotions that well, but he knew that every Saturday, at least for an hour or two, he had a chance to show his athletic side.

His team was sort of a middle of the road team, not the league champion, but he and his team did well.

He averaged slightly over 100, which is fine.

The next night, on Thursday, he won an award for participating in the Challenger Basketball League.

I have written about this before in this blog.

Again, it is a basketball league for those kids in participating school districts who usually fall by the wayside athletically.

If you can get on the court, in any way possible, you can play in this league.

My son really enjoyed this competition. He would talk about it continually while it was on, and honestly, I wish more schools participated in this program.

I was able to go to one game, and the enthusiasm shown by the kids and the crowd was electrifying.

Nobody is looking for the next Lebron James here, but the kids really get into it.

My wife and I are quite proud of our son. In spite of his learning disability, he really is your average teenager. What kid doesn't like to show off his athletic prowess every now and again?

So, all told, this was a pretty great week for myself and my family.

I don't know if next week can duplicate this one, but we're going to try.

Speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #2,330: Another Day

Yesterday started out as just another day on the schedule ... but it became so much more than just another day.

A bombshell dropped by mid-day in the news, something that pretty much everybody knew about, something that has probably been going on for generations, but something that is just so wrong--and now, something is going to be done about it.

The FBI has busted several wealthy people for buying their kids' passage into college. These individuals--including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman--literally paid millions to get their kids into prestigious schools under false pretenses, and they did it because ... well ... they could.

A total of 46 people have been charged thus far in what has been called the largest such college admissions scheme in history.

And these are all big-time colleges that these well-heeled people got their kids into simply because they had the means to do so. Millions were spent on so-called "students" of the rich attending such bastions of learning as Yale, Georgetown and Stanford universities.

Sometimes, the kids got into the schools because of their parents' wealth, and didn't even show up at classes or take part in programs that supposedly got them into the schools. Other times, SAT scores were faked, as kids took the tests proctored by those who would change their test answers so as to boost these scores, thus making them more attractive to schools like this.

And this scam included a wide range of people well beyond TV and movie stars. It included school administrators, proctors, athletic directors, and others up the chain to get into these schools.

And now, they are all going to be subject to jail time, stiff fines and a lot of bad publicity for their actions.

Look, everybody knows that this has been going on forever. Didn't you ever wonder when an actor would tell an interviewer that his or her child was going to an elite school just how that kid got in there?

Were they smart? Did their parents's names give them leverage over others? Was there something else going on?

I can think of one actress, in particular, who I won't name here, who I often wondered about. She was quite popular way back when as a child star, and then as she reached college age, she went right into some prestigious program, and somehow, she graduated right on time with a degree, even though it appeared that her workload as an actress, coupled with her education, would not allow her to 1) not even be able to attend school in person, and 2) not allow her to graduate on time.

I often wondered how she did this, and now I think I know how and why.

Why is this such a dangerous practice?

First of all, it is unethical. You get into school because you earn a place in that school by your grades and what you can bring to that school, and not because your mommy and daddy are rich and can pay for you to get into that school.

Second, you are taking up a spot that should go to someone who actually earns their spot in that school, and from what we have heard, some of these elitist kids got into school by supposedly playing sports that they had never, ever played, which again, is taking up a place for someone more deserving.

There are other reasons that this is just plain wrong, but somehow, these schools are not being held culpable for this crime, which I am not sure that I fully understand.

Even though several middlemen were supposedly involved in each of these scams, we are talking about millions of dollars changing hands. Sure, these underlings had to be paid for their part in each of these scams, but by the time it got to the colleges, how could these bastions of learning not know that they had x millions of dollars coming into their coffers from certain people?

This scam stinks like the NCAA recruiting and other sports scams reek, and have reeked for years. If you have money, or if you have athletic prowess, you are treated quite differently than if you are average Joe.

I mean, nobody paid to get into my alma maters, Dowling College, which doesn't even exist anymore (if anybody paid millions to get in there, maybe it would still exist), or C.W. Post College.

We are talking about some of the most well-known schools not only in the country, but in the world, and these children of privilege, well, were evidently very privileged to be there.

Funny, Loughlin and Huffman are part of the Hollywood crowd--and the wealthy crowd in general--that is constantly telling us that they know better, that tells us that the causes they stand up for are the causes we should all back, that tells us that if we don't agree with them that we are wrong.

They also constantly wave their privilege in our faces, yet they feel that they stand for the American people.

Once again, they stab themselves in the foot with their arrogance, and it is high time that they, and other wealthy people with influence, are brought down to earth.

They put their pants on the same way we do, so why do they think they are better than we are?

I don't get it, but I kind of do get it.

LIke the old song says, "Money changes everything," and yes, it does, it even changes people, who think that their wealth makes them better than others.

I guess a case like this shows that this simply isn't true.

Classic Rant #978 (June 6, 2013): 20 Years

Today is my wife and my 20th wedding anniversary.

I have to say that I am pretty lucky. I am married to the best, greatest and most beautiful woman in the world.

I met her at a very low point in my life, she stuck with me through that, and all these years later, we are as strong as ever.

We believe in the same things, have the same values, and while we don't see eye to eye on everything, we make a perfect match.

We share a son, and my daughter respects her for what she is to her and to me.

Looking back, the evening leading up to my wedding 20 years ago is something that I can now laugh at, but at the time, it really wasn't funny at all.

My best man, Drew, was taking me out for dinner the night before.

He lived in Queens at the time, on a street that ran parallel to the Van Wyck Expressway.

I drove there from Long Island, parked my car in front of the building next door to his, and went on my merry way.

We went to a very good Tex Mex restaurant in Manhattan. I didn't want to stay out too late that night since I had to get up early the next morning, so when we returned to Queens, I bid my friend adieu and walked to my car.

The problem was, my car was not where I parked it.

I looked all around for that car. I thought, perhaps, that I had parked it somewhere else, I thought I was losing my mind.

But no, I parked the car where I parked the car and that was that.

I asked the doorman of the building that I had parked in front of if he had seen my car, and of course, he said that he hadn't.

He was a liar. My car was stolen right in front of his eyes, and he was probably part of the group that took it, or at least he acted as a lookout for them.

Anyway, I went back to my friend's apartment, we called the police, and what we got back was the NYPD version of Abbott and Costello.

One was short and fat, the other tall and skinny. These two cops didn't know up from down, were completely incompetent, and really, I should have reported both of them.

One cop had a very bad cold, blowing his nose repeatedly when speaking with me. The other seemingly didn't take down the facts correctly.

They promised me that I would get back my Olds Cutlass Supreme very quickly.

Well, I am still waiting for that car to return to me.

My friend drove me back home, and I had to push that problem aside, because I had to prepare for one of the happiest days of my life.

And I did just that.

The next day was windy as I have ever seen it, and we had an outdoor ceremony. Everything was blowing over, but when I saw my soon-to-be-wife in her gown and everything else, I was literally blown over by how beautiful she really was.

And still is. Like I said, I am a very lucky man.

We honeymooned in New Orleans, and then moved on with our lives together.

Twenty years. I really can't believe it, but it's true.

I love my wife and I always will.

And like someone else once said for a far different reason, "I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth."