For eight years I wrote, with apologies to Joan Didion, a blog titled The Year of Magical Painting. Then I quit. Now I'm back with a name change because a writer needs a blog the way, Neil Young might suggest, a man needs a maid. And I'm writing a lot more than painting these days.
Who knows how Michael Schumacher (the former driver, not my cat) is doing? I hope well, but information regarding his recovery is sparse. It would be fun if he knew that his son Mick just won a Formula 4 race. This from the Euro version of ESPN ...
Mick Schumacher has won on his first weekend of German Formula 4.
Schumacher, the son of seven-time Formula One champion Michael, finished ninth on his German ADAC F4 debut on Saturday, before crossing 12th in the second race of the weekend on Sunday. For the third and final race at Oschersleben Schumacher lined up second on the reserve grid and quickly moved into the lead.
The Van Amersfoort Racing driver had to fend off a late charge from Australian Joseph Mawson after a period behind the safety car but held his nerve to finish with an advantage of half a second, clinching the first win of his single-seater career. The 16-year-old is fifth in the championship with 27 points after the first three races, but leads the rookie championship. Team-mate Harrison Newey, son of Red Bull design guru Adrian, is 12th in the standings after the opening weekend.
Mick's father Michael, the most successful driver in the history of F1, continues to recover from the head injuries he suffered in a skiing accident in December 2013 and is currently undergoing private medical care at the family home in Switzerland.
Me? I've got two of the best kids ever. And let's say one of them robbed a bank and ended up with ten to fifteen in the big house. Or the other one put a space heater too close to the curtain and burned the house down. With the cat inside!
If you're a parent you've surely had similar experiences. And sure you get pissed, but they're still your kids and you still love them. So what else are you going to do? You drag your ass upstate every Sunday for visiting hours and pick her up when they finally let her out. Hopefully sooner than later on good behavior.
I indirectly refer, of course, to my main man J.R.Smith and the bonehead technical he got in the last game against the Celtics for trying to knock Jai Crowder's head off. It wasn't the technical that was the problem, it was the two game suspension that followed. And now, absent Smith for two games on top of the season-ending injury to Kevin Love, the Bulls are having their way with the Clicks (Cleveland Knicks).
Did your kids do those things you mentioned? No. They did worse shit than that. Ahhhh.
I employ the term Clicks because the Cavaliers employ three former Knicks of significance. Smith, as discussed; Iman Shumpert, he of the other-worldly fade cut; and Timofey Mozgov. Don't get me started on this. I'm trying to have a nice day.
Check out J.R.'s tatts ...
I think you could argue that the two-game suspension was a bit harsh. Just prior to the foul Crowder gave Smith a forearm shiver to the back of the neck that would have killed a lesser man. Nicely said. My expectation was one game, not two. You know what they say about expectations. I thought that was assumptions. Possibly. Either way, it applies.
What's radio? It's like a way to listen to music. Like the internet. Yes, except that it's not interactive. No? No. But it's wireless. And that's something. Are there pictures? No. That's television.
I used the term broadcast television the other day and the person I was talking to didn't understand the term until I explained it to her. My friend Eric and I once made a pact that we'd never date women who couldn't name all four Beatles.
Growing old is hell.
Anyway, tomorrow night will be the last radio program of the famous free-form radio pioneer Vin Scelsa. 47 years of playing what he felt like on the radio. Which, if you know anything about radio these days, is saying something. The man's claim to fame, in counterpoint to everything else he did that was wonderful and lovely, was also a black day for radio. Likewise the world. Vin was on the air on WNEW, one of the great New York FM rock stations, the night John Lennon was shot and had the sad task of reporting it to the world. Imagine.
The only time I ever won anything on the radio was on Scelsa's show Idiot's Delight. I don't remember what the question was, but the answer was Don Was, the music producer. I got a ticket to a private screening of Backbeat, which was about the Beatles in Hamburg. It sucked, but I got to meet Vin.
Tune in to wfuv.org tomorrow night at 8pm and listen for two hours. I think he is the best thing that was ever on the radio. He announced his impending retirement a month or so ago and for a while I was hoping his last song would be "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," because it's the best Bruce Springsteen song ever (Vin was a big Springsteen fan) and because it seemed to fit the occasion. But he played it on his show two weeks ago and then, later in the show, when talking about the set, expressed some melancholy that he'd never play that song on the radio again.
At which point I got a massive lump in my throat.
Yoko takes a lot of shit, but I always thought she was a trip. In the good sense of the world. And John and Yoko really loved each other, which is its own thing.
Here's a live version of the same song. You have to click through for some reason, but it's worth taking a quick peek to see John sing the song live, in a fuschia jumpsuit, in front of a bunch of rich people. It's a bit alarming how much he looks like Bono.
The video reminds me of two things: First, the famous Lennon quote about rattling your jewelry, which you can see here at the 1:00 mark ...
And second, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, the whole business of Mark Rothko giving his commission back to the Four Seasons when he realized that the people who'd be sitting there eating their Dover sole and staring at his work would also be rich people. That's a story for another day, but if you simply can't wait, there's a great piece in The Guardian about Rothko's Seagram paintings here.
Back to Vin: Live long and prosper, old friend. And thanks for the gift.
... here's a picture of the actor who plays Foyle's son, who flies for the RAF, dressed up as The Young Wolf.
Further proof that there are only about fifty actors in Britain, and every one of them has appeared in either Downton Abbey or Game of Thrones. Or, in the case of a woman named Rose Leslie, both.
There was a guy in England named Geoffrey Raymond who painted Spads and Sopwith Camels back in the 50s. Maybe a Hawker Hurricane or two.
I'd love to have this painting.
If you have a reputation for painting certain things -- I, for example, am rightly regarded as a portraitist -- you sometimes get the urge to branch out. Me? I think it would be cool to paint sailboats on stormy seas. Or Spitfires flying over the English Channel.
There is a scene in an episode of Foyle's War (outstanding, absolutely recommended without reservation) in which Foyle's son, who flies for the RAF, is shown taking off in his Spit, cresting the chalk palisades of Dover and winging straight towards France and, like every RAF flyer of his day, a fairly high probability of death or injury. I found the scene very moving.
Beautiful plane, the Spitfire. Especially the wings, which were shaped unlike every other plane of its time. Although this photo looks like it might be a model, or photoshopped in some way.
I'm reminded of that scene from Young Frankenstein where Gene Wilder comments on the size of the knockers on the door of the castle and Terri Garr says something like, "Oooof, sonk you Doctor."
You're a sick man. Sonk you.
If you talk to any Brit of a certain age there's a fair likelihood that the Spitfire is the salient iconic image in that person's mind. Which is why the fact that Christie's is auctioning off one of the few perfectly restored Spitfires is kind of exciting. Check it out here, and be sure to click on the "interactive documentary" link in the second paragraph.
Wow.
If you're too lazy, here's a little promo to get you fired up ...
I love New Shea. Great place to watch a baseball game. Much nicer than New Yankee Stadium, which has an alarming visual similarity to the stadium in which they held the 1932 Olympics. And we all know how that turned out.
So when Thrillist (a New York-centric click-bait kind of a site, but a good one) sent me a note saying they'd ranked the major league stadiums, I clicked on it immediately. And before I start carping about what I found, let me say that I appreciate the fact that Thrillist lists the contents of its listicles (articles that are basically lists) all on one page. So instead of clicking to the next one, which even if you have a fast computer is frustratingly slow, you can just scroll down.
And speaking of which, imagine my anxiety when I scrolled down to find New Shea ranked 28th. Out of 30! What the fuck?
Yes, it’s an upgrade from Shea, sure. But that’s like saying Michael Cuddyer is an upgrade over 97-year-old Bobby Abreau; just replacing something that's worn out doesn’t make it great on its own. Which is definitely the case with Citi, where even a center field Shake Shack hasn’t done much to help the Mets -- who’ve got a losing record at home -- draw more than 64% of capacity.
Okay, the Cuddyer bit is amusing, but their basic premise holds no water. Attendance doesn't make a stadium better or worse, it makes it fuller or emptier. Fundamentally.
Yankee Stadium came in 27th, which is both a comfort and annoying.
Perhaps no ballpark better represents its city than the new-ish Yankee Stadium. Big, impressive, and talked about in the national media ad nauseum. Once you get there, though, you realize it's way too big, overpriced, and, well, not that much fun. While the Yanks have an impressive home winning percentage in their new park, unimpressive food options and a cavernous feel make this a... sorryboutthis... Bronx Bomb.
Taxidermy classes at the Morbid Museum. The Times has this.
Apparently they sell out like nobody's business. They have a squirrel class, a sparrow class and, best of all, a pigeon class. There are, perhaps, more that aren't on my radar. I'd look around on your behalf, but I'm too busy listening to Dwight Yoakam's new album "Second Hand Heart." You'll have to do the work yourself.
Wow. Who doesn't like Dwight Yoakam? Granted, you have to be in the mood for country music, and I can certainly understand not being so. But if you are, and you want a shot of the real shit, not some ashy-assed, watered-down, popped-up crap from bands with cute country-inspired names that have obviously been focus-grouped.
Back to the birds ...
Here. Let's pull this guy apart and see how he's put together.
And speaking of hawks, I'm #2 on the Troy Library waiting list for the electronic version of "H is for Hawk," about which I can barely contain my excitement. I went down to the local bookstore the other day and sat there for a while -- it's a damned nice bookstore and they encourage stuff like that -- and read the first chapter or so. Thought about buying it on the spot then going around the corner and having a glass of wine but thought better of it.
Back to the birds, Part Two ...
And, of course, this ...
What? You were expecting a Rickenbacker? Well this is no Rick, friends. This is David Crosby's Gibson ES-335 that he played whilst a Byrd.
This is Rosie Mac, Emilia Clarke's body double in Game of Thrones ...
Zowie. Very Guess Jeans.
Lovely that Ms. Clarke, of whom I'm fond (if for no other reason than I enjoyed watching her sing a bit of Fisherman's Blues in the movie Dom Hemingway), is now a big enough star to have one. As opposed to the first year of her contract when they pretty much said: "Take off your clothes and stand over there."
Not in a mean way, but still.
This is Ms. Mac suited up for the part ...
Somebody notify the dragons.
We don't usually resort to cheesecake here at The Year of Magical Writing, but it's Wednesday and a man can only think of Mehmet Oz for a limited period of time.
