Author Archives: John Smith

Uncategorized , , , , 2 Comments

Our Date With Judy

by

Celebrating the Judy Garland Centennial

Once a year, from around age three until even today, I have a date with Judy Garland. Millions of us did. That’s because for years there was an annual showing of “The Wizard of Oz” on network television. For those too young, there used to be only about three channels on TV – NBC, CBS and ABC. And for almost four decades, one of those channels would fiercely bid against each other for the rights to broadcast the “Wizard of Oz”. And each year, between 1956 to 1991, “The Wizard of Oz” would win it’s time slot, and place in the top 25 watched programs for the year. It was an event. Because of this annual tradition, this 1939 musical became the mostly widely viewed film in cinema history.

One of my earliest and fondest childhood memories was watching the annual telecast of the “Wizard of Oz” on network TV. It was a huge deal, with big celebrities from Danny Kaye to Angela Lansbury hosting. For weeks we would wait in anticipation, after being constantly reminded by frequent commercials for the broadcast.

I must have been three years old the first time I saw “The Wizard of Oz”. My mom loved celebrating traditions, and she rose to the occasion by organizing a slumber party for me, my sister and a couple of the neighborhood kids. I still remember the awe I felt when Dorothy first opened that sepia toned door to Technicolor Oz, and first seeing the munchkins, Glinda’s bubble, the melting witch and of course Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow”.  

Maybe if my parents hadn’t fought so much, I would have understood better the concept of being homesick, but after the movie, the only question I had was why Dorothy was in such a hurry to get back to Kansas? In my mind, Oz had everything a child would want, talking apple trees, singing scarecrows and a hilarious cowardly lion; while Auntie Em and Uncle Henry and their farm seemed a little dour by comparison.

For Christmas that year, my sister and I got the soundtrack album of the “Wizard of Oz”, with both the music and dialogue from the film, so we could follow Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road whenever we wanted to. As a result, I had the entire movie pretty much memorized by five years old, and adults delighted in having me do my impression of the Wicked Witch, “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too!”

 Margaret Hamilton should have gotten an Oscar. She was only in the movie a few minutes, but she leaves quite an impression. There are tales of kids being too terrified of her, but I ADORED the Wicked Witch. In those days, before my parents got divorced, my Mom enjoyed sewing our Halloween costumes from scratch. Because my sister was older, I usually got her hand me down costumes, which wasn’t a problem when the costume was a clown or a leopard, but my dad wasn’t thrilled when in kindergarten, I insisted on wearing my sister Lisa’s old wicked witch costume from the previous year. To me, a witch didn’t have a gender; she was like Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster. Given my dad was very homophobic, I’m surprised he allowed it, but I do remember there was some controversy about it.

Fast forward a couple years later. My parents had gotten divorced when I was in 1st grade and my Mom, sister and I all moved to a small apartment in the “big city” of Akron, Ohio, where I still played that Oz record in our basement laundry room/playroom.

My parents wisely hadn’t shared the news with us that the actress who played Dorothy had passed away a few years earlier, but our new baby sitter showed no such restraint. 

“She killed herself,” the baby sitter said – inaccurately as it turned out, but I didn’t know any better. (She also told us once that a really vivid sunset was a sign of the apocalypse, causing me and my sister to go into a fit of crying hysterics, but that’s another story.)

So at seven years old I was left wondering what could make someone so beautiful and so talented be unhappy. That question still haunts me.

In the intervening years, my Mom got remarried and we all moved to the country. Though I never missed Oz when it was broadcast on television, by 3rd grade I had discovered horror movies and old Universal monster flicks. Then came my Star Wars “kick”. I was also a voracious reader, having read every Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew book our school library offered, and by 4th grade I had moved on to adult historical fiction, like “The Agony and the Ecstasy”, or any Reader’s Digest Condensed Books left around. For a fourth grader, I had some pretty sophisticated literary tastes.

But then around 6th grade, I got grounded from reading. My grades in school were mediocre and my mom blamed it on my constantly reading what she thought was fluff. She didn’t know you can learn more from Nancy Drew than a whole year of elementary school. There for awhile, I was hiding books in different parts of the house to read in secret, including a stash in my tree house, as well as a spot in a cement planter on our front stoop. 

But I was allowed to read non-fiction books, which included biographies. 

One day I was browsing a bookstore for something non-fiction to read when I saw a paperback edition of “Rainbow”, a biography of Judy Garland, so I scrounged up enough allowance money to buy it. I was finally going to get the answer to the question that had haunted me since I was seven years old: how can someone so talented ever be unhappy?

After devouring the “Rainbow” book, I went on a spree, reading every Judy biography published, hoping each time the ending would somehow be different. While I never did find the answer to my question in those biographies, I found out Judy Garland sure had accomplished quite a lot in her short life. She starred in 35 films, winning an Academy Award for Oz, and she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress (Star is Born) and Best Supporting Actress (Judgment At Nuremburg); and she also won a Tony Award, a couple Golden Globes and she was the first woman to win the Grammy for Album of the Year (Carnegie Hall).

Thru her music, movies and biographies, Judy Garland opened a world to me I’ll always be grateful for: the world of Harold Arlen, George and Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter; not to mention the movies of her husband, director Vincente Minnelli and the movies and music of her multi talented daughter Liza Minnelli, who I also first fell in love with as a child after hearing her as the voice of Dorothy in the animated sequel “Journey Back to Oz”. Liza’s voice just blew me away, it echoed Judy’s in its richness and sincerity, but was also unique.

Growing up in a small town can be tough on a kid who is different. Being called “fag” by your peers might not be a big deal if you’re not actually gay, but when you are hiding that secret, it becomes more of an accusation. How could people know? I thought being gay meant you liked dick, not MGM musicals! So I was a nervous wreck by 8thgrade. But no matter what was going on at home or at school, I always had Judy’s music to explore, to soothe or uplift me. No one does “joyous” like Judy. She became sort of a fairy Godmother who would visit when I put the needle on the record. Also, there was an inspirational part of the Judy Garland story – every time she got written off, she came back stronger than before.

Another aspect of Judy’s movie persona that appeals to the marginalized is that she was always the girl who had to prove herself – from Andy Hardy to Easter Parade – at first losing to the glamour girl, until everyone fell in love with her when she opened her mouth to sing. I didn’t know about the gay connection to Judy Garland when I first began exploring her career – I didn’t even know what “gay’ meant. But even after I found this out, like for instance that her funeral in New York was associated with the Stonewall Riots, I didn’t care if people thought I was “gay” too for loving her. I think I’m most proud of that part of me – I never let peer pressure determine what or who I loved.

Some people like to dwell on the darker aspects of Judy’s life, but I don’t. Her music is enough of a testament. All I have is gratitude she existed. So, thank you Judy Garland for all the years of pleasure you have given me by sharing your heart and soul with the world. 

Frank Sinatra once predicted, “The rest of us will be forgotten, never Judy.” But I think he is wrong. Thanks to the enduring appeal of the “The Wizard of Oz”, Judy is going to drag everyone who was ever in her orbit with her – through the years and down through history.

Show Biz, Uncategorized , , , , , 2 Comments

My One Degree of Separation from Stephen Sondheim

by

David Holliday

When I was a wee twink, I was in a production of “Camelot” starring Broadway veteran David Holliday as King Arthur. Every night, 8 shows a week for two months, I got to wear tights on stage as a paige to King Arthur, and best of all, at the climax of the show, I had the great honor of bringing King Arthur his famed sword Excalibur.

Now it might have been how great my 18 year old behind looked in those tights, or maybe not, but one night David asked me to dinner at his place. Like most actors, he was eager to share his Broadway bona fides.

His most famous role was probably opposite Katharine Hepburn in the Lerner and Lowe musical “Coco”, followed by “Sail Away” with Elaine Stritch. (You can hear his lovely voice on those cast albums.) He was also in Man of La Mancha on Broadway, and he played the King in a TV movie of “Sleeping Beauty” starring Morgan Fairchild (he played a lot of Kings). And he was the voice of Virgil Tracy in the first season of the cult British show “Thunderbirds”!

David’s Virgil Tracy from “Thunderbirds”

But David got his start with Stephen Sondheim, who cast him as a Jet in the original production of “West Side Story” and as the understudy for Tony. Later on, he got to play Tony in the London production of WSS with Chita Rivera and again for the 1966 London revival.

He was a pal of Elaine Stritch and David loved the story of how one day, out of the blue, Judy Garland called him up to invite him to a birthday party she was throwing for Stritch. He was also besties with Burt Reynolds and Dom Deluise.

He would send me Christmas cards every year for awhile (those tights were magic). But sadly he died in 1999 from cancer.

As Don Quixote

Anyway, here’s the cast album of West Side Story with David Holliday as Tony. He starts singing “Something’s Coming’” at the 4:08 mark.

David Holliday from “Coco”
A video tribute for David Holliday with his gorgeous voice singing “Dommage Dommage”

Continue reading →
Uncategorized Leave a comment

Wasted Away In Lake Geneva-ville

by

This pic is from a camping trip to Lake Geneva I took with my friends Tom, Giovanni and Jonathan. Unknowingly, our trip coincided with a Jimmy Buffett concert nearby and just our luck, our camp site neighbors were “parrot heads”.

We did not know this embarrassing fact about our neighbors until they loudly returned from the concert around 2am.

While I’m a very sound sleeper, my tent mate Tom was awakened by their loud, drunken campfire antics. I might have even slept through all their obnoxious laughing and yelling, were it not for Tom yelling every 5 minutes:

“Shut up!”

“We’re trying to sleep!”

Their parrot party went on past 5am, despite frequent warnings from the camp ground security guard. They would quiet down for a few minutes after getting a warning, only to start back up again when the coast was clear.

They finally passed out around 5am and the campground was at last quiet and we were able get some sleep

When we woke up around 10am, our noisy neighbors were loudly snoring in their crowded tent, their site littered with crushed beer cans and their campfire still smoking.

So we started packing up our gear to go home.

Loudly.

Each time we closed the car trunk or car door, it was with a bang; and I also kept “forgetting” to turn off my car alarm, so that every time we opened the trunk the alarm went off blaring.

Then I couldn’t find a lost shaker of salt, which required us to unpack and then repack the car, setting off the car alarm a few more times.

On our way out, with the car fully packed, we wanted to say good bye to our neighbors. So we paused the car in front of their tent and blew our horn until someone poked their head out.

“Goodbye!” we shouted painfully in unison to the bleary eyed, hung over Buffett bores.

My fear that our revenge scheme might have also annoyed the other campers was dispelled when we received a standing ovation from the other campsites as we rolled out of the campground.

Now I’m hungry for a cheeseburger. Hold the paradise.

Nancy Pelosi, Non-fiction, Politics, Uncategorized , , , , , , 1 Comment

Praising Pelosi

by

There’s a media drum beat against Nancy Pelosi, one of the most effective parliamentarians to ever hold the Speaker’s gavel. Don’t fall for it.

The reasoning goes that because the GOP use her as the boogeyman in campaign attack ads, Dems should dump her.

The truth is the Republicans would vilify anyone in that leadership role. They love to use Pelosi to stir up their base because she is a woman representing San Francisco, so there is a lot of underlying homophobia in their demonization of her.

The media obliges the GOP in this endeavor by asking every Democratic House candidate if they support her as House leader. But they never ask Republicans about Mitch McConnell, who polls 5% lower than Pelosi. That’s sexism. And how come we don’t see the media asking every Republican candidate how they are “wrestling” with their vote for Jim Jordan for House Speaker?

The Bernie left hate Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, because she supported Hillary. Well guess what, Pelosi not only got the Affordable Care Act and Dodd Frank passed, she also managed to pass the public option to the ACA that the same Berners accuse Dems of not supporting – though it passed the House and got the vote of every Senate Democrat, but failed in the Senate when newly Independent Senator Joe Lieberman blocked it. The Bernie folk would be very lucky to have her around to pass their proposed single payer bill if we retake congress. She has the track record of passing complicated bills. The Senate is where progress goes to die, not the House under Democratic control.

The best part of this is Pelosi has given her approval for red state Dems to say they oppose her, because she understands winning those seats is more important than her ego or career.

I can’t think of a male politician who would be as pragmatic a team player as Pelosi.

Uncategorized , , , , 1 Comment

Voter ID Laws: The Latest Poll Tax

by

No, you do not need an ID to buy groceries – for the moment anyway. But some states require you to produce a specific ID card for you to exercise your constitutional right to vote.

One of my former hobbies was registering people to vote. I’d do it at street festivals or events and I’d even bring my stuff to parties. It was cool to register first time voters.

So, I have an opinion on voter ID laws, which are just an attempt to suppress minority votes and votes of other economically vulnerable people, who may move often and can’t afford $20 for a government ID each time they relocate. The discriminatory intent of these ID laws is plain to see when you notice they usually allow NRA membership cards but not college IDs to vote.

A person establishes their eligibility to vote when they register to vote, not when they attempt to participate. To register to vote, you have to establish your identity and address. Just like a state ID card, you do this by providing a postmarked utility bill or some other official correspondence received at your current address along with a birth certificate or some type of a photo ID.

You attest to your eligibility to vote when you register and swear under penalty of perjury that the info you provided is correct. When you go to vote, a copy of your registration is there that contains your signature. If a person’s address and signature match, that person should be allowed to vote. Voter ID laws are a thinly disguised attempt to suppress minority voting.

Here are Illinois requirements to register to vote.

humor, Religion, Uncategorized , , 1 Comment

Buzzing for Jesus

by

So, this afternoon some kindly, well dressed Christian lady with her equally well dressed two young daughters just randomly buzzed my buzzer hoping to talk to me about Jesus. I was expecting a UPS delivery, not deliverance.

She was already on thin ice when she greeted me with “I’m so sorry, I see I got you up from a nap.”

Instead of replying,” No bitch, I always look tired and disheveled, thank you very much,” I was gracious.

Refusing her religious pamphlet, I politely informed her I was comfortable with my decision to burn in hell; and unless she had a package from Amazon, she should please move on to her next address.

She then asked me which buzzer was mine, as she was planning on ringing the next apartment in my 7 unit building. “Maybe they want to hear the Good News I bring.”

“Look,” I said, getting a bit annoyed, “I know my neighbors, and they’re also comfortable burning in hell. We’ve made a pact.”

As they left the lobby, I complimented her two young girls, both adorably dressed in their church best.

Barbie, Uncategorized, Videos , , , 2 Comments

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Barbies

by

5FE74B32-16B0-4EFE-BEA5-7930887F4C02

One night, back in college sometime in the late 1980’s, a buddy and I were hanging out at my apartment with a camcorder, and some beer, along with construction paper and a few dollar store Barbie knock offs; and we decided to make a movie we called “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Barbies“. (We were both huge Russ Meyers fans.)

The plot centered around Varla, a deranged, stiff armed, dollar store Barbie who – out of bitter jealousy over her lack of bendable arms and legs, plots revenge on the real Barbie who can bend and pose anyway she pleases.

A sub plot involved a kinky Ken and his dominatrix interior decorator named Barb Wire. Yup, we beat the comic book “Barb  Wire” by 6 years!

Enjoy!

 

music credit: “The Rich Man’s Frug”

I wish I could credit my friend, who  painted Barb Wire using White-out and magic marker and supplied her voice. I came up with the idea of shoving a coat hanger up her ass to give her some movement. Also, note the funny visual of Barbie on the phone, while literally being on a phone

04175982-AD48-4118-B3A1-F347D6DFA2CF

85C317FB-1E2B-4014-88DF-71F08A5EE311

Introducing Barb Wire

Music, Show Biz , , , , 1 Comment

Quiet Please, There’s A Lady on Stage

by

Karen Mason

There’s a line from the musical “Gypsy” when Mama Rose accuses her daughter Gypsy of trying too hard to sound like an intellectual, telling her “You read book reviews like they were books.”

Like Gypsy, I used to read concert reviews like they were concerts. Though I loved music, I didn’t have the dough to hang out in cabarets and piano bars. Instead, I lived vicariously through Howard Reich, the Chicago Tribune’s long time music critic whose column over the years introduced me to a multitude of musicians and helped nurture my unquenchable taste for Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn, and thru him I also found out about a lot of new singers I might never have heard of, like a fresh faced newcomer named Madeleine Peyroux, whose debut CD “Dreamland” I rushed out to buy after reading Reich’s glowing review of her back in 1996.

Another artist Reich adored was a singer named Karen Mason, who got her early start singing in Chicago’s cabaret scene (according to her Wikipedia page, she was once a singing hostess at a place called Lawrence of Oregano!) before graduating to better things. If you’re unfamiliar with this 12 time MAC Award winning vocalist, it’s time to get you up to speed. In addition to being a famed cabaret artist, Ms. Mason’s credits also include starring in several Broadway shows, such as playing Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard”;  she also originated the role of Tanya in “Mama Mia”, and she played Velma Von Tussle in “Hairspray”. Additionally, Karen has appeared on TV in “Law and Order: SVU” and she was in the film version of “A Chorus Line”.

Though I became familiar with her name from reading reviews of her shows at the Park West or at Davenport’s, I never got to see her perform live until she was booked as the entertainment at an AIDS Benefit.

At the time I was hitched to a pharmacist and we attended so many of these events, as his employer Walgreens was a major sponsor and would buy up multiple tables and distribute the tickets to their pharmacists and executives. Over the years of attending these benefits, we got to see a lot of great acts, like the B-52s, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor and Koko Taylor among others.

No offense to the pharmacy profession, but pharmacists make for lousy audiences. I remember that one of these events was hosted by Saturday Night Live alum Rob Schneider, who was very pleasant and graciously introduced himself to my group of already over-served seat mates, who kept embarrassingly insisting he do the “making copies” guy from SNL, which he declined.

With the B-52s, these overpaid drunks got a band they knew, so they behaved, but Koko Taylor got no such respect. Neither did Karen Mason.

I was so excited when I found out Mason was performing at one these benefits because I’d read so much about her amazing vocal talent, but had never heard her in person.

Well, the pharmacists weren’t fellow readers of Howard Reich, so most of them had never heard of Karen Mason. Instead of shutting their free wine holes or leaving the room when Karen took the stage, these philistine boozed up bozos proceeded to talk over the music. Now, when they did this to Koko Taylor the year before, the event organizers went around chastising the loud mouths, but no one was coming to Karen’s rescue.

Except me.

I shushed more than a few of those professional pill pushers that night and despite their antics, I still managed to enjoy the vocal prowess of this amazing talent. Whether Karen noticed the talkative bores, she never let on.

When she concluded her set, I felt an impulse to apologize. I spotted her heading to the escalators and followed after her. There she was, a glittering gowned diva all alone riding a hotel escalator. So I sprinted up to her, “I’m so sorry that people were so loud, I really enjoyed your singing,” I told her.

Then I explained that these weren’t music lovers, but just a bunch of drunks who got free tickets and didn’t appreciate great music.

Anyway, Karen Mason is in town at Davenport’s this week and I’m so excited to be going. And if a mother fucker opens their mouth while she’s singing, I’m going to throat punch them.

Here’s some samples of the great Karen Mason, whose new album “Its About Time” is now available. Check her out and witness the perfect example of a great singer who is also a gifted actress.

Karen Mason in Sunset Boulevard

Karen singing “This Nearly Was Mine”

Karen celebrating equal  marriage, “It’s About Time”

Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, History, Non-fiction, Politics, Presidential Election , , , , , , , , , , , 21 Comments

Bernie is No John Lewis or a Democrat

by

img_2278

Putin couldn’t have done it without Bernie

Bernie and his Brats are trying to do a hit and run. They wrecked the election and are now attempting to flee the scene.

History unlearned, or worse, re-written, repeats. That’s why I stand up for examining truth. The Russian government may have installed Donald Trump as President, but they couldn’t have done it without Bernie Sanders, the guy who once honeymooned in the Soviet Union.

For some reason, the Bernie or Bust crowd seems thrilled with Trump beating Clinton, almost as if beating Clinton was always their only goal. Maybe they think Rust Belt voters would have swooned for a leftist socialist atheist who never held a job outside of government, but I don’t.

Now, after doing more than anyone to beat up Clinton, Sanders wants a say in a party he still hasn’t joined. He wasn’t a Democrat before he inserted himself into the 2016 Democratic Primary (a hijacking attempt that DNC leaders should have nipped in the bud by telling him to either join the party or be disqualified) and he isn’t a Democrat now, even after the destruction he caused.

The major reason Bernie never became a Democrat while seeking to lead the Democratic Party is because he’s a narcissist who never voted for anyone until he voted for himself. It is ALL about him.

Despite casting himself as a Civil Rights hero, Bernie Sanders never voted for any of the civil rights heroes of the Civil Rights era. He didn’t vote for anyone until he was into his 30’s when he voted for himself. He didn’t vote for Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey or McGovern. He didn’t care if Goldwater or Nixon won.

His supporters treat him like John Lewis while tossing the actual John Lewis under Rosa Parks bus (for daring to back Hillary Clinton).

Bernie trained his supporters to blame Hillary for the 1994 Crime bill that Bernie actually voted for. He claims he only voted for the bill because of the Violence Against Women Act, but he voted for each component of the bill – and he used to brag about his tough on crime votes, until he decided to paint Hillary as racist because she supported her husband for signing the bill Bernie voted for.

Here’s Bernie bragging about his tough on crime bona fides that he has since deleted from his resume.

IMG_20180103_185413

Here’s Bernie bragging about not giving a damn about voting in a 1987 article in the Gadfly, a University of Vermont student newspaper.

img_2276

Apparently, Bernie Sanders only liked to talk about politics, not do anything meaningful to change things like organizing voter drives or all the various things real community leaders do, for example: voting. (GOOGLE Obama, Barack or Clinton, Hillary for examples of effective community organizers.)

Some may question the relevance of Bernie’s narcissistic voting habits, but I believe it perfectly explains Bernie’s careless disparagement of the Democratic Party that so graciously endured his constant jabs at its leaders and longtime supporters like myself who have voted in every damn election since I was legally allowed to (and never once been called a “shill” until this year).

Remember when Bernie cried “rigged” over the Superdelegates? His supporters sure do. They still claim the election was rigged. Who can blame them when their leader said so?

Bernie’s top campaign advisor Tad Devine actually invented the superdelegate system in the 1980s, but that didn’t stop his fanatics from blaming Debbie Wasserman Shultz. The Bernie Brats know more about the hierarchy of the DNC than they do their own state governments.

Once Bernie was mathematically eliminated from the nomination, he changed his mind about those evil SDs. He needed them. Hillary had 18 million votes and he only had 13 million. What to do?

So he then called on those same dastardly SDs to reverse the election and nominate him instead of Hillary at the convention. His supporters then began harassing delegates at their homes. (It’s hard to distinguish Bernie’s and Trump’s supporters sometimes).

Bernie stayed in the race too long and held out the false hope to his fans that Hillary would get indicted over emails. His wife Jane even begged the FBI to hurry it up! He refused to concede when any other candidate would have to avoid dividing the party, but he wasn’t a Democrat anyway, so dividing the party he never cared for wasn’t really his concern.

Then WikiLeaks and Russia decided to get involved, selectively leaking hacked emails from the DNC suggesting (GASP) that longtime Democratic Party leaders might prefer nominating an actual Democrat to lead their party. The Bernie kids ate up the Russia propaganda like it was free college.

Hoping to change the outcome, his delegates disrupted the nationally televised Democratic Convention, an event meant to showcase the party platform and nominee.

The 227 year old glass ceiling got shattered when for the first time a woman became the nominee of a major party, but Hillary and her supporters were denied that celebration.

Instead of celebrating this history, instead of celebrating the achievements of a woman who has been an inspiration to millions world-wide, Bernie’s boorish delegates booed and interrupted speakers at the convention, including John Lewis. Even Bernie supporter Sarah Silverman got booed and she told them on prime time TV that they were acting like babies. Bernie more than anyone brought us Donald Trump.

Despite everything, Hillary was up 7-12 points in some polls 11 days from the election. It took the FBI Director’s last minute letter to defeat Hillary, but she shouldn’t have been in that danger zone where 80,000 votes in 3 swing States decided the election.

The answer to Hillary’s question on why she wasn’t up by 50 points against Donald Trump is: Bernie Sanders.