A Tribute to Tributes

LA's "Thai Elvis" - Kavee “Kevin” Thongpricha

I used to scorn tribute bands as being, well, less-than. 

But in the past several weeks, I realized the number of "tribute" concerts I've attended outnumbered those by actual music acts: A David Bowie birthday celebration; actor Michael Shannon's all-REM show for the 40th anniversary of Murmur; and a career retrospective of Neil Young - and I was surprised at how fulflling the experiences were. 

Does this mean I'm getting older, more forgiving - or that, at its best, the form is actually worthier than I gave it credit for? 

Back when I was at Rolling Stone in the late 80's, I pitched a piece to my editors about tribute bands. I had noticed a lot of ads for such acts in music publications. Instead of being a generic bar/wedding band covering a range of popular songs, these guys -- and yeah, they were mostly guys -- dressed up as, and sang the oeuvre of, a single band. Anything from Styx to Steely Dan. 

Being a young snobby rock writer, I found it a mixture of interesting, funny, and kind of pathetic. I had never been to one, but I imagined they could bring joy to crowds - many of whom might not have access to see the real acts, for any number of reasons, including geographic and economic, even deaths of the musician(s). 

I envisioned it as a photo-driven feature, but I also wanted to interview the musicians, about how they had ended up on this particular path to music-biz careers. 

It was rejected. Probably correctly so. The stories would have blurred together, the fun might have been sad, and it would have seemed snarky. Plus, it would have taken up valuable real estate in the magazine from actual bands writing original material trying to make their way. It would sort of be like covering Joe Piscopo doing Sinatra. 

Then when I moved to LA in 2002, I was told I *had* to see Thai Elvis. Every Friday and Saturday night at a restaurant in Thai Town on Hollywood Boulevard, a man named Kavee "Kevin" Thongpricha (above) wore a sparkly suit and karaoked a convincing Elvis. (It's a tradition that apparently has its origins in Thailand and there's another guy who was doing it in LA prepandemic who was in his 70s). 

I went, it was fun, and had an extra layer of intrigue above the usual Elvis impersonator because of his nationality, but it was more curio/camp than musically compelling. 

On the other hand, I was a huge fan of the tribute albums and concerts organized by the late great impresario Hal Willner. He started with jazz musicians and in non-rock genres - Nino Rota, Thelonious Monk, Allen Ginsberg -- but eventually lassoed rock and avant garde musicians onto albums interpreting Kurt Weill, Disney soundtracks, Harry Smith American folk and sea shanties. 

He assembled shaggy, miraculous live shows honoring Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan's first Town Hall concert -- the last of which included everyone from Bill Murray to Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (below, with the Milk Carton Kids) -- but it all worked. 

When Hal died in 2020, he was finishing a T.Rex album which included this Nick Cave cover: 

I did once foray to a show by "Lez Zeppelin," an all-female Led Zep tribute band, because I know the brother of one of the members - and it was both serious musicianship and a hoot. 

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The only other memorable tribute-type shows I've eagerly attended were by the Fab Faux, who I saw for the fourth time last November, playing all of Revolver and "The Psychedelic Singles."

Will Lee rocking Imagine clouds suit, Beacon Theater, 11/23

Formed in 1998 by Letteman bassist Will Lee, the band of veterans - including Conan's guitarist Jimmy Vivino - take Beatle nostalgia out of the costumed realm of Beatlemania and into a whole other level of musicianship. They perform live many songs the Beatles never did, since they stopped touring as their recordings and relationships got more complicated.

One of the Fab Faux's more impressive feats was this seamless re-creation of Side 2 of Abbey Road (remember when albums had sides?) which had been pastiched together from many different sessions. 

Today - despite the Dead never really dying, despite residencies at the Sphere in Las Vegas, despite holograms and Broadway shows and IMAX concert films and live streaming and all sorts of ways to see vintage acts -- there is still a thriving tribute band business. 

A quick Google turned up dozens just in the NYC area - where "genuine" live music is plentiful. Tributes to Abba, George Michael, Queen, Elton John, Janis Joplin, Guns N Roses, Pink Floyd, and Simon & Garfunkel. There's "Jagged Little Thrill - the Alanis Experience" and "Echoes of The Eagles" -- even though those acts are alive. (Well, some Eagles). Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew themselves are touring the Talking Heads Remain in Light album. And one could argue that at this point, some of the older acts have devolved into kind of ossified self-tributes. 

So my expectations were middling when I booked tickets for the recent shows, but all of them were kind of amazing. 

The Bowie birthday at City Winery, led by upstate musician Robert Burke Warren, featured several sung by Rhett Miller of the Old '97s, a couple by Broadway star Michael Cerveris, and the soul singer Queen Esther. Perhaps the most memorable was when of the middle-aged female backup singers took the mike for a raucous "Jean Genie." Although the sadness of Bowie's early passing sometimes seeped in, it was a warm reminder of his enduring genius.

Michael Cerveris, Rhett Miller, Queen Esther at Bowie tribute

I was even more skeptical of the REM show by Michael Shannon -- even though he's one of my favorite actors, and his singing as George Jones in the Showtime series George and Tammy was admirable. 

I'd heard of him doing a show covering the entire Modern Lovers debut, and apparently he also did Bowie's Scary Monsters, The Smith's The Queen Is Dead, and Lou Reed's The Blue Mask - all offbeat choices. So he's clearly a fanboy with good taste. But trying to recapture such a legendary album seemed to border on hubris. 

Narducy & fundraiserposter

But he and his Chicago musician pal Jason Narducy had done a show in 2023 in their hometown of Chicago - and REM bassist Mike Mills had shown up and participated, and they decided to book a mini tour -- 8 shows in 7 cities in less than two weeks. 

And then the craziest thing that could happen at a tribute show happened: think Joe Cocker singing along side John Belushi on SNL. 

At the show in the band's hometown of Athens, GA,  all four members of REM showed up -- the first time they'd all been on the same stage since being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007 -- although Stipe did not sing, the other three played a bit. 

In Philly, Kurt Vile played a song with them, and in Boston, the sax player from Morphine. So the anticipation for the NY show was high. 

The Valentine's eve show, at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, featured no such guest stars, but it didn't matter. From the opening riff of "Radio Free Europe," the music was the star.

While Shannon is not Stipe as a vocalist, he's as committed a singer as he is an actor. The 2 1/2-hour show flew by. I shot videos  and compiled a playlist adding videos from others at other shows to replicate more of a complete setlist. 

And I went home and listened to REM records, which I hadn't in years. 

Bizarrely, the exact same night, across town at Carnegie Hall, Cat Power played a show recreating Dylan's 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert when he went electric. 

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Finally, last night, my college roommate and I went to see The Losers Lounge tribute to Neil Young, back at City Winery.  (The venue knows where its bread is buttered: the smaller upstairs room also was hosting a tribute show that night.) 

I sort of fudged things above -- I have attended Losers Lounge shows in the past, and they've all been pretty great. They've tackled everyone from Prince to the Monkees. The band is led by former Psychedelic Furs keyboardist Joe McGinty, and the format is one song per vocalist (occasionally two). 

Past "Losers"

In the time since we'd bought the tickets, Neil himself had announced he was actually touring with Crazy Horse, which made me worry the show might seem more incidental. 

But from the opening strains of three women singing "After the Gold Rush" a capella, the band quickly dispelled any notions of that. In the opposite tack of Shannon, none of the songs were played true to the record. You didn't have to be a classic rock fuddy duddy to appreciate the newfound power "Southern Man" and "Ohio" had when belted out by stellar female black vocalists. There was a disco take on "Lotta Love," a punk thrash of Buffalo Springfield's "Burned" - all of it true to the music and yet reinventing it to hear it fresh. 

I only captured one full song on video, but it shows the spirit of the night - husband and wife John Cowsill and Vicki Peterson (of the Bangles) reimagining the somewhat whiny "Winterlong" from the greatest hits compilation Decade as a majestic 60s pop song.

So have I rethought my feelings about tribute bands? If they're all this good, sure. 

Serendipity in the Park

If I had to single out THE thing I love most about living in New York City, it probably would be the serendipity. 

I was reminded of this Saturday when I stumbled on, and became something of an impromptu temp usher for, a wedding - just a few hundred yards from where I'd gotten married less than five months earlier, and with my daughter's wedding just two weeks away. 

Serendipity. 

Sure, the city boasts all these amazing cultural institutions, architecture, parks, waterfront, history, restaurants, vistas. But there's an electricity to tripping across completely unexpected people, sights, and sounds amidst the sheer volume of everything that takes place in a Gotham day, that can't be matched. 

Like happening upon an entire parade that, if you were a block away, you wouldn't have even known was taking place. Or walking past a manmade, Central Park waterway and suddenly having a heron take flight. Or spotting a celebrity riding the subway. Or popping into an obscure Chelsea gallery show and running into a friend who lives 3000 miles away, who you haven't seen in decades. 

I've been experiencing more of them recently, whether due to post-pandemic bounceback, the warming of the temperatures, or just - serendipity. 

For instance: during a recent crowded matinee Wednesday on a Times Square sidewalk, while captaining a Writers' Guild picket, trying to keep order between the rules of the building, the monitoring of the cops, and the steady stream of tourists trying to make it to The Lion King, I thought I saw a familiar figure in our midst, wheeling a backpack. 

"Bill?" I asked. 

I was right. It was Bill McKibben, the famous environmentalist and author, who had been a year ahead of me at Harvard and been the editor of the Crimson. At the time he was a fiery political figure wrapped up in the issues of the Irish Republican Army, and I was a culturally minded critic who reviewed movies and records like by Steely Dan, The Police, and The English Beat. 

He somewhat ironically nicknamed me "Hotsh*t Handelman," which I still carry inside on days when things feel bleak. 

I hailed him, identifying myself as "Hotsh*t Handelman." We hadn't seen each other in person since he graduated in 1982 -- 40+ years ago. He smiled and stopped and chatted, en route to a speaking engagement, wearing a cap from "Third Act," his new venture trying to give oldsters like ourselves new meaningful goals later in life. As actors, writers, and hangers on picketed in circles around us, I grabbed a selfie to commemorate the moment, thinking this was probably the only time I would see him again. 

Me and McKibben, Times Square, May 2023

(Side note: in researching this post, I found that in 2015 my classmate Melissa Block of NPR had posted to Facebook this yellowing piece by Bill, about a anti-Draft rally we'd attended organized by another classmate of mine, now-Congressman Jamie Raskin, and now Washington Post editor Chuck Lane. If you take time to read what's legible, you can see Bill's skepticism about the long-term cause. The photo is by my friend Nevin Shalit, son of Gene, who would end up an executive at New Line. I have another photo he took that night where I look way more interested in talking to a cute woman than protesting.)

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Now to this Saturday. 

I woke at 6am per usual, to remotely help produce Smerconish on CNN, then crashed for my post-show nap. When I awoke, I headed out to run some errands like picking up dry cleaning. 

But the May weather beckoned, and I decided to detour into Central Park to see if the bench plaque Syd and I had ordered to commemorate our private ceremony had been installed. 

We had been promised mid-May, but deadlines mean nothing in NYC - as we are constantly reminded by the dilapidated plywood construction shed eyesore that has stood around the corner from our building for the entire 13 years we've lived here (right), or by the fact that my neighborhood pool has been closed for 4 years while they try to find a leak. 

Well - no plaque yet. But I moseyed past throngs of Memorial Day Weekend picnickers, and the turtles, geese, and cormorants in the murky Harlem Meer.

I kept going to the Conservatory Garden, where we'd held our ceremony on January 1. 

However, the northern, French-style garden with the dancing girls fountain - where we'd stood under an arbor on a 50-degree New Year's Day, with our friend officiating while another streamed it to immediate family - is now closed for more than a year of renovations.

So I made my way to the English (southern) section, and came across a group of people in black tie. (Also, unrelated, one woman in neon green plastic armor, which turned out to be her bodywear for a clowning class she was headed to) 

The reporter in me soon sussed out the situation: a half-hour hence, 100 people would be convening for the wedding between a 6'11" groom and his less tall wife, who had lived here for a dozen years but recently relocated to LA. 

I chatted up the groom's dad (pictured up top in the hat, with the blue-haired, tatted sister of the groom). 

He had flown in from Minneapolis and was preparing to officiate and we discussed how, because they had needed a permit, Park Rangers were on hand - meaning they would enforce the no-amplification rule (ironic, since every day dozens of musician buskers break this rule all over the park and are never ticketed). 

Even a dog had gussied up for the occasion: 

But - due to NYC construction - the ceremony was forced to improvise. 

The couple had planned to be up on the wisteria-laden pergola between the two halves of the garden - but last week, with no notice, the Conservancy had erected a huge fence blocking it from the public. 

Fact is, they were better off -- especially given her long dress -- not having to deal with all those steps. 

After the bride's veil and flowers were readied, her planner showed her a graph on her cell phone - - was it a stock market price? 

No, turns out, the bride has diabetes and had a concealed monitor stick on her inner arm to make sure her insulin was on track. 

I volunteered to block passersby from ruining the sightlines of the procession beneath the crabapple canopy. It was picture-perfect.

And - just when you thought you had enough serendipity for one Saturday - randomly this couple walked by:

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Update: the professional photographer has published his blog about the couple (Taylor & Kris)'s wedding weekend, so I thought I'd add it in here for posterity. 

Just My Bill

 

Bill Zehme, in his element.

"I started spelling “chemo” k-e-e-m-o whenever I wrote it out because I thought that made it sound fun. And then “hot sauce” and “glow juice.” It’s so easy to fall into a vat of hopelessness. You better bring some levity to this. And you better laugh every day. Because if you forget how to laugh, cancer will just spin you out." -- Bill Zehme, Chicago magazine, Dec. 2016

My ol' buddy Bill died this weekend, at 64, nearly 10 years after being diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer. We first found each other and bonded in the mid-80's when we were both young celebrity journalists, and we ended up helping each other get launched at various places. 

But I hadn't seen Zehme since he came to New York in February 2013 for an Andy Kaufman event in a 50-seat gallery, Andy being one of his many, many showbiz deep dives, this one came out booklength - 1999's "Lost in the Funhouse: the Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman." 

It was typical of Bill to choose to decipher one of the most confounding, hard to nail down celebrities to walk the earth and approach it with the same work ethic and clarity of wordsmithery that shamed most other people who toiled in the trenches of celebrity journalism, whether he was doing so for Playboy, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, or - less characteristically - Spy. 

Bill was a fanboy, but not a mindless one. He spelunked for humanity where most would only see cartoons: subjects who few would take seriously, like Liberace, Regis Philbin (with whom Bill wrote TWO very Bill-titled books, "I'm Only One Man!" and "Who Wants to Be Me?"), Jay Leno, and Barry Manilow ("If he could be anyone else, he would be Sting. 'He's on his own path,' [Manilow] says, admiringly. 'I wish that I could be as brave as he has been with his career and his life.' Next choice: Tom Waits. 'He sings from his kishkes.'").

Also, impenetrable subjects like Warren Beatty, who refused to answer any questions, so Bill published the timed length of Beatty's infernal pauses and summarized, "To interview Warren Beatty is to want to kill him. It is also to become fond of him. He seduces anything that is not mineral."

Also, Carson, who talked to nobody, Letterman, who didn't suffer fools, Bozo the Clown, and Sandra Bernhard, whose public persona everyone was afraid of. When he handed in his profile for the Rolling Stone Comedy Issue I edited, I tripped on his first line: "She's not so scary."  Spoiler alert, I protested. But Bill won me over -- it's the question everyone wanted to know, and once you got that out of the way, you could hang with her, as he did, most improbably. 

Sandra: Not so scary?

Bill was a tall guy -- in fact one of his email handles was "TallGuyInc" -- and had the unassuming, midwestern, gee-shucks I can't believe I'm talking to you demeanor that ingratiated him with everyone - subjects and editors. Perhaps he was overcompensating for his 6'5" height to put people at ease. He saw the world clearly, but he also cherished the value of cheeseball showbiz, and found ways to convey his enthusiasm and insight with mighty turns of phrase, never falling into the trap of repeating himself. 

He was also the world's biggest Chi-town booster -- I visited him there several times, and he showed me Wrigley Field, the Twin Anchors - one of Sinatra's favorite local hangs -- and a Greek Taverna with live Opa Opa music whose name escapes me. He later wrote a book decoding Sinatra's approach to life, which included mid-90's correspondence between him and Sinatra - who otherwise had not cooperated with a member of the print media for 25 years.

Bill, Cubbie booster, me, ye olde Wrigley

But he also ably navigated LA, where he would later relocate. And when Spy magazine held a promotional event there, he miraculously pulled strings with his hometown employer, Playboy, to get Spy's editors invited to a shindig at Hef's mansion, grotto and all. 

I saw Bill a couple more times in both cities, then lives intervened. He divorced first.  I had cancer first, around 2010, and kept it pretty mum. Bill's first hit in 2013. 

As the quote up top shows, Zehme tackled his cancer with the same kind of cheerful derring-do and devil-may-care breeziness as his art. 

But despite the "lookback now that it's over" tone to that uncharacteristically personal article, the fucking disease wouldn't leave him be. It derailed his personal Moby Dick of a project, a comprehensive Carson biography; the fact he confoundingly had no health insurance (Oh, Bill!) both ate up his book advance and lost him his domicile (as he would call it). He got some TV documentary work to tide him over, but he never finished the book, which was to be called “Carson the Magnificent: An Intimate Portrait.” 

Before a 2017 trip to Chicago, I reached out to try to see him, and he made it seem possible, but then pulled back. My sense from other friends was that he didn't want old pals to see him in his current state. 

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And then this: 

In the cosmic way the universe works, after Willis Reed died, BUT BEFORE BILL DID, I was going through one of my many unsorted piles of my life to dig out an autographed photo of Reed - and out fell an envelope from the Vanity Fair Chicago office, postmarked September 2, 1986, that I had no recollection of receiving or saving. 

It hailed me, in Bill's inimitable all-caps, as "THE AMAZING DAVI!!" - a reference to my then-recent freelance piece for US magazine about The Amazing Randi, the magician who had recently been awarded a MacArthur Genius recipient. 

I set it aside to read after I finished my work this weekend; in the interim, I got a text from our mutual friend David Rensin that Bill had been in hospice (which I hadn't known) and had passed. 

This morning I trepidatiously opened the envelope,

David Crosby and his "Dr. Detox"

 

Every time a celebrity dies, there's a flurry of social media posts and blogs and newspaper remembrances about the writer's encounter the the celebrity, which of course usually comes off as more about the writer than the recently deceased. 

This might be one of those. But it's really not about David Crosby, who died today, but the guy who'd introduced me to Crosby -- Bob Timmins, who Crosby credited with helping keep him sober. 

Timmins with Crosby in Timmins' office, by Max Aguilera-Hellweg

"If you look in Timmins's eyes," Crosby told me, "you can see he's been through it. He understands screwups. He doesn't stand in judgment of you-but he doesn't lie to you about what's going on."

Mars, Sixx, Neil, Lee shot by EJ Camp

I had met Bob in 1987, when I was on the road with Motley Crue for Rolling Stone. He had been hired  by management as a kind of sober minder for Vince Neil, who in 1984 had killed his passenger, the drummer from the band Hanoi Rocks Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley, and severely injured two women, in a DUI car crash. 

Neil had been charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence. He served only half of a 30-day jail sentence, paid $2.6m in restitution, had to perform 200 hours of community service, and received 5 year's probation.

Vince's deadly car 

Timmins was part of this probation, kind of an unofficial gutter guard. Walking around backstage with an inocuous "Security" pass, he was instantly interesting to me -- indeed, more interesting than the band I was there to interview. 

His eyes were haunted, his arms were fully tattooed, he looked like a biker, but he was as gentle and calm as the Dalai Lama. He had clearly seen it all - and his experience gave him power with rockers who normally wouldn't listen to someone. 

Turned out, he had grown up in El Monte, California, the son of a law enforcement agent. At 9, he witnessed his mother kill and mutilate a neighbor, after which she was institutionalized. At 12, he started drinking, and by ninth grade, he had dropped out of school. He picked up a heroin habit, began stealing to buy drugs, and eventually did time in San Quentin and other prisons. 

I knew Bob's story was worth telling, but for whatever reason, I couldn't get Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner interested. So after I went freelance in 1990, it was one of the first stories I pitched, and my GQ editor signed on. 

Remember - this was years before "Intervention" was a popular cable TV show, before Twitter confessionals. Drug use was still very much not talked about. 

Yet Aerosmith's Steven Tyler was among many who surprised me by agreeing to talk for the story. "Bob Timmins" Tyler told me, "is directly responsible for a lot of my friends' being alive today." 

Among others quoted in the article: Harry Nillson - who Timmins had only recerntly helped get sober after 20 years, and who called his 12-step meetings "the highlight of my life" -- Doug Fieger of the Knack, actor Corey Feldman, CSNY drummer Dallas Taylor. Among others he helped: Nikki Sixx, Anthony Kiedis, Sly Stone (hey, nobody bats 1.000). 

Tyler, Feldman, Fieger, Nillson, Taylor, Kiedis

Timmins was not intimidated by star power, partly because, as he told me, “I’m not, like, a rocker guy. I listen to jazz. A lot of times the first time I hear of a group is when I’m called in to meet with them.” 

He helped start two recovery centers in 1969 and 1971 while he was still using. Finally in October 1975 he was arrested again, and the judge let him check into one of his own facilities. He had not yet turned 30. "It was a little humbling," he told me, "but it saved my life." 

And, after a couple months' sobriety and clarity, he decided to dedicate his life to helping others. Quoting from my piece: 

Since then he has lived a workaholic existence, constantly on beeper call [!], out at meetings and clubs until 1:30am, then back in his closet-sized Santa Monica office by 8:30. A widower, he is often out of town - as he was for nine months this past year - and when he returns his desk is piled high with phone messages from such supporters as Paul Newman, Conrad Hilton and Ozzy Osbourne. 

He often didn't take money up front, because he didn't want the musicians to mistrust him as being in it for the cash.

Motley Crue's manager Doug Thaler told me, "For a long time, Bob was the ugly demon that came to the door when you were high. The last thing you wanted to see was him coming up the stairs, this Christ figure coming to save you, and you didn't want your soul saved. But I've never seen a more patient man. Even if you cry wolf five times, Bob's still there at the door, ready to pick up the pieces." 

Timmins in March 1991 GQ by Max Aguilera-Hellweg

"I wanna be fair," Timmins told me. "Sly Stone was very creative on cocaine, but after a while, he lost his ability to do anything. What I try to reinforce is, maybe you did some great stuff on drugs, but see the work people have done since they got clean. Motley Crue never had a number-one record until they got clean, and both of Aerosmith's sober albums [i.e. their two most recent at the time] are they best stuff they've ever done." 

So, what became of Bob? I didn't stay in touch with him, though I know a couple of friends he actually counseled on the phone when they were seeking to get sober. I heard some stories over the years, some of them unsavory, that I can't factcheck on deadline (if you know anything with citations, put it in a comment).

What's in the official record is his obituary from the Los Angeles Times, dated March 8, 2008, that actually quotes a bunch from my piece. 

It said he died of respiratory failure at his home in Marina Del Rey at age 61 - my age as I write this -  having worked the last several years battling chronic obsstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

It quoted him from my piece as saying he saw all these celebrities "as human beings first. I see them in their pain and try to help them through."

Well, Bob didn't die of drugs, and neither did Nilsson (heart attack), Fieger (cancer), nor Dallas Taylor (complications of kidney disease and viral pneumonia). 

Nor did David Crosby, who died today at the ripe old age of 81, who had survived multiple heart attacks, diabetes, hepatitis C, and a liver transplant, in part thanks to the mostly quiet work of Bob Timmins. 

"Sometimes," Crosby told me, "it's just a matter of somebody having the right word at the right moment. It's not as if it's a science; it's an art."

Lincoln Center, August 11, 2019

2022 in the Rear-View

After realizing I had not blogged once in all of 2022, I planned over Christmas to write up a year-end piece on the year's events that should've motivated me to the keyboard. But then I got locked out of my apartment on Christmas Day night. 

Sorry for the delay. I may get around to telling that story, but first: 

Among the missing posts:  

- my frustration before the year even began - December 2021. After having carefully avoided Covid because I'm among the 3% of Americans considered immunocompromised, I risked seeing my now-remote CNN colleagues in-person for the first time in 21 months -- and tested positive the next day, rushing to the ER for Regeneron  - which turned out to be ineffective vs. Omicron.

- my misery in then having to spend my two-week Xmas break quarantining from my partner in our apartment, having to skip my uncle's funeral, and then, trying to make it to the family cemetery for the interment, having  the Uber driver get so lost on the way that we missed all but the last farewells. 

Finally arriving at Mount Hebron Cemetery

- my reflections on visiting the buildings at 2 Broadway and 14 Wall Street where my father had his law offices before moving them up to the burbs, memories of accompanying him to work on Saturdays to match the schedule of his workaholic father/boss - part of why my brothers and I never followed him into the family business.

14 Wall Street's pyramid roof/my brother Matt
 (who became a school superintendent)

- my disappointment at the ongoing suspension of the Central Park volunteer tour guide program, for which I had just been certified on a second tour, the Ramble, when the pandemic hit in mid March 2020. I attempted to stay informed by taking more tours from the staff guides...

The Block House, built for the war of 1812, North Woods

...being a "greeter" at Belvedere Castle, while also still...

...giving unofficial tours to friends. 

The Bow Bridge, Lake, & Dakota, 1890 & 2022
(photo: John Williams)

- my relief in finally getting an Evusheld shot in March, finally giving me measurable Covid antibodies because the vaccines hadn't worked on my immunosuppressed system (now moot because Evusheld doesn't work against the latest variants, and has been discontinued).

- my sneaky satisfaction in returning in February, masked, to nearly empty museums on weekdays before the city had fully gotten back to full throttle.

MoMA and the Met, February 2022

- the crazy coincidence discovery by my older daughter, while working for New Yorker writer John Seabrook, that my great-uncle (her great-great-uncle) had been involved in the reorganization of Seabrook's grandfather's company in 1925.

- the bittersweetness of finally getting to attend a memorial service for our friend, the legendary music genius Hal Willner, whose wife Sheila had been my pal since Rolling Stone days, and who tragically died in the first weeks of Covid - with tender tribute performances by many including Bono, Elvis Costello, and the normally reclusive Michael Stipe and Tom Waits. R.I.P. 

- my risible fury with the crazy Covid rental car/employee shortage - 

Not Like Any War

 

As a general-interest reporter, you have to cram knowledge and then discard it to make room for the next story, and you have to move on. 

But at a book reading in Greenwich Village last night, I was bracingly reminded why some stories you do just matter more, and stick to your guts. Most of my tenure was spent covering pop culture, which certainly is important to a lot of people, but is rarely life-or death. 

Not so this story. 

My first meeting & demonstration

I just dug up a paper pocket calendar to find the date - November 6, 1989 - (right) that I first attended a weekly meeting of ACT UP - the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power - which had formed in March 1987. 

I had been assigned to write a longform piece by Rolling Stone. I think one of my editors, Susan Murcko, had brought in a clipping about the group from the Village Voice. Or maybe the Times. 

I wanted to suss out who was who and what was what, and the best way was to attend the open, democratic, freewheeling, sometimes fractious, often cruise-y Monday night forum at New York's Gay & Lesbian Community Center at 208 West 13th Street. It was run by "facilitators" and everything was decided by majority vote, after kicking off with the request that any undercover cops identify themselves (none ever did). 

The facilitator, Ann Northrop - a lesbian former debutante and TV news producer - described ACT UP to those in attendance as "a diverse, nonpartisan group of individuals united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis."

All true. 

A few weeks earlier, in September, seven members of ACT UP had donned fake IDs and worn suits to infiltrate the New York Stock Exchange, chaining themselves to the VIP balcony and unveiling a banner saying "SELL WELLCOME," a reference to the pharma company Burroughs Wellcome which made the only approved AIDS drug at the time, and had priced it at $10,000 per patient per year. Meanwhile compariots outside staged a "die-in" blocking traffic. Many traders angrily screamed things like 'Die, faggots!' and 'Mace them!'

Wall Street, Sept. 1989

But a few days later, Wellcome lowered the price of its drug by more than a third. 

This -- was impressive. 

It turned out that the leader of that action, Peter Staley, knew what would be impactful because he had worked on Wall Street as a closeted gay man and had been participating in ACT UP secretly until his t-cell count got so low that he quit to become a full-time activist. 

Staley was exactly my age - 28 - charismatic, impassioned, articulate - and in the fight of, and for, his life.  

Just two days later, I attended my first demonstration, and my story was off and running. 

A month later, I was with ACT UP inside St. Patrick's Day Cathedral for their choreographed "Stop The Church" interruption of mass led by Cardinal John J. O'Connor, who had opposed teaching of safe sex in schools and condom distribution. 4500 protesters showed up outside, and 111 were arrested. 

The impact got muddied when, during communion, a renegade member threw a wafer angrily to the ground, which enabled critics - and President George H.W. Bush - to say they'd gone too far. But they of course got more publicity for it. 

As I continued to report, I naturally found myself focusing on individuals -- most of them leaders, like co-founder playwright Larry Kramer, Staley, and Northrop, and Mark Harrington and Jim Eigo of the "Treatment and Data" committee, who were monitoring the status of medications and trials. 

But I also found interesting Natasha Gray, a 25-year-old Bryn Mawr grad who hadn't known anyone with AIDS, who had gotten involved through the issue of housing for the homeless, many of whom were now becoming infected. Gray talked to me both about how empowering the group was in terms of self-education, but also about how she now was dreading losing her new friends to the illness.  I decided to include her as a point of entry for readers like her. 

Fauci 

I also interviewed the NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci, who

The Steagle Saga, a/k/a "How it is done to you"

This is the myth-worthy saga of a low-budget movie you've never heard of, that few people have ever seen, that failed miserably both artistically and financially - and about which I have been unduly curious for half a century, because it was the first movie set I ever visited.

Stories of failure have always been fascinating to me. Partly because they don't get told nearly as often - George Lucas would much rather talk about Star Wars than Howard the Duck or Willow. But he started all those projects with a vision and a script, and nobody knew in advance which one would produce generations of progeny.

One of my biggest regrets as a journalist was that I never got to write up my Rolling Stone-sponsored visit to the set of Texasville, Larry McMurtry's sequel to The Last Picture Show, with struggling director Peter Bogdanovich returning to the scene of his 1971 triumph in 1990 - the same year Coppola was making Godfather III and screenwriter Robert Towne had written the Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes.

When laboring on the originals, those filmmakers didn't have any foresight that they would become classics; indeed, if you listen to Coppola's commentary on the Godfather DVD, he was under constant worry that he was going to be fired. And when they tried to recapture the magic two decades later, they certainly didn't set out to make thin, soulless retreads. I never wrote up my Texasville reporting, because the Rolling Stone movie critic saw an early screening and - correctly - declared it bad, and the magazine (like most) was not geared to giving space to long features on duds.

But it would have been a much more interesting story than one of a success.

Which brings me to my earliest set visit, to The Steagle, a movie released 50 years ago this month.

In early May, 1970, the cast and crew were filming at the train station in Scarsdale, my hometown, for a scene of star Richard Benjamin getting off a commuter train. 

My mother, then 32 - only a year older than Benjamin! - having somehow learned about it, dragged me and my two younger brothers to the station to watch the dull, repetitive act of a train slowly arriving and a man getting off and being greeted by his wife (played by Cloris Leachman, unknown even to my fangirl mom - The Mary Tyler Moore Show wouldn't premiere until that fall, and although Leachman's performance in The Last Picture Show that would win her an Oscar had already been shot, it hadn't yet been released).


The under-10-year-old set visitors, Scarsdale RR station, May 1970

I had dutifully brought along my recently-obtained autograph book, which mostly contained New York Mets, and with my mother's nudging, obtained Benjamin's signature. As you can tell from the photo, I had no idea who he was - since his movies had all been for adults.

Me and Dick
My interest in The Steagle was recently rekindled by a Facebook post by a guy from my high school whose dad had done locations for the 1969 Benjamin movie Goodbye, Columbus, which reminded me that its tennis scenes had been shot at the Scarsdale High courts. I wondered - wait, what about that other movie Richard Benjamin shot in Scarsdale?

Even in the streaming era, The Steagle is nowhere to be found, despite the fact that Benjamin was in the peak of his career after the troika of Goodbye, Columbus, Catch-22 and Diary of a Mad Housewife.

I finally tracked down a crappy bootleg DVD. Though