Featuring...
Ron Vazzano
At one point during the nighttime of this event, one could not help but note the irony, when a rock group about twenty yards from Notre Dame, began playing “Sympathy for the Devil.” And then walking back to our hotel we hear... “We’re living it up at the Hotel California,” drifting in from somewhere.
Tech programmers seem to have no idea how the real world works.
I can't recall ever seeing anyone over fifty who looked good in shorts.
Crustacean restaurant in Beverly Hills is the best dining experience you will ever have.
People wheeling baby strollers always assume they have the right of way.
I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like pizza.
What did we do before cell phones?
The highest compliment paid to a cat is “he (or she) acts like a dog.”
When was the last time you saw someone reading a newspaper on public transportation?
Buying a book online is never as satisfying as buying a book in a bookstore.
Senior citizens have to struggle to open their “child-proofed” prescription bottles.
You can’t go wrong spending a night at the Hollywood Bowl regardless of who is performing.
I don't know anyone who uses a toothpick.
Until Covid hit, I never saw anyone walking around with a surgical mask who wasn’t Asian.
Legalize marihuana; criminalize Oreo’s.
I will "go paperless” when my electronic access devices "go flawless.”
Why are pennies still being minted?
I get Pete Davidson... I don’t get Colin Jost.
Even if you don’t eat bacon, there's nothing like the sound and smell of it cooking.
Nobody works harder than an ant.
You ought to get a discount on your purchase when you self-checkout.
The expression “boy meets girl” could not be any quainter in this LBGTQ age.
I will never understand excessive tattooing.
Wolf Blitzer’s odd breakup of sentences in his speaking pattern, sends me to changing the channel.
Pound for pound, The Wizard of Oz is the best movie ever made.
finito
No September 2022 edition
muse-letter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought, especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
pre November 2018
Parts of the site under reconstruction
During the course of our stay, we’d walk some streets we had never walked before in our respective previous lives. Rue de Lappe, Boulevard du Montparnasse, that tiny one near the Louvre with the longest name, Rue des Prêtres Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, and a part of Boulevard Saint-Michel in the Latin Quarter to drop by a place called Le Petit
Journal. Which turned out to be a local hangout playing
New Orleans style jazz, with nary a tourist in sight. Excepting us. With whom the nearby table found humorous—good naturedly so—as I reached back for my two years of high school French, taken when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. “Je m'appelle, Ron. Nous… sommes…ici en vacances. Holiday!”
Also different in Paris this time around on the flip side, is that it was teeming with Gen Y'ers, and even Z'ers, at almost every turn. In Woody Allen movies, lovers promenading under the stars along the Seine, will have it all to themselves. In reality, here were these upstarts in party mode, bottles of beer and wine in hand, lining this “River of Romance” each evening and well into the night. And on one such night, while gliding by them on a dinner cruise, we were mooned. C'est choquant! But as they show their butts, do we show our age?
Quote of the Month
On a slow sports news day, he would still fill his daily column space by starting off with the phrase "Nobody asked me, but..." And then, he'd complete it with an everyday observation or musing— with no equivocation, and often a touch of wit— on everything but sports. About two dozen in all.
A sampling.
Nobody Asked Me, But...
Eons ago, there was a New York sports columnist of great renown named Jimmy Cannon who wrote, for among others, the New York Journal-American evening newspaper from 1959 until 1966. During which I was a regular reader.
A street guy, boxing was Cannon's favorite sport. When he died in 1973 at age 63, The New York Times noted in his obit...
"He was perhaps the first sportswriter aware of the sociological impact of the black athlete. Of Joe Louis, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, he once wrote:
'He's a credit to his race—the human race.' ”
This device has been “borrowed” many times over the years by columnists, bloggers and commentators, who invariably, will lead off by paying tribute to, or “with apologies to,” Jimmy Cannon. And then be on their way. It
provides a springboard for commentary for a wide range of things, as everyone has an opinion on just about everything. It's almost irresistible. And while one may not agree with the sentiment expressed, it takes but a single line to get what the author is getting at. So here I go again, putting my two dozen in for the third time over the years in these MuseLetters. Call it an escape from the dog days of summer.
Nobody asked me, but...
… how many people do you know who have ever been to the Dakotas?
… people in bus terminals always look tired before they start the trip.
… I can't remember the last time I saw anyone whittling.
… whatever became of Twiggy?
… anyone who can drink whiskey out of a paper cup qualifies for Alcoholics Anonymous.
… I never heard a funny ventriloquist.
… roasting chestnuts smell better than they taste.
A Whale of a Story in a Summer Reading
In an essay entitled "The Summer Reading List," novelist Meg Wolitzer offered a number of observations on reading as they apply to the summer months. Which included... “Summer reading has a leisurely reputation. We picture the reader outdoors only, arranged in some bucolic setting, or beach or yard.”
This is what I picture upon coming across recommended lists for summer reading, or "beach books."Which seems to suggest that the deeper the ocean, the lesser the swim. Nothing that will force you to think outside the blanket.
Though in a Preface in 2006 to the novel Nightwood (by Djuna Barnes), novelist and essayist Jeanette Winterson felt that this was true of any season. She writes: “Books have been squeezed in, which goes a long way to explaining why our appetite for literature is waning, and our allergic reaction to anything demanding is on the rise.“
So I decided this summer, to fly in the face of all that. Or to sail in the face of all that might be more apropos, as I took on Moby Dick! Or to be more precise, Moby-Dick, or The Whale as it is fully entitled. Which I never knew till I went over to a bookstore and spotted a lone fat copy on a bottom shelf. All 625 pages of it in a Penguin Classics edition. Not including numerous pages in addendum consisting of Introduction, Etymology, Extracts, List of Textual Emendations, Explanatory Notes, Glossary of Nautical Terms, Maps and Illustrations.
It has been called “...the greatest unread novel in the English language. It is the Mount Everest of literature.” Yet, a mole hill I would think compared to the 1,400-plus pages of War and Peace. Which you couldn’t get me to read without a court order.
It has been said that a long journey begins with the first step. And there it was. Call me Ismael. An opening sentence of just three words. Yet, arguably, the best known in all of literature.
Which right there posed a question for me. Was he really named Ishmael? Or did he just want to be called that, referencing the Ishmael in Genesis, who was a pariah, an outcast, a man in exile? Is that how he saw himself? I would never find out the answer to a question that apparently no one has ever bothered to ask. At least as far as I could find. But does it matter? In the meantime, call me Ron. Because I really am.
Ah, but who knows the last sentence of Moby-Dick? One that is contrastingly long, hardly memorable, but poetic.
Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
In between those two sentences, the book does a deep dive into a range of topics and disciplines, that encompasse religious and political allegory, mythology, existential inquiry, social satire, economic analysis, industrial relations, racism, and yes, everything, I mean everything, you’d ever want to know about whales and whalers. At one point, literarily providing a how-to on boiling blubber down to produce oil. But analogies and life applications often follow as a sort of payoff to all the TMI that preceded.
Then there is a whole chapter in which Melville explores the color (or lack of) white, (The Whiteness of the Whale) in a distinct contrast to the way in which it is usually thought.
The elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from the more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten terror to the furthest bounds.
An interesting perspective I’d like to explore in a future MuseLetter. Perhaps in December, when Crosby might be heard crooning over the beauty of a white Christmas.
Herman Melville, who wrote this book in 1851 at age 32, would in 2022, be disparagingly called “woke.” In one chapter, he even sees whaling from the whale’s point of view. How terrifying the shadow of the huge ships must be to them. (As an aside, whaling was outlawed in the United States in 1971). Yes it has always been a brutal piece of business. For whale and whaler alike.
Further evidence for a charge of "wokeness" against Melville, is Ahab’s ship. It's called the Pequod, which was named after a tribe of Native Americans, that was decimated and scattered in the early 1600s after the white man arrived.
At times, Melville might suddenly wax poetic in a no holes bard Shakespearean fashion.
Towards thee I roll, thou all destroying, but unconquering whale.
To the last I grapple with thee from hell’s heart. I stab at thee.
For hate’s sake. I spit my last breath at thee.
That’s Ahab in mid-meltdown. For at its core—all treatises on the many different types of whales aside —it's a story about a man’s obsession. And how obsessions can lead to self destruction. Told through that time-honored trope of man against beast. Though who here is the beast exactly? To Ahab, Moby Dick is the personification of evil. Though this is clearly a case of the pot calling the whale black. In the end (spoiler alert), the whale wins out. As depicted, rather over-dramatically, in the 1956 movie version of the book starring Gregory Peck.
Though this is a sprawling novel, it sprawls unlike any before or since, given its many styles—at times it is flat out comedic— and it being comprised of many genres. Yet the story itself takes place in only a year. “Big books” tend to cover a long expanse of time and even generations (Ulysses by Joyce taking place in a day, being a stark exception).
The classics become Classics (capital “C”), in that they are invariably said to be “still relevant today.” And is that ever true here. In addition to pointing a finger at racism (in 1851 no less, when slavery was still an institution), Melville doesn’t shy away from other social issues. Such as acceptance of a homosexual union (there’s been speculation that Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne might have had a thing going), even same-sex marriage, the religious vs. the secular, “otherness” and multi-culturalism to name a few. And can it be any more of the moment, what with Ahab exhibiting behavior that is remarkably Trumpian? Of course how could Melville ever know what would one day come to pass.
The book was worth the long journey. It took a month to read. Which I came to see in online commentary, as not really long at all. Many said it took them months, if not years to get through it. And as is often the case, it gets read in fits and starts. Times when the book is abandoned... only to be returned to.
I too thought it might turn out to be a drudgery. This climbing of the afore-referenced “Mt Everest of literature.” Surprisingly, it turned out to be more like riding a ski lift to the top. Slow, yet steady (about 20 pages a night), and with a wonderful view along the way. Or at least as I would imagine that analogy to be. One more thing I don’t do. Ski. And I have a fear of heights.
Word of the Month
A Tale of Love and Travel. Or...
“We'll always have Paris.” Finally.
That classic line uttered by Rick to Ilsa in “Casablanca,” is one I suppose we’d all like to own. But a personal line on the heels of a sprain one summer decades ago, could have been something more along the lines of… “I was walking around Paris with a bad foot, and a bad marriage.”
Many such as I, have a notion of Paris so infused with a mix of romance, fantasy and imagination, that there seems to be the need to try to play it out. So yet again, and for the third time, I returned under better circumstances with the aim of getting it right. Though, how exactly would that be defined? But if as the song lyric goes, “love is lovelier/the second time around,” the third can be the loveliest still.
Others go in search of something else. Such as the character Gil in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” which for him turned out to be about encounters with legendary expat writers and artists of a Jazz Age Paris. The closest I would come to any such encounter in the reality of a 2010’s Paris, was Roman Polanski sitting across from us at Café de Flore. (Should I have notified the authorities?). And what are the odds that my partner would recognize a woman at his table that she knew from back in the day? And at the conclusion of brunch, they take to chatting about some old times. While Polanski, looking smaller than life, stands off to the side obviously itching to exit during their seemingly
interminable exchange. ("Not as interminable Mr. Polanski as a term in
prison," I hear myself thinking).
This... “Isn’t it a small world?” sort of tableau, would recur just a few moments later across the street from an old Hemmingway hangout, Les Deux Magots. Where Olivier Franc, a soprano saxophonist— who has played with the Wynton Marsalis orchestra—was wailing away as part of a jazz combo. We had just caught a performance of his two months prior in New York, and here he was on Boulevard Saint-Germain participating in Fête de la Musique. Also known as Make Music Day. An event of music and song that takes place in the streets, cafes and bars of Paris, every June 21st, in celebration of the summer solstice. On a break, Monsieur Franc concurs with me, “Oui, petit monde.”
muse-letter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought, especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
pre November 2018
Parts of the site under reconstruction
Capt. Nemo played by James Mason
in deep-doo doo in the deep blue sea.
Ron Vazzano
Ron Vazzano
"
"
Nobody Asked Me, But...
Eons ago, there was a New York sports columnist of great renown named Jimmy Cannon who wrote, for among others, the evening newspaper New York Journal-American from 1959 until 1966; years in which I was a regular reader. He died in 1973 at age 63. In his obit, The New York Times noted:
"He was perhaps the first sportswriter aware of the sociological impact of the black athlete. Of Joe Louis, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, he once wrote:
'He's a credit to his race—the human race.' ”
Often, on a slow sports news day, Cannon would still fill his daily column space, by starting off with the phrase "Nobody asked me, but..." And then, he'd complete it with an everyday observation or musing— with no equivocation, and a touch of wit— on everything but sports. About two dozen in all.
A sampling.
… how many people do you know who have ever been to the Dakotas?
… people in bus terminals always look tired before they start the trip.
… I can't remember the last time I saw anyone whittling.
… whatever became of Twiggy?
… anyone who can drink whiskey out of a paper cup qualifies for Alcoholics Anonymous.
… I never heard a funny ventriloquist.
… roasting chestnuts smell better than they taste.
… people who wear sunglasses usually walk on the shady side of the street.
… only lions should be asked to eat hamburgers that aren't well done.
This device has been “borrowed” many times over the years by columnists, bloggers and commentators, who invariably, will lead off by paying tribute to, or “with apologies to,” Jimmy Cannon. And then be on their way.
It provides a springboard for commentary for all sorts of things, as everyone has an opinion on just about everything. It's almost irresistible. And while one may not agree with the sentiment expressed, it takes but a single line to flesh out what the author is getting at. So here I go again, for the third time over the years in these MuseLetters. Call it an escape from the dog days of summer. Feel free to jump in. The water's fine.
Nobody asked me, but...
Tech programmers seem to have no idea how the real world works.
I can't recall ever seeing anyone above age fifty, who looked good in shorts.
Crustacean restaurant in Beverly Hills is the best dining experience you will ever have.
People wheeling baby strollers always assume they have the right of way.
I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like pizza.
What did we do before cell phones?
The highest compliment paid to a cat is “he or she acts like a dog.”
When was the last time you saw someone reading a newspaper on public transportation?
Buying a book online is never as satisfying as buying a book in a bookstore.
Senior citizens have to struggle to open their “child-proofed” prescription bottles.
You can’t go wrong spending a night at the Hollywood Bowl regardless of who is performing.
What ever became of toothpicks?
I wonder how that 76 year old woman, who two years ago fell seven stories out of her apartment window, and lived and was lucid, is doing these days.
Do kids really need 120 Crayola crayon colors?
Until Covid hit, I never saw anyone walking around with a surgical mask who wasn’t Asian.
Marihuana should be legalized; Oreo’s, criminalized.
I will "go paperless” when my electronic access devices "go flawless.”
Vanilla, as an ice cream flavor, gets a bad wrap.
I get Pete Davidson... I don’t get Colin Jost.
Why are pennies continuing to be minted?
Even if you don’t eat bacon, the sound and smell of it cooking is intoxicating.
The life expectancy for a rapper seems to be about 35.
Nobody works harder than an ant.
You ought to get a discount on your purchase when you self-checkout.
The expression “boy meets girl” could not be any quainter in this LBGTQ age.
Absolut is to vodka what chameleons are to reptiles.
I will never understand excessive tattooing.
Wolf Blitzer’s odd breakup of sentences in his speaking pattern, sends me to changing the channel.
The Wizard of Oz is still the best movie ever made.
finito