It's somebody talking in a saloon and people think it's important!
The great Jimmy Breslin at Barnes & Noble Lincoln Square, February 5, 2007.
If you want to know what New York has lost, think about a city where JB was its voice. Today, the voice of the city is the twentysomething at your bank branch who turns down your loan.
I would certainly be remiss if I did not mark the passing of the man who was an inspiration in so many ways (not the least of which is the title of the blog).
gratified. But if you are a writer, and you listened to or spoke with Norman for any amount of time, you felt… heroic. Like part of a secret, endowed clan that was called upon to move off into hopeless quests that had to be undertaken anyway, or moreso, had to be undertaken because they were hopeless.
What better day than Valentine's Day to learn
The Truth About Love?
OPENING ON VALENTINE'S DAY
for FIVE PERFORMANCES ONLY
The Truth About Love is set in 1958 Philadelphia. On the idyllic Penn campus one hot summer, Rachel sees Mark and Mark sees Rachel and they fall in love. But for Rachel, 'the truth' about love is that it makes her see only a beautiful light at the end of a tunnel, not the locomotive speeding towards her. The Truth About Love is Our Town, if Emily was bewitched and bewildered—and George was gay.
The Truth About Love is funny, touching, absorbing drama, brilliantly written and brilliantly staged. It's the first collaboration of Susannah Nolan, who's equally brilliant Don't Pick Up is now being performed around the country after being named Best Play in the 2002 American Globe Festival, and Christine Simpson, on of nytheater.com's Dowtown Theater People Of The Year and fresh from her Theater Row triumph The Great Conjurer. The Truth About Love will be another downtown triumph.
SUSANNAH NOLAN is the author of Don’t Pick Up, which won the American Globe Theatre's 2002 Fifteen Minute Play Festival and was also staged at New Dramatists and published in the Guthrie Theatre’s anthology The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 2 Actors: 2004 (Smith & Kraus) and is now performed around the country. Some of her other works include Fed Up to Here (finalist, Samuel French off-Broadway Playwrights Festival 1992), The Man with David’s Face (part of “Bi-Polar Expeditions” at Synchronicity Space) and No Time To Change Clothes (presented as part of THAW Out for Peace @ Collective Unconscious).
CHRISTINE SIMPSON is a Korean-American writer/director based in Manhattan. She was recently named one of nytheatre.com's People of the Year for 2006. As a director, Ms. Simpson has directed with Ma-Yi Theatre Company, New Georges, Reverie Productions, Peculiar Works Project, Bumblebee & Blackbird Productions, The Public Theater, the NYC International Fringe Festival, Fluid Motion Theater & Film, and Happy Lady Productions. Plays penned by Ms. Simpson have been produced at the Blue Heron Theatre, Baruch Performing Arts Center, the New York City International Fringe Festival (2003 and 2006), and Theatre Row. She has also written and directed two short films that have screened globally. In 2005, she was selected as one of five filmmakers to compete in the Asian American International Film Festival Michelob Light Music Video Contest.
Sense a theme developing here? 
"What the Venus de Milo has to look at every day."
David and Claire, nos hôtes extraordinaires
Sometimes you get a sense when something will be fun, despite your fears. David and Claire, our amazing hosts in Paris, invited us along to a party soon after we got there. “Don’t worry, they’re all fluent in English,” he said. I sure hope so, I thought, not quite standing astride my ten words of French and ready to take on the city.
It was our third night in Paris, and we were still getting up at ten and not falling asleep until two or three in the morning. So despite the fact that both my wife and I are terminally shy, especially around people whom we don’t know and who don’t speak the same tongue, I was up for adventure. We accepted the invitation and hoped for the best (and, as always, took the baby weasel option for our Plan B, excusing ourselves after an hour because, well, we have to get the kid to bed).
The first thing I noticed at Parisian dinner/house parties is that even though this one had a distinctly grown-up flavor (in other words, the party was so the grown-ups could get together, not so the kids could have a play date), the kids all come along. No reason why the adults should have all the fun of trying to make small talk with perfect strangers in a foreign country. No sitters… the kids play together have something to eat, and then when they’re tired they all go to one of the bedrooms and crash. And the party goes on. Amazing system.
So here we are in this wonderful Paris apartment, surrounded by bright, funny, engaging people, the food is delicious, the apple cider is flowing (“No, Liv, you can’t have any, it’s not that kind of cider”), and laughter and good conversation is filling the air.
On this night, four days before the Olympic announcement, naturally everyone was curious about what the race to see who would be the host city looked like from New York. Michel, who works for the French equivalent of NASA, asked me point blank, “Is there excitement in New York over the possibility of the Olympics?”
Being a good New Yorker I replied, “No, just derision.”
Now I tend to this that the contrarian, world-weary, slightly jaundiced eye that lifelong (or even long-term) New Yorkers cultivate is in its own way roguishly charming. “Oh, those New Yorkers, they’re soooo cool…” And one of the things I have come to love about Paris and Parisians is that they are the only match I’ve found for New Yorkers in their urban energy, vibe, and just-this-side-of-cynical eye. So I knew Michel would totally identify with our anti-Olympics attitude.
The Tour Eiffel gets into the act.
But Michel was completely taken aback.
“There is no excitement over this?” he said.
“We’re actually rooting for you guys. We’re hoping Paris gets it.”
Forget the language barrier (though Michel’s English was impeccable). I could have been speaking Ku and he would have understood better.
“Why wouldn’t you want the Olympics?” he said in a tone that was starting to indicate an insult to sensibilities, though he was never anything less than unfailingly polite.
Undaunted (or clueless), I blundered on. “Well, you know how New Yorkers are. We’re like Parisians. The Olympics are nice, but it’s not worth the aggravation.”
This he seemed to get. “Ah, yes. We know about aggravation. And yes, having the Olympics in town would have it annoyances. But I think there is also national pride at stake as well. There is great national pride in the Olympic bid. So it is balanced between aggravation and national pride.”
I didn’t have to ask… national pride was coming out ahead.
I also didn’t have the heart (or common sense) to go on and tell him that in New York, we don’t have the counter-balance. That most NewYorkers refer to their home as “an island off the coast of America.” That where the Parisians have no problem carrying the flag for France, most Gothamists think about the rest of their country and say “what have you done for me lately?” And that being told by our Mayor that we’re inviting the Olympic Games was like being told by your mother-in-law that she’s inviting five more cousins to the family dinner you’ve been persuaded to throw.
Apparently Parisians weren’t as much like New Yorkers as I thought. At least in one respect. Parisians proudly consider themselves French. In fact, they think of themselves as almost uber-French (pardon the mixed metaphor) --- no one is as French as them. New Yorkers think of themselves as, well, New Yorkers.
And yet I never felt more in touch with being American than when I am in a foreign country. You have no choice but to embrace your nationality, for its wrapped around you whether you like it or not. And to my surprise, it was a very comfy fit. It’s amazing how having an ocean between you and the homeland can make all the differences and feuds with your countrymen seem a little fuzzier. I never felt like I had to make a stand for the stars and stripes, but I did feel them around me.
Suppose we had marketed the New York Olympics that way… Come to New York, for the real America! No one’s more American than New Yorkers. That instead of the bid trying to avoid, and therefore unintentionally reemphasizing, the disconnect between New York City and the U. S. of A., it sailed right into the teeth of it. For to most of the people at this party, and to most of the folks we met in Paris, we were not New Yorkers, but Americans… in fact, uber-Americans. No one is as American as we are.
As a postscript, the party ran on until after one in the morning, with many more discussions about politics, sports, the state of France, the state of the United States, the difference between liberals in the two countries, and the price of real estate (at last, something real!). Two days later, London beat out both Paris and New York for the 2012 Games. Paris lost by a whisker. New York wasn’t even close.
Even though no one is as American as we are.
Temporary expat
Back in NYC after two weeks in Paris, and in between checking the net for apartments in the 14th arrondissement I'm working on writing up some of the better stories from the trip.
When you look in the face of a dying man, you can see their whole life. As they slip from one world to another, you can see the baffled new dad, the Bronx street dude, the scruffy young man, the adoring grandfather, the dedicated officer, most of all the loving and devoted husband and father.
On the last night of his life I saw the man who took care of my mother in what was undoubtedly the most difficult time in his life. It tore him up to see the great love of his life deteriorating day after day, but he never let her know that. When my dad talked to my mom, even in the days when she couldn’t understand him, every day was sunny and fun and full of love. At his most tortured, he could put on a smile and make mom feel like nothing was wrong. That was Dad.
I live near downtown Manhattan, near the Supreme Court Building on 100 Centre Street, and every time I would walk by the building I would think of Dad. Especially when I saw a few of the officers hanging out… excuse me, on door patrol… outside the building sharing a laugh or airing a gripe. But what I really thought about was the fact that that building, the first building where my dad served as a court officer, was about 50-something miles from our house in Mahopac. About a hour and forty-five minutes by car, at night, with traffic, when your eyes are tired and your body is tired from standing all day and your head is tired from a long day’s work. There must have been many days when the last thing he wanted to do after a tough day was climb into our old Volkswagen Bug, with too many miles on it and too many funny knocks and grinds, and set out on that long journey. But that’s what he did. Every day. Because that’s what he had to do to give us a nice life in a nice house with a back yard. He did it because he felt it was what he had to do. That was Dad. I saw that guy on the last night of his life, too.
Sarge
I saw the guy who got his brother out of trouble, usually right after he got him in trouble. I saw a young man who ran afoul of Bronx street gangs because he stuck up for a guy who couldn’t stick up for himself. I saw the sergeant who demanded excellence from his crew by casually expecting it. I saw the guy who was usually assigned difficult officers, who had not worked out with other crews, and by simply expecting them to do what was asked of them, by a combination of confidence and toughness, he showed his charges that they were capable of more than they thought. That was Dad, too…
In the words of another Irishman, “… we fight, all the time, it’s alright, we’re the same soul…” When I said goodbye to him, I said, “thanks for showing me what a man is.” I saw all parts of that man on that night, and I’ll pay tribute to the man he was by being the best I can be. He would demand and expect nothing less.
Thomas E. Nolan
1937-2005
Making enough noise to wake the dead.
It should be apparent by now that, as Bono so eloquently puts it, "I like the sound of my own voice." But there are times when one must defer, and this week I defer (and paraphrase) to Robert Friedman of the St. Peteresburg (FL) Times, who this week wrote the column "Living Will is the Best Revenge," which I'm predicting will soon be boilerplate for such documents throughout the country (at least let's hope so).
Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:
* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semi-existence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.
* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.
* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.
* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.
* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.
* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.
* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.
* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated oblivion.
* I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Tim," as if they had known me since childhood.
* I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Tim's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.
* Even if the "Tim's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.
* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.
* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.
* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.
* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best "to err on the side of life."
* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.
* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.
Christians with Bad Attitudes
Why, indeed…
“You never know at any given moment whether you’re [working for God]… or whether you’re being duped… whether you’re an Agent of the Other Side. It is when we feel our holiest that we are actually doing the work of the Devil.”
--- Norman Mailer
Well, the lawyer for Robert and Mary Schindler finally got one thing right.
In their testimony before the Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, they demanded that the three judges hearing their appeal restore a feeing tube to their brain-dead daughter Terri, because otherwise the actions of Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and George W. Bush will amount to “a vain and useless act.”
Which, of course, it is.
I have been able to think of little else lately besides the Terri Schiavo case, because when I think of it, I think of my God, and my church, and my grandfather, and my daughter, and my brothers, and my mother, and mostly my father.
Two summers ago, as I lounged on a beach in Cape May, reveling in the successful run of my play Acts of Contrition in the Fringe Festival, my father called me on my cell phone. At the time, I didn’t think my father even knew I had a cell phone. But there he was on the other end:
"Tim, you better give me a call. It's not good."
My mother, suffering with early onset Alzheimer's and two weeks shy of her 64th birthday, had stopped swallowing. My father had been holding her hand while she wrestled with the ever-increasing symptoms for better than ten years. Now, as she was unable to respond to him, unable to speak, unsure of what she was seeing and hearing, she had stopped taking food and water. The doctor presented my father with the choice: adminster a feeding tube or, as he said, "let her go."
My mom didn't have much life left at that point. We looked at her broken body and knew there was a vibrant, ornery, beautiful soul in there somewhere. And it was trapped. And it was tortured. We couldn't see what was to be gained by forcing nutrition on her.
We let her go. And we did the right thing.
It was the second time I had had to be part of such a decision. Two years earlier, my grandfather, who was like a second father to me, was dying of more things than I could mention. I remember sitting with him in the hospital near the end thinking the only reason I'd want to keep him around is for me. So I could see him, so I could be around him. Selfish reasons. I looked at him, at his soul straining against what was left of him mind and body.
My friend Fr. Ned Coughlin told me a story of a man and his son trapped in a burning house. The man made it to safety, looked up at the house and saw his son trapped in the smoke on the second floor. "Jump!" yelled the father. "But I can't see you!" yelled the son. "It's alright, I see you,"said the father. "Jump, I see you!" He then turned to me and said, "What you're telling your grandfather is its okay to jump." So we let him jump.
I sometimes wonder if his soul wasn't already halfway in Heaven and we just cut him loose for the rest of the trip.
Now I sit here and think about the Terri Schiavo case and wonder: What if some stranger, some Christian with a Bad Attitude (CBA) walked in, yelled stop, and then proceeded to berate us a bad fathers, sons, grandsons, and Catholics.
I’d have done what any good Irish Catholic I knew would have done. I’d have knocked all his teeth out.
Terri Schiavo was a chubby teenager, and like most chubby teenage girls in America, she was lonely. She finally went on a doctor-approved diet and changed her look in her 20's She met Michael Schiavo, and for the first time in her life a man made her feel pretty. They got married and moved to Florida.
Some say that Michael found a picture of her from her bad old sad old days and said if she ever looked like that again, he'd divorce her. Some said that her brother used to torment her by showing around old pictures of her in a mocking tone. We'll probably never know which is correct. What we do know is that Terri began getting heavy again after a few years of marriage and couldn't tolerate it. She developed an eating disorder. She stopped getting any nutrition. Her potassium levels dropped to dangerous levels. And one night at home, she collapsed from a heart attack.
Michael called 911 immediately. The paramedics came. They got her heart started. Unfortunately, they couldn't bring her brain with it. The brain, where so much of what we are - our identity, our memories, our manners, our loves, our hates - is stored, was gone.
Michael and Robert and Mary couldn't believe it. Try another doctor. Try another hospital. Try another therapy. Keep talking to her. Keep singing to her. Keep bringing her the things she loves. She's gotta wake up. I can see her eyes, I can see her looking at me. She's gotta be there. She's just gotta...
It took Michael eight years to realize that, in fact, his wife was gone. There was nothing left but a hollow shell holding a heart that had been brought back alone. He wanted to believe, he did, so bad, but there was nothing there. She could breathe, but she couldn't eat. She needed a feeding tube for that. He was keeping her around for his reasons. Selfish reasons.
So he decided to let her go. He told her to jump.
I cannot imagine the pain this man must be in.
Now, this is a bad situation for Christians with a Bad Attitude to get involved with. Because it's a real-life situation. It's messy. It's unpredictable. It doesn't fit in any perscribed right or wrong scenario. Its a lot like democracy. It isn't easy. The CBA like easy. All their answers are easy. My way or severe abuse followed by eternal damnation.
So what have the CBAs done to Michael Schiavo? Tormented him, threatened him, attacked him, slandered him. What have they done to the judge, himself a born-again Christian, who decided the case? Forced him to live under armed guard and issue rulings by telephone from undisclosed locations.
And what are they doing to Terri Schiavo herself? A woman was arrested yesterday for trying to bring Terri Schiavo a glass of water. Friends, a glass of water could have killed Terri Schiavo. Unable to swallow, the water would have gone down her throat, landed in her lungs and possibly blocked her breathing. Doctors have said this. CBAs don’t listen. This woman would have killed Terri Schiavo in the name of saving her life… and getting her own picture in the papers.
The CBAs will try to tell all of us what it means to be Christian, what it means to be American. They will try and try and try. They will use the most un-Christian rhetoric and expound the most un-American principles to get this country to line up single-file behind them. They will slander a husband and threaten a judge and callously kill a woman. They will override the Constitution and even double-back over their own espoused principles. Because it's not about what God wants or what Terri wants or what other believers want. It's not about democracy or civil rights or the law or the Constitution.
It's about winning. At any cost. And then spiking the ball in the name of God.
In the Christianity I know, and in the America I know, we don’t call people like that Christians. We call them bullies.
And sooner or later, everyone figures out that they are not being led by “assertive leaders.” They’re being bullied. This may, just may, be the moment when the people of this country, the real people who get up in the morning and try to get their kids to school on time and get their work done and worry about their bills and wish they had a weekend free, realize they are getting pushed around in body and soul.
All Michael Schiavo wants is to see that his wife, who he apparently loves very much, gets safely from this world to the next one with a shred of dignity. In America, of all places, he should have that right. Who's to say she's not already halfway there?
“The sanctity of marriage must be paramount.”
--- Tom DeLay
“I don’t care what the husband thinks.’
--- Tom DeLay
“Have you no decency?”
--- Joseph Welch
