#59 "Yes, Virginia," Says the God Particle, "'There Really Is a ME."

Hiya, kids Hiya! ... or as I should say, 'Yea and Verily,' to keep up godish decorum here for the doubting Virginias and Thomases out there. That's Me, Your Everlovin' Holiness, sort of on the lower left--where FINALLY, after 3 million years of evolution, the humanoid brain of one Reverend Dr. Higgelty-Pigglety, as I playfully like to call him as only I can, got it right. To My mind--and I've got the biggest one--Peter Higgs will go down as a PROPHET surpassing Jesus or Mohamed any day of My week! And you guys at CERN, whatever that means, CONFIRMED it ...  bless your hearts--I'm  a QUARK!"

Of course, Mr. Yahweh's first statement was in the form of sparky and blippy things transmuted somehow onto computer machines at the Large Hadron Collider, someplace European. The resulting interview is a mathematical translation of literally TRILLIONS of the sparky-blippy things into readable Latin prose, then King James English, and finally--

That's right. [said the Subatomic One] I'm one in a trillion, upon more trillions ad infinatum--just loves Me that Latin, by the way, though I don't speak it very well--but then who DOES these days?! Ha, Ha  Not my native tongue, as if I had one. Sorry. But to get all quantumy on you: I GIVE the MASS.  .............

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#58 Death of a Childhood Hero [in progress]

Smilin' Ed McConnell died right in front of me ... sort of. He was right there on the television machine one minute, and then he wasn't ... because he was dead, I was alive and only eleven,  What's happening? He was right over there on the screen last week. It's gotta be that old Froggy playin' tricks again. But there seemed no amount of  plunking on his magic twanger could get Ed back.

I.didn't know him "face-to-face" till his transition from radio to TV, which sadly was a short 2 or 3 years. And it took me at least that long to get over it. Here's the deal ... I loved the guy.  I got to know Smilin' Ed before I could see his smile/ Ed was in my head.

[ A "partial post"  related to DMW #233. More to come, but here it is for now.]

#25 Da Vinci Vindicated

Thought I'd better bring out the original, after shamelessly exploiting his "Vitruvian Man" for rhetorical purposes over in the Daily Mosteller. And it gives me a chance to recount an encounter with Leonardo, some 35 years ago.

First of all, it's an evocative piece of work. No wonder the drawing has been redacted/exploited for all manner of logos by myriad health/fitness/science entities like Blue Cross and Sky Lab II--though usually stylized and decidedly non-gender-specific, unlike the original here. Setting aside the artist's always interesting homoerotic subtext in almost everything he did--q.v. especially the Da Vinci Code conundrum about the ambiguous male/female figure at "The Last Supper"--this piece is a fascinating blend of art and science, or at least pseudo-science. It's the thought that counts.

And no man ever thought so much about so many things as Leonardo, as we all know. In fact, it got in the way of his work, more often than not. No greater "Renaissance-Man"; no greater procrastinator. My hero. All told, his greatness rests on a very small number of actual accomplishments. This one, though, is particularly interesting because it's an overt attempt to resolve, through his art, that persistent conundrum of his age: New Science vs. New Humanism. He was trying to humanize science here, and vice-versa. We know from the drawing's footnotes that he was faithfully following "scientific" guidelines for perfect human proportions, laid down by the Roman architect Vitruvius. (The artist had already been forced to study the "New Anatomy"--people were finally carving up people in the name of medical science--by his first teacher, and we can see it in those macabre "muscle-and-bone" sketches of his, which were nonetheless well ahead of their time for accuracy.)

All this went along with the optimistic Renaissance notion of the perfectibility of man. "Drawing" upon a countryman from the classical period, Da Vinci used the architect's questionable geometrics to construct a human figure of ideal proportions. He was serious:

For the human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height ... from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a fourth. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from the bottom of the chin to the the underside of the nostrils is one third of it; the nose from the underside of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a third, comprising the forehead. ["Mona Lisa?"] The length of the foot is one sixth the height of the body; of the forearm, one fourth; and the breadth of the breast is also one fourth. The other members, too, have their own symmetrical proportions, and it was by employing them that that the the famous painters and sculptors of antiquity attained to great and endless renown.

Leonardo even tried to crack that ancient chestnut, "squaring the circle," in his drawing above, and supplemented in the following:

Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses [think of the bygone, I assume, grammar-school chalkboard-compass--a giant one!] centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly square.

Perfect nonsense, of course. But it seemed to make good art. How about the perfect face ... the perfect "enigmatic" smile? (more)
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#25 Two Books by Steven Berlin Johnson

Saw this pop-science/pop-culture author last March on "The Colbert Report," promoting his latest book, The Invention of Air (2008), ambitiously subtitled, "A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America." It's really all about Joseph Priestley, who has been a hero of mine for a number of reasons, and for a goodly number of years. Long library waiting-list. Just got it a couple of weeks ago, and a review is to follow in the fullness of time.

Meanwhile, I got hold of his earlier book, Everything Bad Is Good For You (2005), subtitled, almost as ambitiously, "How Today's Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter." Johnson's study of what I'll over-simply call "techno-culture" and it's effect on our collective gray-matter IS good for you, and will make you smarter and--this is most important--less guilty about the time you and/or your kids spend on playing video-games or watching television.

Johnson's got some science to back that up, but first, he got me hooked early on when he explains his central thesis by coining a metaphor from a Woody Allen movie!--

... popular culture has, on average, grown more complex and intellectually challenging over the past thirty years. Where most commentators assume a race to the bottom and a dumbing down--"an increasingly infantilized society," in George Will's words-- I see a progressive story: mass culture growing more sophisticated, demanding more cognitive engagement with each passing year ... making our minds sharper, as we soak-in entertainment usually dismissed as so much lowbrow fluff. I call this upward trend the Sleeper Curve, after the classic sequence from Woody Allen's mock sci-fi film, where a team of scientists from 2173 are astounded that twentieth-century society failed to grasp the nutritional benefits of cream pies and hot fudge.

That's the author's only reference to the movie--he assumes probably correctly that most of his readership would've seen it, or at least heard about that "classic sequence." However, it's just too good not to share more fully with the Myriad Readers. Sleeper (1973) is perhaps my favorite from Allen's early, "mainly-funny-with-some-social-satire" period. Here one of Woody's trademark "schlemiel" characters, Miles Monroe, is brought back from an accidental cryonic state 2oo years into the future. His former diet was a regimen of all the hippie food-fads of the day; in fact, to hammer the point home unmercifully, Allen has him working at a health-food store! After thawing him out, two scientist-doctors discuss the morning after, all the while puffing on their cigarettes:

--For breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey, and tiger's milk."
--Oh yes [chuckling]. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
--You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or ... hot fudge?
--Those were thought to be unhealthy ... precisely the opposite of what we know to be true.
--Incredible.

Or later when, after they advise him to be sure to inhale deeply on a proffered cigarette, Miles confronts them with his confusion:

--Where am I anyhow? I mean, What happened to everybody? Where are all my friends?
--You must understand that everyone you knew in the past has been dead nearly 200 years.
--But they all ate organic rice!

This is the author's Sleeper Curve. Video-games bad? Nope. Turns out they're good for you after all. They are only one aspect of an intellectually rich, high-tech landscape through which a modern 10-year-old navigates: "shifting effortlessly from phone to IM to e-mail in communicating with friends; probing and telescoping through immense virtual worlds; adopting and troubleshooting new media technologies without flinching." That last was written before likes of Twitter and FaceBook (etc.) came into prominence, which can only further his point. Compare all of this to the rather simple-minded recreational toys and games of the past, and again you get his point. New stuff make brain good.

Public classrooms may be overcrowded and teachers underpaid--traditional test scores continue to go down--but outside of school kids' brains are developing sophisticated problem-solving skills. And IQ scores continue to go up. That's right: over the past 50 years Americans have improved by about 15 points, half of that in the last couple of decades. Johnson believes the paradox is solved when we look at what IQ tests test: problem solving, abstract reasoning, pattern recognition, spatial logic--a sufficiency of all of which is to be found in modern media technology. Q.E.D.

Even prime-time television has become more intellectually rigorous over the last couple of decades, Johnson believes. And I like his take on it. Ever since Hill Street Blues, he says (to paraphrase), a story-arc with multiple plot-threads has been de rigueur for the most successful sitcoms--popularly and critically--from Simpsons to Seinfeld to my current favorite, Scrubs. (Though I might contend that it really got started with shows like All In the Family and Mary Tyler Moore.) No longer "present tense" from one episode to the next, where the bare-bones "situation" was enough for the viewer to "get" the joke--Three's Company, Home Improvement--the newer shows require external references, an accumulated context that the audience must draw upon in order to be in the know. (That's why they're so popular in reruns: the viewers already have their ready-made "insider's playbook") Johnson points out Sam's past drinking-problem in Cheers, for example, or George Costanza's made-up character/entity "Art Vandelay," who appears in several episodes of Seinfeld. And I'll add the notorious "Master of My Domain" episode which keeps coming back in the form of "self-denial" in-jokes throughout the rest of the series.

Finally, and incidentally, my kids came up and along a bit before the monster techno-media revolution--somewhat ahead of the Sleeper Curve--but the author cites various fantasy and role-playing games as possible precursors to that revolution. One of those he mentions is Dungeons and Dragons, to which my first three sons were devoted player-aficionados. As far as I know, they never gave it up. I guess that's why they're so very, very smart. Or not.
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#14 Stephen Colbert and the Double-Reverse Zeitgeist

I can't leave Jon Stewart's (MM #12) partner in crime at right, out of our discussion of late-night TV journalistic satire. How come we're so lucky, lo these politically-fraught last five years or so, to have these two guys back-to-back, four hours a week? (Need to do a little DVR-ing to get the mandatory "Letterman-fix," however.) Both shows are based in media satire, both are on the side of current moral/social/civil consensus ... if not the angels. But here's the difference: Monsieur Colbert pretends to be on the OTHER side. The irony is thus double-edged, and about twice as funny for it. This is all best illustrated in their divergent takes on the "Birthers," which I'll get to in a minute.

Colbert models his persona on Bill O'Reilly, in fact, whom he defers to as "Papa Bear," but it could be any other self -righteous, opinionated, wing-nut pundit like Hannity or Beck (not the rocker). He assumes a parodic character: you might call him UberConservativeMensch--who satirizes himself at the same time he's taking right-wing ideas over the top ... reductio ad absurdum style... while not once breaking character, or revealing the true liberal bent of the show.

(Even his name is invention: it pretends to somehow connect with the Huguenots of his Charleston SC upbringing and hence the Frenchified pronunciation of "coal-BEAR," when in actuality the man himself is of Irish-Catholic stock born in the nation's capital, no less; and the rest of the family pronounces the name as spelled. In a funny but revealing moment on a recent show, Colbert asks his guest, none other than younger brother Ed, how he pronounces his surname. Answer: "COAL-burt." "See you in hell," responds "coal-BEAR"--not dropping his mask for a moment)

We can clearly see the difference in satirical mode between Stewart and Colbert in the treatment of the Birther movement this week. His boss had the easier task: as mentioned in that earlier post, Stewart can for the most part let the video clips speak for themselves and expose the Birthers for the fools they are--punctuated with a few incredulous grins and disapproving grunts. On the other hand, when Colbert took up the topic yesterday, he became one of them. Perfect irony. His guest was Orly Taites, a Russian emigree' and so-called "mother" of the faux Obama-birth-certificate movement. As introduction he played a clip where she declaims that "You have to have two parents who are citizens; Obama's father was not a citizen of the US." Colbert "agrees"--"Yes, everybody knows both parents must be citizens. It may not be in the constitution, but it's a basic fact taught to every school-child growing up with Ms. Taites in the Soviet Union."

When she enters and sits for the interview, Stephen assures her that he's on her side; that Obama is a bad President; and we need to get him out of office "by any weird loophole we can make up." She proceeds to make her case, which is weird enough to allow Colbert to sit back and let her self-immolate for a time. After her inevitable comparisons to Stalin and Hitler, which he declares to be "fresh and new," he takes her point into woo-woo land. "We wouldn't want another Chester A. Arthur [whom she'd never heard of--perfect again] would we? Mutton-chops [as he gestures along his face] and all that. His father was not a naturalized citizen when he was born. He was a terrible President. Do we really want a return to mutton-chops."

The Zeitgeist will out-- no matter the guest or subject: Colbert will hyperbolically OVER-agree on the right, and illogically DIS-agree on the left. Case in point for the latter--Arianna Huffington, who was his very next guest after Orly Taites. The HuffPost lady-in-chief was on to plump the newly updated re-issue of her 2003 Pigs at the Trough, which chronicled corporate greed and political corruption in and around the Enron era--this edition uncovering even "more bacon" in and around the Washington DC beltway today.

"We can't let these guys go back and do business as usual and ruin the country," says she.

"Yes," says he, "but it was working so well ... for awhile. I made so much MONEY ... for awhile. Why can't we just let them go back to what they were doing and then everybody just jump out before it all goes to hell? A red flag or something."

When asked earlier about her own citizenship status (since she, like Orly Taites, has an "unbelievable, ridiculous accent," according to Colbert), the Greek-born Ms. HuffPost captures the essence of Colbertian Irony in appropriately ironic form. She claims that

"Actually, I was born in the United States and cultivated this accent to give the air of a minority, which is very, very big now."

"Well, wait a minute, how do you really talk?"

"No, no, I never break character. Just like you, I never stray from character.

"You never break character ... that must be hard."

"I learned from the best, Stephen."
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#12 Jon Stewart and the Zeitgeist

Speaking of the late great Walter Cronkite over at the Daily Mosteller ... his popularity was pitted posthumously the other day (sort of) against the proportional popularity of present pretenders to his pedestal of premier presenter (somebody stop me) of the news on our TV machines. Jon Stewart won. The Time magazine poll gave him a 44% plurality over Couric, Gibson, Williams, et al. A poor showing, really--Cronkite in his heyday would have scored in the 90's, I'm sure.

The criterion was "most trusted newscaster," inspired no doubt by the death of the "most trusted MAN in America." You see the difference. Never could Stewart aspire to the "Uncle" honorific attached to Walter, nor could he hope to have the the kind of moral authority to sway a nation, as Cronkite assuredly did over Vietnam and Watergate. Nonetheless, Huffpost pictured them side by side under the headline.

Their methodology of influence was/is very different, though. Cronkite was a journalist; Stewart, a satirist. The former was so trusted because he was perceived to be scrupulously impartial. In deference to that, for the very few times he lowered his personal boom on a controversial issue (honestly, I can't think of any but the two above), he was careful to label it an "editorial"--and boy-o-boy was he believed. Stewart, on the other hand, has never been accused of impartiality. He always hedges his bets by calling the Daily Show a "fake news" program, grounded in comedy and entertainment. Fair enough, but it's so often so very earnest in its satire, and always on the right side of the popular Zeitgeist--the moral/social/political consensus of thinking people. And that's where the "most trusted" business really comes from.

For instance: yesterday's show. The first segment lampooned the "Birthers"--that wingnut cabal (supported even by some southern congressmen!) which believes against all evidence that Obama is somehow a Kenyan. As Jon ran the clips, hardly any sarcastic commentary was needed: res ipsa loquitur. These folk are so far behind the "curve" that they make fools of themselves. In one, Liz Cheney is seen exploiting the so-called "controversy" to impugn Obama's overseas posture as "appeasement"--an unwillingness to properly defend the country against foreign threats. Because, after all, he's a foreigner.

The second segment was typical, and as usual salutary, as Stewart took off on his own medium, television journalism--this time for its coverage of Michael Jackson's death, and its aftermath. Of course it was over-covered. But here the satire gets sweet and subversive: he showed a montage of clips wherein mainstream reporters report on themselves reporting too much on Michael Jackson! This included soul-searching Q&A's about how they might be short-shrifting more important news, while at the same time interviewing the groundskeeper at the Jackson gravesite. Very funny.

Today he went after Fox News for misrepresenting Health Care Reform in "Candyland" maps that would confuse anybody. The bias was obvious: scrap reform. Waaay askew from the current Zeitgeist curvature. The American people, to their credit, overwhelmingly favor universal health care in one form or another. Polls reflect it, and so does Jon Stewart. Otherwise, Q.E.D., he wouldn't be the most trusted.
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#10 Late-Night TV--"Tonight" and Beyond

Bringing us up to date from the obscurity and burlesquery of "Broadway Open House" at the turn of mid-century, Pat Weaver tried again with Steve Allen in 1954 and this time hit the mother load. Titled "Tonight," the format has remained the same ever since: talk/variety of decidedly after-prime-time-hours adultitude. Allen was the precursor of sharp-witted masters like Carson and Letterman, and later (before launching his great prime-time show) he shared hosting chores with THE avant-garde comic of early TV, Ernie Kovacs--before Jack Paar took over in 1957.

All of this self-indulgent TV nostalgia was triggered by the death of Carnac's old side-kick, Ed McMahon (off-camera stage left, above, setting Johnny up), but the larger point is that the "Tonight" show and its spawn provided the ONLY true, topical, hip, and grown-up entertainment on television ... not only then, but really all the way up to the post-"All in the Family" era. Setting aside some of the live drama on such programs as Studio One and Playhouse 90, most of the so-called "Golden Age of Television" was just enjoyable kid-stuff. For my generation and beyond, Late-Night was a kind of acculturation for pre-teens and semi-adolescents into the more sophisticated ways and thoughts of the adult world. The hosts based their monologues mainly in social commentary and political satire, and the guests included--along with the usual media celebrities, of course--newsworthy authors, scientists, politicians, even Presidents, as often as they could get them. In this sense these programs really did subtly educate as they entertained.

Steve Allen's stint was a bit sillier than later host's, but that's all right--he introduced us to the comic genius of regulars Don Knotts and Tom Poston, guests Lenny Bruce (one time, and then I never saw him on the tube again--wonder why ...), and ELVIS (first time, not Ed Sullivan, as is popularly thought). Cutting-edge stuff. Allen's successor, Jack Paar, stirred up controversy whenever he could, it seemed--much to the delight of a super-loyal fan base--such that in a famous episode he walked off the set in a dispute with NBC censors, leaving his poor sidekick, Hugh Downs, holding the bag for the rest of the show. A real shocker for its time, and I remember it well. Paar was back by popular demand within the month. 1962 began the reign of "King of Late Night" with Ed the court jester and Doc the royal minstrel, and the rest is history now.

David Letterman should rightfully have taken over after Carson's record-setting 30 years. Dave was part of the NBC team after all, hosting the precedent-setting after-Johnny show, and filling-in for his idol on many occasions. But not. Now he competes in the 11:30 slot for CBS. There are some who appreciate Leno, and now Conan, but in my opinion they haven't quite lived up to "Tonight" standards ... without going into a detailed critique. Let this suffice: What fun it was to see old Dave get into "trouble" over some satirical barbs vis a' vis Sarah Palin recently. So it's been Letterman for the Blogman since Carson relinquished the throne. Hey, you can only watch so much television.
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#9 Late-Night TV Through the Ages (& Wimbledon)

My ages, that is. Speaking of Ed McMahon in last post, I got in on the late-night TV phenomenon right from the beginning. We got our first set sometime in 1950 when I was seven years old. For a couple of years before that I had been able to watch "Howdy Doody" at a rich Jewish friend's house (sorry, but they got 'em first in my neighborhood), as "religiously" as I could, week-days after school. I was already hooked by the time my father got jealous enough, I'm sure, to avail the whole family of this new invention. Meanwhile and beyond, it was "Radio Days" (pace Woody Allen***) at the Mosteller household--the likes of "Lone Ranger" and "Inner Sanctum" for me, and maybe Fred Allen and Bob Hope for the parents (at least that's what thought I could hear when they thought I was asleep), because ... there just wasn't enough programming to watch (the "test patterns" were just fine, however, for awhile in between) on the fledgling medium for several years to come. We supplemented with old reliable radio. Strange as it sounds today, my father and I could watch "Gunsmoke" when it started-up on TV in 1955, and still listen to the ongoing radio show starring later "Fat Man" William Conrad as the voice of Matt Dillon! Many of the radio scripts, in fact, were re-worked for television.

As for late-night TV--maybe Van Gogh's "Starry Night" above will set the mood--for some reason I was allowed to watch some of it before the truly revolutionary newness wore off. Not really TOO late, though, because late-night programs started an hour earlier in CST Chicago--10:15, after the local news. So in 1950-51 I was privileged to witness the first great experiment in what was to become the "Tonight" show format. It was called "Broadway Open House," and invented by a then-boy-wizard at NBC named Sylvester "Pat" Weaver (father of Sigourney, believe it or not), who later tried again and wildly succeeded with Steve Allen's "The Tonight Show" and all its later incarnations, after creating the daytime counterpart and Mosteller family staple, "Today," originally with Dave Garroway. (For a news program, still kind of "burlesquey"--he was often upstaged by his sidekick, J. Fred Muggs ... a chimpanzee.)

The short-lived, talk/variety show was hosted on alternate week-nights by Jerry Lester and Morey Amsterdam. The latter's cello-accompanied, rapid-fire one-liners I didn't quite get (I was seven, after all), but Jerry Lester did such a good job mimicking the other popular Jerry of the day--physical comedy, slapstick--that he was funny enough. Pure vaudeville and burlesque--all the TV comics (Berle, Silvers, etc.) in the early days of television came from that background. Great fun for kids then, but unwatchable now by anybody but the Brits. I remember in particular that the show always opened with "The Bean-Bag Song"--the audience/viewers were loyal bean-baggers (much like comical GOP tea-baggers of late), encouraged to have their beanbags at home, so that everybody could join in the bean-bag comedy bits involving bean-bags going this way and that. If the show got more sophisticated ... by then it was probably past my 10:30 bedtime. But not before I got see DAGMAR, at least once.

Yes, the show did break ground on one level (a hyper-adult one at that), however, by introducing a comic side-kick for the host. Not quite an Ed Mahon though--she was a tall, bosomy blond, whose two principle charms were "barely" constrained by her low-cut evening dresses. "Dagmar"--of the contrived sexy-Scandian name (she was actually from the hills of West Virginia)--played the burlesque-inspired, dumb-blond role, but with sly flashes of wit. Even at seven I could tell. She was a sensation, and became more popular than the show. She made the cover of Life, and cameo appearances everywhere for many years after. Including my dreams.

***Can't resist: shortly after typing this post, I began to watch the Wimbledon Gentlemen's Finals. At a pause in the action, the camera duly focused-in on a special guest: Woody Allen! Not surprising ... he did a couple of movies there, one of which set in and around the tennis world called "Match Point" (on which I'll reserve comment for now). See last post for a Johnny Carson afterthought.
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#8 One More Dead Icon--Ed McMahon (& Wimbledon)

His iconic status has slipped in the last few years, mainly because he lived so darned long--he was 89 (and about the only prominent person who ever shared a March 6th birthday with me)--unlike Farrah and Michael, who died more notoriously later in the same week. But in his heyday and beyond Ed McMahon played the nonpareil Sidekick, Second Banana, Straight Man--many names here--Announcer, Spokesman, and above all Court Jester to the King of "Late Night" Johnny Carson.***

To the right is an "icon" of Henry VIII's comic sidekick, Will Sommers, almost as famous in his day as his boss (the re'all tennis guy from MM #4). With H(enry) R(ex) on his outwardly sober vestments, he revealingly clutches an antic tool of his trade--I'll call it his "razzberry" horn, which he doubtless tooted in full embouchere to punctuate his jibes at Henry when the king was getting too full of himself--the traditional role of the jester or "fool.". McMahon would toot his horn at Johnny on occasion, to comically deflate him a bit. Usually it would be a semi-snide reference to their perennial marriage/divorce problems or to past drinking escapades.

Most importantly he was an always jovial, counterweighted comfort-zone for the edgier Carson, and for us. His "iconic" Heeeeere's Johnny! invited us for an hour or so into the relaxed company of friendly people proffering a measure of sleepy-time purgation of our work-a-day cares. (Unless you were Shelley Duvall in "The Shining") For thirty years! An amazing run that no one before or after could match.

Unlike today (and long before DVR's), "Tonight" was the only quality game in town at that time of night. ABC's duo of Joey (Bishop) and Regis (yes, that Regis) stole some rating-points from Johnny and Ed for a short while in the late 60's (and they're the only failed competitors worth mentioning), but if you wanted to produce a successful TV talk/variety show, better do it during day-time hours. They were invincible at 11:30 pm. It was a bedtime ritual for most TV-watching Americans, and Ed Mahon's ever-familiar, comfy-cozy, welcome-to-the-show voice-over... helped make it so. Hi-Yo!

***This is a post-Wimbledon update: when I saw Woody Allen in the stands yesterday (MM #9), I was reminded that another celebrity, Johnny Carson, has been missing from his perennial spot for some time. Of course ... but for twenty years or so and even for a while after his retirement he would schedule his summer break around the All England Club thing. Always good for a roving camera shot, like Jack Nicholson at the Lakers' games. He was an avid tennis player in his middle and later years. And spectator. I can understand.
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#7 More Dead Icons--Farrah Fawcett

Though not close to the posthumous status of Michael Jackson, for whom the mourning around the world is approaching insanity, Farrah Fawcett, at the very least, had the most "iconic" HAIRDO of the late 70's and 80's. Almost every co-ed in my classes mimicked it for years, along with every other pre-teen on the planet.

Here is Botticelli's famed version of the "wind-blown" look in "Birth Of Venus," where the elaborate coiffure serves to cover at least one naughty bit. The right hand though, while coyly covering the right breast, deliberately directs the eye to the exposed left one. And notice that the west-wind Zephyrs are blowing the goddess and her elaborate "do" to the shore so that the goddess of Spring will cloak Venus more modestly ... too late. But that's the erotic point, isn't it? Not enough, not quite in time.

Farrah was a sex-goddess too, and her Botticellian poster of more than 30 years ago (you've seen it--it's all over the internet right now) surpassed even Betty Grable as the best-selling pin-up of all time. All the naughty bits are covered ... but not enough, not quite. The pubescent eye is deliberately directed to the very center of the poster where the skin-tight whatever-it-is reveals the right-nipple-outline underneath (Ahh ... the bra-less era.) Same erotic effect as the more demure but more naked Venus above. Accessible only maybe. But in contrast to the goddess's sidelong glance and subdued grin, Farrah looks at us directly with an unashamed toothy smile of unprecedented dimensions--still Ultrabrite wholesome but with the randy undercurrents.

In the very early 70's when I first noticed her in those toothpaste commercials, I remember pointing out to my sons that this "unknown" was destined to become a star. Later, sure enough, my sons would never miss an episode of her "Charlie's Angels" heyday. (Okay, me neither.) She had made it as a genuine "sex-symbol"--to use the term in the old-fashioned Marilyn Monroe sort of way. Unlike Marilyn though, she didn't progress much beyond that, and her later years were much of a muddle. But by all accounts she was a sweet and caring person, and remained lovable and semi-"famous" to the end. Her rare cancer was of continued media concern for the last two years. But still beautiful and slowly dead at a youthful 62? ... a cosmic injustice.

She lives up to the "icon" epithet in an ironic way ... literally. Her IMAGE has become more famous than she has. That pin-up poster IS somehow transcendent. Almost sacred, in an Eastern Orthodox kind of way. I don't think Ms. Fawcett would be ashamed to achieve that little bit of immortality.
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#6 Dead "Icons"--Michael Jackson et alia

Three in a week! Two on the same day! One of them, Michael Jackson, even had an impact on Wimbledon Tennis, a subject that this blog can't seem to shake. Yes, the London press had as much about the Jacko as Brit tennis-star Andy Murray. Serena Williams considered herself a personal friend of the "King of Pop," and his subjects filled the stands at Wimbledon, reflecting all of the royalty-obsessed United "King"-dom, where he was within days of opening in 50 different venues for his huge fan-base. Bigger there, than here.

Already the media have hauled out the tired and flatulent epithet, ICON, to characterize not only MJ, but the other two celebrity casualties of the week: Farrah Fawcett (the name itself is outre'), and even the poor, overshadowed Ed McMahon, whose posthumous fame was cut short in a matter of days. The term is grossly overused, and while its Greek root, eikon, simply meant "image" or "representation" (strictly so for our computer screens), the borrowing has lost in general usage the connotation of "sacred" or "sanctified"--an object worthy of adoration and even worship (strictly so in the Eastern Orthodox church). Too often today its just a tongue-tied and lazy-hip way of saying, "Gosh, he was the greatest."

Peeve over ... I DO believe the guy deserves the "pop-icon" epithet more than anybody ever has lately, notwithstanding--nay, even because of--his wayward last years and early death. A flawed hero, after all, inspires the most fervent kind of worship. Take Elvis or ... Jesus. In his day, and even after, MJ certainly enjoyed that kind of wild adoration. He deserved it, and Gosh, the "Thriller" album and videos were the greatest, and haven't lost their luster even today. It was for me the best executed combination of the pop-rock idioms of music/dance/visuals and so on, up to that time. Man-on-the-street test of iconic status: "Who was the greatest figure on the pop-music scene of the 80s and 90s?" Would the response, "Michael Jackson" get less than 99% even before his death? Not.

But his time (sangfroid alert) ran out, long before he did. Not to rehash the troubled last years--despite his highly touted comeback-attempt-to-come in England, he really had way too much unseemly "baggage" to carry with him. Perhaps, like Elvis did, it was best to "leave the building." Still ... it's very, very sad.
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