APPLAUSE and LIFE AT THE SHORE

Applause Please

   1-Once there were 4 million of us, this last couple of years maybe 3.5 million, and we now face Saturday afternoon and early evening without Garrison Keillor.

    2-CS Lewis died the same day John Kennedy was murdered and hardly anyone knew. But in his life he touched a world wide audience and left a complicated literary and intellectual legacy.

The Prairie Pope

     By many standards neither Keillor nor Lewis was "mass appeal" but that does not mean they were not appealing.

      Over 42 years Keillor created a radio program that was a must in many homes. Prairie Home Companion was unique and the autistic Keillor became an American media original with a career length that outdistances Carson, Letterman, Stewart and others. There was nothing like it, nothing even close to comparison. Keillor was not for everyone in the same way vodka martinis, beef carpaccio, Miles Davis, or having a faith is not for everyone. Eclectic wit and pleasure. His fans were a mixed bag with a tilt toward NPR, PBS, reading books and lots of magazines and appreciation for music.

      Keillor signed off after Saturday's live performance from the Hollywood Bowl, bringing down the curtain on what he called an accidental career in radio. Now he will return to writing including assignments for the New Yorker. 

      Thoughtful and pensive Keillor was my nominee to be the Pope, though Francis is doing well. Not without significance here because his Plymouth Brethren and Lutheran background made him tick with a unique rhythm and strange but searing wit. Sadly there is no one like him so an era in American culture is closed.

The Oxford Vicar

     Lewis too was an original. A Brit from Belfast with a brilliant creativity, who shared a love of ale with JRR Tolkien,  confounded his fellow intellectuals, but like Churchill inspired the English with BBC broadcasts during WWII.

      Most may know Lewis because of his Chronicles of Narnia, or Anthony Hopkins portrayal of him in a kind of bio pic, Shadowlands. Lewis was first a scholar who wrote classical critical reviews. He wrote theology, though he was not a cleric, adult literature and of course the fairy tales.

      The complex Lewis comes to life in an extraordinary script An Evening With CS Lewis written by David Payne. We were fortunate to see American actor Philip Crowley's performance at the Theater at the Cambria Center for the Arts. Artistic director Nancy Green saw a workshop performance of Crowley about a year ago.  She produced the limited engagement here as Crowley is "warming up" for a limited run in L.A.

       Well known as a voice actor and narrator Crowley assumed Lewis's visage, voice and manner brilliantly. Lana and I pride ourselves on having see lots of theatre and the best talent. Crowley's work as Lewis and Payne's script are superb and we would see it again.

      If the performance comes to a stage near you, it will be a rewarding couple of hours. 

An Ovation for Wit

       A friend and occasional correspondent to Light Breezes is in the midst of a chemotherapy regimen. Over the years we've spent many evenings sipping wine and dining, comparing notes and opinions. She recently sent an e-mail to friends and channeled her inner gourmet.

Whoever is in charge of side effects went down the list and made sure I wasn’t deprived of any of them.  And treatment for some of the side effects come with, you guessed it, their own set of side effects.  It’s a balancing act but one I’m happy to report, I’m getting a handle on and plan on staying one step ahead of. 

One really annoying side effect is the awful taste Chemo leaves in your mouth.  This particular blend of drugs... I’ll call them the “Reserve” blend... is brimming with the complex flavor of chemicals like lead and iodine while delivering secondary notes of sulfur and the pungent taste of rotten cheese.   The ‘nose’ is reminiscent of highly acidic cow pie with just a hint of freshly poured and still steaming asphalt with the smoky aroma of hot tar making an appearance as it lingers on the tongue.  None of this finishes with the slightest silky smooth flavor of chocolate so it’s no wonder I’m losing weight.

        Cheers to her and to all who are reclaiming health in a similar manner. Here's to your better tasting days!

Shore life

    A common murre is in a bit of trouble as an oil like substance covers parts of its body. Bird experts, who were along side, said the penguin like auk needed to clean itself or it would perish.
     A sea lion seems annoyed that I interrupted his nap.

   Gulls and cormorants are oblivious to human eyes.

     See you down the trail.

ON THE LETTERMAN SHOW

ALL TOO QUICKLY

The writer on the David Letterman Show September 29, 1980

    The day before Dave Letterman departed Indiana for what has become an historic future, we had a picnic on our wooded property in southern Indiana.

     His pick up truck was loaded and he was a bit apprehensive. He and his then wife Michelle and Lana and I had packed a lunch and were there to give him a send off. Dave was in what Jay Leno would refer to as his Dinty Moore fashion stage. Dave had calculated how long they could survive before he or she got jobs. He was ready to work at a gas station if need be.  

    We had been a big supporter of his move. I was convinced he'd make it, big. Dave was, as he often can be, more doubtful. But the point was, he was giving it a go.  Oh, how things would have been different for all of us if he had not spooled up the courage to give it a shot. It took guts going from Indiana to Hollywood.

     In the last couple of months I have been interviewed by people from the New York Times, magazines, papers and local television stations. I have said repeatedly, as I have since the late 70's, Dave is one of, if not the most, innovative user of television and technology. Way back I told an author writing a book about Dave that he was able to build on the innovative genius of Ernie Kovacs in terms of how to use the medium and technology to entertain. He raised the bar and created a new standard for the format even disposing of what was a kind of artificial formality about television programs.

      I remember sitting one evening in our east side Indianapolis apartment watching our favorite, the master, Johnny Carson.  Johnny was doing his Carnack bit, supplying questions to the answers read by Ed McMahon. Dave was supplying his own lines and they were better than Johnny's.

     In the early days I hosted a morning radio magazine show  broadcast on two stations. I hired Dave to write a kicker "essay" to run two or three days week to close out the hour.  He'd write, call me to run through it, then later we'd record it. Often he was not sure what he had written was funny. I tell you in all honesty it was brilliant. I remember laughing so hard sometimes that I'd almost drop the phone. It was a genesis of his  brand of humor that is now so well known. But being original and cutting edge there were a few in news management who did not appreciate it. There were times when getting the checks to Dave was delayed because the boss had not written a requisition, so there were weeks when I paid him the $25 to $50 out of my pay, which at the time was $150 a week. Neither one of us had much money, but it didn't matter. The important thing was to get his work on the air.

      A couple of years before that Dave took my shift at a little AM radio station in Muncie Indiana. Lana and I were married in April and we were going to honeymoon in Europe until August-that was back in the days of Europe on budget plan. Dave took over my mid-day shift which included doing news casts and then an afternoon drive time shift of playing hit music. I told him he'd need to play it straight doing the news, but could have fun on the DJ shift.  He did both. And as I have said before, "Look where it got him!"  That is facetious of course because what got him there was a rare and unique sense of humor and amusement.

     I'm a bit stunned that my old friend is wrapping up 33 years, an historic television record. I told someone many years ago that I thought Dave would be in the pantheon with names like Carson, Benny, Hope, Kovacs, Allen, and Berle. He's there. He's made us laugh and he's been clarifyingly honest. He's inspired generations of new entertainers. He is indeed one of the greatest.

     I think of all of his bits and shtick what I enjoy most is hearing Dave laugh, when he is genuinely amused. I'd love to again spend some time with him, but what I hope most for him in his retirement is that he'll find a lot of reasons to laugh, genuinely. 

      

       And Dave, next time I'm on your show, make sure the graphics operator knows how the name is spelled.

LANA'S TOP 10 FOR DAVE

   Lana tries her hand at comedy writing as a salute to Dave.

    THE TOP TEN THINGS DAVE WILL PURSUE WHEN HE RETIRES

    10- Open a Pizza Parlor in Muncie

      9-Be a judge in the Westminster Dog Show

      8-Teach Harry how to mow the lawn

      7-Run off to Italy with George Clooney

      6-Be the oldest Rookie at the Indy 500

      5-Open a Hardware Store

      4-Play bocce on Thursday with Jon Stewart

      3-Become a florist like his Dad

      2-Move to California and smoke weed with Ophra

      1-Finally get a real job!

       See you down the trail.

A NEW WAY TO THINK

PERSPECTIVE

    My brother John was apparently an effective psychotherapist. Even psychiatrists, with the capacity to order medical intervention, hired him to work with extraordinarily troubled patients.

    I was fascinated by an experimental technique he employed where in he had schizophrenic patients draw maps of their brains, including neural circuits. He would,  step by step, navigate them through a thought or reaction beginning with the sensory cues. The therapy was to "reroute the traffic," to find a new way of thinking, responding and reacting.

    As the 2016 Presidential circus launches don't we all need  a similar "intervention" as regards the mix of information and its delivery and how we feel or reason? Coverage is obsessively about the horse race and is more silly, shallow and of dubious focus and proportionality than during Obama-Romney. Much of it is ideologically or politically skewed and overly generous with pundits and hot air. It is long on entertainment and presentation value and short on thoughtful, non pack, intellectually independent journalism and inquiry.

   Electoral politics also populates the prismatic effulgence of the Internet. Almost no view is left unstated. And we've all got one, at least, so there is a law of diminishing returns at work. 
     It is a renegade American Idol. We'll see the parade of GOP hopefuls in a traveling fight and we'll wait for Hillary to stumble or crumble. Independents and Democrats either like her or they don't. Those who are Republicans must come to accord with one of their multiple choice field. But can there be many undecided or non-committed between D's and R's. Is there enough to compose a "significant difference" in the interim? 
    Before the media and campaign gillies roll, minds are set, but the carnival will go on for a reason certain. Money. Politics, especially presidential politics, is an industry and commerce is good. Billions are churned and much of it gets spread around the media that has no interest in shortening the season, silly or otherwise. They're in it for ad dollars. 

    Plan on plenty of silly, inane, irrelevant, hyperbolic, partisan, mean and self important. Analytical numbers, polls, probabilities and indexes, will be creatively displayed. At the game's end, numbers win.  
     Sadly much of this will play without benefit of Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. David Letterman is riding off into the sunset too. Yikes! We're being left without our media "neural circuit" traffic cops. What is our protection? 

     Cheers to the inventor of the off switch!

WESTERN DIVERSIONS

    See you down the trail.

LETTERMAN AND OPRAH & THE HIGH VALLEY

LOOKING  UP

     If you are not a "cat person" you may think those of us who are kept by cats are a bit silly. I was taken by the expression of our poly dactyl, Hemingway. (Ernest Hemingway's cats at Key West had six toes.  Our little guy has six toes on each paw.) 

     A feral kitten, dropped by his mother as she ferried her litter over a fence, he was rescued by a Paso Robles woman.  He's the first of his line to be "domesticated." He is a link between wild DNA and being a pet. He seems perpetually curious and maybe a little bewildered. He's got an easy going personality with his greatest interests being eating and napping. He's learning quickly isn't he?

NOT SO STUPID HUMAN TRICKS

    Our old college friend was back at our Alma Mater and making news.  David Letterman's interview with Oprah created lots of interest.

Link to a CBS video of the chat here.

    In so many important ways, Dave and Oprah are people

to look up to.  

GEOGRAPHY THAT BLOWS YOUR MIND

   An easy first impression of these frames is that the valley and lake are a low altitude flatness surrounded by the distant peaks which surround and frame the images.

   Partially correct. The valley and the lake are at 7,000 to 8,000 feet.  This is the northern edge of the Owen Valley and Mono Lake which nestle, if such a massive space can indeed nestle, in the Sierra Nevada high country, bounded by the Sierra and the Excelsior mountains in Nevada to the east.  

     The peaks of the Excelsior range between 7 and 13 thousand. The Sierra Nevada peaks are at 13 and 14 thousand.  

      As the settlers trekked west they climbed to reach the big valley, only to face the more rugged eastern slope of the Sierra. Beyond that lay the central valley. 

      What an extraordinary inner drive to lift and buoy the spirit to overcome the sheer struggle.  

      See you down the trail.

LETTERMAN ROCKS & ANGLES AND LINES

LETTERMAN LEADS THROUGH SANDY

    It was the sort of thing you may see only once in a lifetime.  David Letterman filling an empty Ed Sullivan Theatre, and an untold number of American homes with his unique humor and personality as nature did its worst to the East coast.

     Only a skeleton crew made it through the hurricane, and there was obviously no audience so the rhythm was pure Dave with input from Paul Shaffer and live reports from outside by  "I'm no weatherman" Biff Henderson.

     Production lacked all the niceties and slickness of graphics, bumps, voice overs and the usual stuff, but the spareness of it and Dave's demeanor demonstrated a kind of resilience and toughness in the face of the super storm.

      Denzel Washington appeared as a guest, and entered wearing a yellow slicker and walking as though through a gale as Shaffer and the band played "Hurricane"- Bob Dylan's tune.

     There was something classic in the unusual show.  Maybe  a bit like Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor of New York, reading the funny pages on the radio in the midst of a 1939 newspaper strike.  In those dark days, the funnies lifted people's spirits.  

     David makes people laugh as well and on a night when an unprecedented storm took aim at millions of Americans, he took up his place, and did what he does so well, made us laugh and lifted spirits.

     I've known Dave since our college days.  Those memories and his video tribute at my retirement, along with Biff's  "Hey Tom _ _ _ _ you!" are treasures.  But his personal and sparse performance last night is a moment that is exceedingly powerful and memorable. It was also courageous and encouraging. 

     Dave-as our old pals Bob and Don would say-"Here's a boy howdy for you!"  Well done!!! 

                                        day file

SHOOTING ANGLES

 Morning Drama

 Lots of Angles and Lines

A Spider's Patch

     See you down the trail.