Most Morbid Myth, Maybe

A sample of the artwork from The 27s. Rolling Stone Keith Richards is not a member of “the 27 Club,” but his former bandmate Brian Jones is a charter member.

By Robert Rosen

The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll is an ambitious book with an identity crisis.

What manner of tome is this? That’s the question.

Could it be a coffee-table book? The slick artwork, glossy paper, and quality printing all indicate that this might have been the intention of its “creators,” Eric Segalstad and John Hunter. But it’s really a trade paperback that lacks the size and heft of a genuine coffee-table book. And though Segalstad and Hunter discuss in detail the numerous musicians—like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones—who died at age 27, it’s not exactly about them, either. The book is filled with so much general rock history that “the 27 Club,” as it’s known, often gets lost in the background.

More important, to call this 27 Club “the greatest myth” of rock ’n’ roll is simply not true. It may be the most morbid myth, but it’s barely in the same arena as the holy trinity of Elvis/Beatles/Dylan, none of whom died at 27.

The 27s is a well-researched rock ’n’ roll overview that would work best as a reference book if it only had a table of contents and an index, and was divided into chapters. But with these essential elements missing, it can’t be called a reference book. It’s just a book that goes on for 310 pages. You can’t find anything in it. And even if you happen to stumble upon what you’re looking for, key bits of information may be missing. Take my John Lennon bio, Nowhere Man, for example. I heard it was mentioned in The 27s. And it’s true, in a way; there’s a reference on page 283: “Author Robert Rosen writes that after Lennon discovered Cheiro’s Book of Numbers…” But it doesn’t say where I wrote it. It doesn’t give the title of my book. Nor does the title appear in the bibliography, and that sort of thing is as unprofessional as the numerous proofreading mistakes throughout—the kind of mistakes a good copy editor/proofreader (one is credited) should have pointed out.

I think that writers and artists who have the wherewithal and courage to form a company to publish, distribute, and promote their own book, as Segalstad and Hunter have done, are to be commended. But The 27s serves as a good example of the many things that can go wrong with such a venture. It is, ultimately, a book that cries out for the guidance of a professional editor who could have helped shape and focus their very intriguing concept.

The Way They Are

Palmer Van Dyke (James LeGros, at right) takes Sherman Black (Michael Shulman) for a wild ride.

Sherman’s Way
Directed by Craig Saavedra
Screenplay by Tom Nance
Starring James LeGros, Michael Shulman, Enrico Colantoni, Brooke Nevin, and Donna Murphy
97 minutes

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

Within the first 20 minutes or so of Sherman’s Way, I got tired of counting the stock characters: primarily, a young, uptight aspiring lawyer, named Sherman (who you instantly know will become downloose by the closing credits); his controlling, successful parent (in this case the mother, played icily by theater stalwart Donna Murphy); and the wacky catalyst for his undoing, a hirsute 40ish guy named Palmer (who may or may not be a former Olympian skier who lost the gold for the USA). As the film was also turning into a rather silly road-trip-cum-buddy movie—cool red roadster notwithstanding—I was almost outta there, but my fellow blogger Bob Rosen suggested we stay with it, apparently intuiting a gleam ahead. And he was right. The gleam came into view around the time that Sherman, having impulsively run off to sunny California (from grey New York, indicating New York is staid like Sherman?) to surprise his disenchanted girlfriend with his new impulsiveness, lands in the eccentric yet idyllic—in that movie way—indoor-outdoor lakeside pad, somewhere near Napa Valley, of Palmer’s friend D.J. (“I want to live there!” I said to Bob, who replied, “It’s a trailer!”)

Though falling into many clichés, this movie has enough quirks and surprises (particularly when it comes to the inevitable reunion of Palmer and his estranged son) to make it an enjoyable light, and occasionally touching, comedy. Sherman, played by the boyish Michael Shulman, learns a few practical and emotional truths from crazy Palmer (James LeGros, of Ally McBeal, nearly unrecognizable under all that hair) and resourceful D.J. (Enrico Colantoni, of Just Shoot Me [something tells me these sitcom backgrounds came in handy]), though their arrogant, placid knowingness when dealing with the rich, inept—but sweet—Sherman is at times infuriating. And of course by the end of the film Sherman has helped the self-destructive Palmer inch toward maturity.

He has also, as if one odd couple were not enough, hooked up with yet another flaky partner, the babelicious, skinny-dipping Addy (Brooke Nevin). Apparently, that is Sherman’s way.

John Updike’s Version

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

It’s been more than a week since John Updike died, and in this crazily blogging world that might as well be a year. However, I don’t think Updike would mind my dwelling on him and his unique oeuvre, since dwelling on things was what he did best (he would have made a great copy editor, as he was apparently afflicted, as I am, with ASD, attention surplus disorder). Updike would describe something you had seen countless times in such a way that you felt you’d never really looked at it—or that someone had finally fully caught what you did see. At its best, his pulling away of the tiniest layers could be mind-blowing, like a drug (UDD—the Updike Drug?); at its worst it could be tedious (probably only a golf aficionado or computer nerd wants to read pages upon pages of the details of a game or program). But readers must have had more “Yes! That’s it!” moments with Updike than with any other writer.

My own favorite such moment came from a simple depiction: his fictional couple the Maples’ running to their Greenwich Village window when they hear the “clatter” of horses’ hooves, knowing mounted policemen are coming down their cobbled street—because that’s what I’ve always done in the same situation. I also have an enduring image in my mind of “Rabbit” Angstrom in a field, looking toward the house of his possible daughter, the field conjured up in all its ugly/beautiful naturalness but also evoking the wistful state of mind of Updike’s most famous character.

The other day, looking for a light—I mean physically light—book to take on vacation, I discovered I had an unread Updike on my shelf, Roger’s Version. The copyright is 1986 but I don’t know when or where I bought it; I like to think it was on Cape Cod, since Massachusetts was Updike’s adopted home state. The book was a used paperback; on the fly sheet is a faint, penciled “50¢.” If Updike were writing this, he would now describe in painstaking detail the shiny hot-pink cover and what that might signify, as well as the little illustration of Adam’s and God’s fingers nearly touching, à la Michelangelo, on a computer screen. (He might also speculate as to the paperback’s previous owner—what that person’s face looked like, what his house looked like, how he came upon the book, why he sold it—not to mention the bookseller…)

Though my vacation didn’t pan out, I nonetheless—a sore throat as my excuse—spent most of the next two days reading Roger’s Version. And here, for me, was the fresh afterlife of Updike: his thoughts, his visions, doubtless his memories and fears and appetites, his imagination, coming at me full-strength through these yellowed pieces of paper. Roger is a theologian, quite a flawed one, grappling with middle age (I calculated that Updike, who shared the fluffy grey hair and eyebrows of his protagonist, must have also been about his age when he created him, 52), a straying wife, and a fear of death.

I could certainly relate to the last. I’d spent the midnight hour of my recent birthday looking for poems to lift me away from a looming depression, but everything I picked up seemed to be about mortality—and almost hard-heartedly so (I decided that poets as a group are hardly the namby-pambies of some hoary stereotypes). In teaching his niece about a William Cullen Bryant poem on the subject, Roger begins to rail against it: “‘Breathless darkness, and the narrow house.’ Bryant was so young, you see, he could say it; an older poet’s hand would have frozen with terror trying to write those lines.”

But his own hand seemed never to freeze. He took on not only death but also such “sins” as adultery and incest, in such a human way that you had to, like the author, go deeper—and therefore get more confused, seeing all the greys, all the layers—than you normally would. In another part of the book, Roger contemplates both a pencil and his own future death, calling the latter “the impossibly fine point to which my life will have been sharpened.”

John Updike, in some mysterious way, made millions of fine points possible.

Forté Fugit: A Rapper's Homecoming

"Homecoming" John Forte + Talib Kweli from The ICU on Vimeo.

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

Musician John Forté, a Grammy nominee for his production work with the Fugees, has fugit from prison courtesy of—it’s a shocker—George W. Bush (and here I was expecting him to pardon himself). Forté, who turns 34 today, allegedly got caught transporting a damn lot of liquid cocaine, but Carly Simon (some kind of kid’s-prep-school connection here with Forté, who went to Phillips Exeter Academy), Senator Orrin Hatch (a, ahem, songwriter on the side), and others thought a 14-year-sentence for a first, nonviolent offense was over the top. They lobbied successfully on behalf of the violinist/guitarist/rapper, who had already served seven years. On his Daily Beast blog about leaving prison on December 22, Forté recounts that on his first day out, after seeing his mother and his probation officer, he hit the studio—why waste precious time? Above is a video of his new track “Homecoming,” featuring Talib Kwell, with Kanye West on background vocals. Partly a paean to his home borough (“Brooklyn, keep my heart open”), the song invokes Sarah Palin (negatively) and Walt Whitman (positively) as Forté vows to keep singing “till every string on my guitar’s broken.”

Boxing, Ballet, and Booze

By Victoria Looseleaf

Okay, I’m a ballet junkie! And Miami City Ballet gave me a great fix the other night. It was also heartbreaking for me to meet the “Cuban Nijinsky,” Rolando Sarabia and his brother, Daniel, at the cocktail party after MCB’s awesome performance. The brothers defected from Cuba and the tiny island’s phenomenal ballet troupe, Nacional Ballet de Cuba, several years ago, and are not allowed back in the country under the current regime. As I’m going to Havana to cover the 21st International Ballet Festival and 60-year anniversary of BNC – as well a chill out with muchos mojitos - I promised them I would visit their father, and tell him they are well and thriving in their new life in the States.

On a cheerier note, check out what Miami City Ballet’s founder and artistic director, the fabulous Edward Villella, has to say about boxing, ballet and choreographer extraordinaire Twyla Tharp in a series of interviews I did for KUSC-FM radio. Included are two Spotlight on the Arts (Boxing and Ballet and An Unlikely Collaboration), as well as my Arts Alive feature, a longer portrait of Villella, one of ballet’s true superstars under George Balanchine at New York City Ballet. So lace up your toe shoes, tug up your tights and enjoy.

We Have a Winner

By Robert Rosen

It’s hard to believe that it’s been only six weeks since we ran “Hypocrisy Now: 16 Questions for Every Voter Who’s Been Paying Attention,” and already the quiz seems veiled in a mist of nostalgia from that quaint time when one could still believe that nude pix of Sarah Palin could swing an erection.

Excuse me, I mean election.

Now, with that distinct whiff of 1932 in the air, I think it’s safe to conclude that if Jesus Christ himself hand-delivered to Larry Flynt a certified authentic 1980 loop of an underage Palin doing interracial DP with John Holmes and Johnny Keyes, of Behind the Green Door fame, America, at best, might pause for a moment to collectively raise a quizzical eyebrow. Then everybody would collectively howl: “But what about my fucking 401(k)Y Jelly—the preferred lubricant of Wall Street titans?”

Excuse me, I mean fucking 401(k)—the retirement scam Wall Street titans foisted on American workers.

The land of the free (market) has indeed come crashing back to reality under the inimitable guidance of The Great Uniter who, unable to escape the White House without bringing down the entire Global Fucking Economy (GFE), has at last succeeded in uniting the country, the Republican Fucking Party (RFP), and the world—against him.

Excuse me, I mean, Heck of a job, Bushie.

Yet, in this moment of profound darkness we can still thank our Christian Lord for small favors: The quiz has produced a winner—Richard Reynolds, a seditious malcontent who, from his lonely outpost in suburban Seattle, has been paying close attention, and overcame the competition with a combination of acid-tinged words and a delightful drawing of Our Ms. Palin as “Pro-Life Alaska Barbie.”

For his efforts above and beyond the call of duty, we will send Richard his prize: an autographed copy of Mary Lyn Maiscott’s debut CD, Blue Lights. And he’ll have it well before the holiday season, giving him plenty of time to groove on the title song, now recognized in the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Missouri (as well as in certain New York City neighborhoods) as an instant Christmas classic.

So, without further ado, we at The Looseleaf Report proudly bring you Richard Reynolds’s answers, and a few editor’s notes commenting on the seismic changes that have taken place since they were submitted BC (Before the Crash).

1. Is there any chance that this election won’t be ugly, close, and marred by legal challenges?

No. It will probably end up in the GOP-controlled Supreme Court...again. I'll let you guess who they give it to.

2. How can anybody have any faith in the wisdom of an American public that twice elected George Bush, when even a corpse would have done less damage and should have beaten Dubya in a landslide?

Television is a horrible, debilitating drug. Far worse than heroin or crack...and far more pervasive.

3. Will Bush, like Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, be hounded like a war criminal for the rest of his unnatural life?

No, he’s going to retire to a compound in South America and do lines off the bellies of rent boys and drink himself to death.

4. Can the broadcast media raise the level of their political discourse from sub-moronic to moronic?

Barely, and then with only the greatest effort.

5. Does Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! know how often she disintegrates into self-parody, or that her ace correspondent, the ever-indignant Jeremy Scahill, acts like a graduate of the Samantha Bee School of Journalism?

Fame, like television, is a debilitating drug.

6. Has John McCain ever heard the Phil Ochs classic “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” which The Jefferson Starship recently covered (with our friend Cathy Richardson singing lead)?

I think he just listens to Barry Sadler and the sound of the little man who lives in his head.

7. Does the lyric “It’s always the old who lead us to the war” (see above) remind McCain of anybody?

NO!

8. What will it take for people to understand that McCain’s a corrupt warmonger whose bad judgment dates back 25 years, to his first term in Congress, when he tried to influence bank regulators on behalf of his biggest campaign contributor, convicted racketeer Charles Keating, after the failure of Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan cost taxpayers $3.4 billion?

An invasion and occupation by Canada and UN peacekeepers?

Editor’s note: You’ve got to give the Obama campaign credit: They had the Keating Five video ready, waiting to unleash it at the right moment, like a secret weapon.

9. Why didn’t McCain apply to Keating—a Nixon ally, founder of Citizens for Decency, and producer of the anti-porn film Perversion for Profit—the most reliable litmus test for integrity? That is: The biggest crooks cry “Ban pornography!” the loudest.

He’s too busy looking at Sarah Palin’s ass.

Editor’s note: Good answer, but he didn’t know Palin at the time.

10. Why does the media constantly bring up Obama’s mentor and fund-raiser, convicted felon Tony Rezko, but virtually never mention Keating?

The board of directors are the Dungeon Masters...and they all own the GOP.

11. What’s worse: Helping a man buy a house or defrauding taxpayers of $3.4 billion?

Depends on if the man who’s buying the house is your “good ol’ boy” from the country club or some poor schmuck who has the colossal bad taste to be born in an inferior tax bracket.

12. Why can’t the media admit that Barack Obama hasn’t lived long enough to learn to be as corrupt as John McCain?

That would require homework and—gasp!—an opinion.

13. What, exactly, is the problem with a presidential candidate who speaks good English and inspires rather than demoralizes every time he opens his mouth?

S&M...America is run on S&M.

14. When Sarah Palin’s nudie pix finally surface—nobody becomes a beauty queen without flashing her tits for at least one photographer—will they help or hurt the Republican ticket?

I SWEAR I saw her in some lesbian “teacher porn.” No kidding. According to the Universal Law of Unequal Political Media Coverage, it will help Palin if her tits are bared. O’Reilly will state, “Who hasn’t shown their tits? I have here a picture of a SHIRTLESS Joe Biden, aged 17 at Brighton Beach. SO, who’s the slut NOW?”

Editor’s Note: See intro.

15. Wait a minute. Wasn’t it the Republican Party that excoriated the fictional Murphy Brown for getting knocked up?

It’s okay when a “real” person does it. (“Real” = GOP)

16. Why hasn’t the Democratic attack machine branded the Republican candidate “Malignant McCain” (as opposed to “Benign Barack”)?

They have an attack machine?

Rachel Getting Harried

Left to Right: Anne Hathaway as Kym, Debra Winger as Abby, Bill Irwin as Paul, and Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel. Photo by Declan Quinn © 2007 Sniscak Productions, INC. Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics.

Rachel Getting Married
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Screenplay by Jenny Lumet
Starring Anne Hathaway, Bill Irwin, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Debra Winger
113 minutes

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

Although he overdoes the vérité (Another wedding speech? I kept thinking) and jerky camera shots, Jonathan Demme has created a small marvel with Rachel Getting Married. Succeeding where Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding did not—the movies share a rambling-house setting and affectionate but resentful sisters, one of whom has a barbed presence that throws off the cozy proceedings—Rachel centers on an extended family with a terrible past event that leaks into their every encounter. From a script by Jenny Lumet, daughter of director Sidney Lumet, it profits greatly from actors such as Bill Irwin, whose gamin quality occasionally sneaks out in his performance as the worried dad, the much-missed Debra Winger as the aloof mom, Rosemarie DeWitt as the bride swinging wildly between ecstasy and bitterness, and Anne Hathaway—far from her princess days—as Rachel’s sister, Kym, a drug addict on leave from rehab.

Hathaway, with her huge deer eyes and remarkable pillowy lips (when I got bored during The Devil Wears Prada, I would simply stare at them as I might a painting), gives herself over to the complex emotions of her character, who is self-absorbed to the point of being obnoxious yet sincere in her efforts to shake her addiction and deal with her guilt. She goes to 12-step meetings, hooks up with a fellow addict/wedding guest, smokes incessantly, pisses off her sister’s best friend, insists on being the maid of honor, wrecks her dad’s car, and seems to always feel the pull of her mother, though she is the furthest star in Kym’s universe.

Kym’s struggle takes place amid the nearly constant music of the wedding band members (everyone seems to be staying at the house and many characters appear to be in the music business)—when Kym irritatedly says of a violinist, Does he have to play all the time?, she echoed my own thoughts—and the color and whimsy of other preparations; as Rachel and their dad attach guest names to tiny ceramic animals, Kym learns that she is not at the family table. This is the kind of detail that is true vérité (sorry for the redundancy)—just when your sympathy is about to go with the beleaguered Rachel, who had to sit through a scarily disjointed all-about-me speech from Kym at her rehearsal dinner, she reveals her own capacity for cruelty.

Which is to say there are no heroes or villains in this film. Or resolutions. There is just, in high definition, the fullness of life, which includes both glittery Brazilian dancers and bruised black eyes.