Month: July 2008

The Lydster, Part 52: Bachelor Father


Bachelor Father was a television show in the late 1950s starring John Forsythe (“Dynasty”, the voice of Charlie on “Charlie’s Angels”) as a single man who ended up raising his niece (Kelly Corcoran) with the assistance of his houseboy, Peter (Sammee Tong). I used to watch it, though I’m fairly sure it it wasn’t very good.

That’s the source of the title of this piece, but it has nothing to do with MY actual existence. When Carol went away to college late last month, it meant that I would take Lydia to daycare and have friends of mine pick her up and take her to their home from where I would pick her up and take her to our home. It, at least for a time, broke her of the habit of trying to decide on which was the preferred parent at any given time; she was stuck with me. On July 3, I got out of work early to pick her up, but the bus was extremely late, and I nearly had my nervous breakdown.

On July 4, Lydia and I took the bus to Oneonta to visit the grandparents. The bus stopped in a village called Cobleskill, where we unintentionally had the opportunity to watch the Fourth of July parade for about 45 minutes. After the parade ended and we followed the trailing police car through town, the citizenry waved at those of us in the bus as though we were part of the procession. Naturally we waved back. I stayed with Lydia over that weekend but left on Sunday by myself. Lydia did not want me to go, and was weepy as her grandfather drove off with me en route to the bus station.

The next day, I called her at about 8:30 p.m. and read her bedtime stories. This seemed to be working until I finished reading when she started negotiating her desire to have “someone from Albany” stay with her. She sounded so forlorn that I felt like hopping the next bus and picking her up. What I discovered subsequently, though, was if I called her earlier in the evening when she wasn’t so tired, she became less needy and coped with me hanging up after our conversation much better. That Friday, I called her around 7, which was fine, but then she called ME around 8:30, asking for stories. I complied, and she was OK because she knew i was coming soon.

I went back to Oneonta the next day, went with her and her grandparents to the family reunion in Binghamton, and then on Monday, Grandma and Grandpa drove Lydia and me back to Albany so we could have a reunion with my wife/Lydia’s mom, and go out to dinner.

I did miss Lydia when she was away, but I’m really happy that she found a way to have a good time going to the playground every morning and going swimming most afternoons, and then telling me about it at the end of each day. Now I’m done with those long-distance talks between her stuffed creatures that made the trip and those that didn’t. The goodbyes alone rivaled the Waltons’.

ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Young@Heart

Now that my wife is home from school, and off for the next four weeks, we’ve come up with a way for us to enjoy the same theatrical releases – see them separately. So I went to the Spectrum Theatre, the “art” theater in Albany to see Young@Heart; Carol went on Wednesday. I tend to be immediately suspicious of a movie that uses punctuation other than question marks and exclamation points in the title.

More to the point, I worried about this being one of those “Oh, isn’t it cute how the octogenarians are singing Coldplay?” type of films. Largely, it is not. It’s primarily about these folks in their 70s, 80s and 90s relating to each other and the music that their 53-year-old musical director is offering them. As someone who sings in a church choir, I know that choirs can be balky when attempting music not in their comfort zone but that ultimately, they tend to appreciate being stretched.

The movie is funny and poignant. A group of elderly people doing the BeeGees’ Stayin’ Alive, the Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go or the Talking Heads’ Road to Nowhere adds a certain urgency not experienced in the originals.

As of Monday, the movie had a 88% positive score in Rotten Tomatoes. Naturally, I gravitate towards the negative reviews. One writes: “Young@Heart plays like a 100-minute version of one of those ‘on the lighter side’ news feature segments that end a local newscast.” Meh. If that were so – if there was no investment that the audience makes with these performers, then that assessment might be fairly accurate. That it transcends what a positive critic feared would be “dubious and cutesy” that makes it worth recommending. If I did stars, it’d be three and a half out of four. The fact that it takes place around Northampton, Massachusetts, where I’ve been a number of times, is just a personal bonus.
***
Estelle Gtty, best known for Golden Girls, died at the age of 84. By contrast, Bea Arthur, who played her daughter, is 86, as is Betty White; Rue McClanahan is a mere 73.
This got me to wonder about, of all things, the Beverly Hillbillies. Irene Ryan, who played Daisy Moses, a/k/a Granny, was born in 1902, while Buddy Ebsen, who played her son-in-law, Jed, was born in 1908. Certainly, this is plausible, if Jed was much older than Granny’s late daughter.
***
Old fool: The often arrogant Robert Novak> is 77 now; what was his excuse for his foolishness when he was younger?

ROG

ROG

The 1987 San Diego Comic Book Convention

The San Diego Comic Convention starts today, or maybe started yesterday. I’m not going, but I have gone in the past, on behalf of the retailer/publisher FantaCo. For the first of two times I attended, the details had left me. However, I seem to have written it down in painfully precise detail, only some of which I will share with you now. If the details are wrong, it’s not from a failing memory, as much of this is verbatim from my journal. [The stuff in brackets are asides from a more current perspective.]

Day One (August 11)
The first session I attended was for retailers. It was called “Fear and Loathing in San Diego – the Chain Store is Coming!” It was about how to survive the onslaught of regular bookstores carrying comic books and how to position comic stores to look more like “regular bookstores.” [I was thinking that as long as FantaCo is selling horror comics, this model won’t work for the store.]
After lunch, I went to an exhibit room and talked to a number of distributors. I kept coming back to the Marvel Comics table because Lou Banks, Dale Kanzler, and Ann Eagan were such a fun bunch. [Hey, they were!] I helped the Marvel crew learn how to run a cash register.
I saw Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Sink Enterprises, and I’m afraid I thoroughly gushed when I talked to him about the Chronicles.
I got into a debate with Bob Wayne of DC over the $2.95 Dark Knight format going to $3.50. His point was that if we knew our customers better, we wouldn’t have a problem. [This really ticked me off.] I also complained about the Millennium and crossovers.
Met Mike Friedrich, who is very instrumental in supporting the comic industry’s self-examination. Talked Chronicles with him as well. The Malibu people acted as though they were on the beach – lawn chairs, and laid back. I took an immediate dislike to Ron Turner, who owns Last Gasp, especially when he said, referring to FantaCo, “You still around?” But he bought three cases of The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Day Two
Met the people from Comico, CBG (Ann Goetsch, who had just recently married John Koenig). They’re both charming. I also met Chet Krause, who was in San Diego for a car show. He indicated that CBG was a lot bigger project than he thought it would be. He suggested that he probably paid Allen Light too much money for TBG and that CBG was losing money until two years ago. He has nothing but admiration for Don and Maggie, who I unfortunately didn’t meet, and Ann and John. I had just missed meeting Billy Mumy [who I wanted to meet not so much for Lost in Space, but for a couple episodes of The Twilight Zone}.

Day Three
Talked with Cat Yronwode and Dean Mullaney (Eclipse Comics) and Walter Wang (comics distributor) and others. Also met artists like Tina Robbins, Steve Leialoha, Scott Shaw! Hung out a little with Cat’s bored 16-year-old daughter. Saw bits of a couple of movies, and went to a panel on how to break into comics, which was really lame.

Day Four
Caught a snatch of a panel on social relevancy in comics.
Went to Stan Lee’s soapbox. He and Tom DeFalco had an embarrassing interlude when DeFalco reminds Lee that Lee and Jack Kirby DID sign some papers when Marvel was sold in the early 1970s.
Met Steve Webb, who used to write for the Knick News in Albany but who now writes the entertainment insert for a Phoenix newspaper.
There was a panel on gentrifying the ghetto of comics narrated by Gerald Jones. The panel included Joyce Brabner (Real War Stories, Harvey Pekar’s wife), Max Allen Collins (Ms. Tree), Carol Kalish (Marvel), Art Spiegelman, Heidi MacDonald. It occurred to me, and I told Art later, that it is the ghettoization which has allowed these good things in comics to flourish unobserved, and that the good stuff will show through. [I had forgotten this, but I had talked with Art before because FantaCo was buying RAW comics, this oversized comics he was involved with.]
Gerald Jones then moderated “Black and White Comics: The Gray Future.” with Denis Kitchen, Scott McCloud, Gary Groth, David Olbrick, Wendy Pini, Stan Sakai, and Will Eisner, who took exception to the observations (including mine) that the marketplace should have some standards. [I was in an argument with Will Eisner?] Groth and Collins were defending the standards when I left. Other people I saw at the convention: Leonard Rifas, who I met back in ’83 when he was traveling the country – he gave me some African comics; Tom DeFalco; Ward Batty (he and I hit it off instantly).

ROG

ROG

The middle child’s birthday

My sister Leslie sent me this video, with a note: “Who does this remind you of ???” well, her, of course. She was near-legendary for her multiple sneezes; after she hit five, everyone count aloud: “Six. Seven. Eight.” It was usually 7 or 8, virtually every time.

Since my sister seems to have a sense of humor about herself, I thought I’d share this story about our childhood. She and I got along famously well, oh 98% of the time. We sang together, confided n one another, etc. I’m only sixteen and a half months older.

But that other 2% was always the same: I wanted to be left along and she would goad me into finally chasing her away. One time, I was probably 10 and she was 9, and I just wanted to read, but she’d hit and poke me repeatedly, Finally, I chased after her. She was wearing a bathrobe, and I stepped on the back of it. She went straight down to the ground and chipped one of her upper front teeth. She cried; I was mortified. Oddly, I don’t recall getting punished for this, perhaps because my explanation of my sister’s M.O. was plausible. Anyway, for about the next two years, she had a silver tooth in her mouth. The good thing: she hardly bothered me at all during that time.

Happy birthday, Leslie.
ROG

ROG
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