Christmas Eve New York 2009

Christmas Eve New York 2009
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

Christmas Eve New York 2009

Christmas Eve New York 2009
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

Christmas Eve New York 2009

Christmas Eve New York 2009
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

Christmas Eve New York 2009

Christmas Eve New York 2009
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

POET'S WALK

KABOOM

Susan comes over with a bottle of wine and a bag of spinach.  I play Christmas choral music from the Pandora website.

We sit side by side on the sofa and page through the art book I recently bought through Amazon, "The Messiah". The book tells the story of Christ through the history of art.  Aroo (the cat) stretches over both our laps. Susan thinks that most of the classical paintings depicting Christ are corporal, sensual, sexy.

"Look at those shoulders! Those legs!"

We play "Name That Tune" using pandora.
We eat yams, spinach and organic turkey bacon.
We barely touch the wine but when Susan goes, she leaves her winter coat (hanging in the closet) and her cellphone (on my coffee table).

Susan must be in love.

The next night I bring her coat and cellphone to her apartment on West 95th and Central Park West.
Susan borrows a neighbor's bike and we ride the loop of Central Park in the cold December night.
The New York skyline chaperones our joyride through the brittle, leafless park.

At "Poet's Walk" we peddle past statues of Robert Burns, William Shakespeare, and Sir Walter Scott.  Susan asks me if I'm related to each statue we pass (referring to an earlier blog entry I wrote about being related to Oliver Ellsworth). This, I find hysterical.

Before we split up at west 72nd Street, we're stopped by a young man with a thin face, long hair, and a serious expression. He needs directions to the east side. Susan is all over it and the young man takes his time with us as if he wants to spend time with us.  He thanks us and is on his way.

I tell Susan that that could have been Jesus. Looked just like him. He was testing us and we passed.

Susan says "imagine if we'd been rude?" and then she pantomimes lightning striking her. "Kaboom!"

HAND

Today I can't turn the key in my mailbox. It takes several tries. It's cold. But still I've never experienced that before.

ELOISE AT RIVERPLACE

The night before Christmas Eve, Jackie comes over at around nine. The knock, knock, knock on the door. "Come in Jackie!"

The door is open and I am at my desk.
I had a little wine but poured it back in the bottle. I wasn't in the mood.
Christmas activities take energy and focus.

I sit tucked into my desk with a box of thank you cards and a wad of twenties.

Jackie and I go through the list of River Place employees (left in our mail boxes) and decide who I should give money to.

I ordered an extra box of organic fruit from Urban Organics with my weekly box of vegetables. We line a cardboard box with red wrapping paper and arrange grapefruit, oranges, apples, kiwis and rolls of cookies in the box. We make a sign to tape to the box. I print it out in big red and green letters from my printer.

It reads,

"Happy Holidays!

To the staff of River Place

Organic Fruit from Urban Organics

Thank You!

Charlie
apartment #916"

Jackie gasps at how perfect it is.

"Oh Charlie. This is bea-ooooo-tiful.! I mean gor-g-ous! I can't believe how beautiful that sign is Charlie!"

Her reaction (like she's staring at a new born baby) makes me laugh.

I ask Jackie if she'll carry it down to the front desk. It weighs a lot.
Jackie is totally willing, totally into it. She's high on the pre-Christmas flurry.

Jackie is "Eloise at Christmas Time" and I am the more sober Aunt.
I guess I'm Kay Thompson? And actually, our apartment building is kind of a great place to be at Christmas time. The lobby is bustling with people carrying gift wrapped packages, toys and christmas trees. It kind of reminds me of the illustrations in "Eloise at Christmas Time".

When Jackie returns from delivering the box of fruit, I ask her to get the stack of chocolate bars from the kitchen.

"Jackie, I'm sorry to boss you around but will you get the candy bars I bought at Ikea? They're stacked near the cans of soup."

"Charlie! Don't apologize. I NEED direction. I'm like an actress on the stage. I don't know where to go unless someone tells me."

Jackie brings the candy bars over to my desk crowded with unsent Christmas cards, gift wrap, scotch tape and unpaid bills. I order Jackie to get rubber bands from the secretary in the living room. We use the the rubber bands to attach candy bars to the thank you cards (which have folded twenty dollars bills inside).

Then Jackie deliverts the few Christmas cards I managed to write (I used the free ones you get in the mail from CARE and HABITAT FOR HUMANITY) to the mailbox in the lobby. Before she goes, Jackie asks me to wrap a gift for for her son-in -law with my IKEA red wrapping paper. (I got four rolls of paper at IKEA for one dollar. This impressed Jackie hugely. She is devoted shopper of the 99 cent store).

When Jackie comes back, I write the gift card to her son in law.  Jackie (like most of her generation) has lovely loopy handwriting. Mine is graphic, chicken scratch but Jackie insists I write the card.

"You're handwriting is great, mine is HORE- able." Jackie makes a comically tragic expression when she says this.

When I'm done, after I attach the card to her package, Jackie again coos, "this is beauooo- tiful!!  He's going to love this Charlie, I mean it, he will LOVE this!"

Jackie has some gifts for me. This was unexpected. I would have got something for her but I can't seem to think ahead. And I can't just walk into a store so .... I don't have much to give this year.

Jackies gifts are undisguised re-gifts: a miniature portable (lime green) bible - Jackie inscribed my name,
love Jackie, and the date, on the first page, a bar of bitter-sweet chocolate,  a cd of classical musical that someone gave her, (Jackie tells me that she wasn't raised with refinement but that I was so I'll appreciate it), a bottle of vanilla extract, and a book, "The Purpose Driven Life".

I page through "The Purpose Driven Life". There are several passages that have been underlined with a blue ball point pen. I point this out to Jackie and Jackie feigns shock. She insists I read the passages that were underlined over and over to her.

"Things don't happen up for nothing Charlie. This is a sign. I'm supposed to hear this. What does it say?
Read it to me. Read it again!"

It's time for our movie.
I've netflixed "Holiday Inn" with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.

We get a bottle of sparkling cider from my kitchen and a bag of potato chips from hers and watch the movie at her apartment.

When we get to Jackie's apartment, we can't find the DVD of "Holiday Inn".
Jackie leaves me on her settee and  goes back to my apartment for to search for the missing movie.

She returns fifteen minutes later with the lost DVD.

"Turns out I left it by the mailbox when I mailed your Christmas Cards. The guys at the front desk think I'm crazy!"

THE TRIP TO GABRIEL

The trip to Gabriel is dangerous. The roads are slick with snow.

___________________

During my craniosacral session, I use prayer and visualization. I speak to my body, spirit and mind.

___________________

At six-thirty, I bike to the Music Box (on west 45th) to see the Broadway play "Superior Doughnuts" by Tracy Letts. When I see a play from Chicago,  I feel a pang of longing for college, for lost opportunities.

I stagger through the ticket line to the box office. People in line talk about me carelessly, loudly, as if using two canes goes (hand in hand) with being hard of hearing.

"Look out! He has a cane!
"He's going to fall!"
"Get out of the way! I think he needs the wall."

I keep my expression plain. I'm both righteous and vulnerable.

Once inside the Music Box, I ask the house-manger if there is handicapped seating.
The house-manager puts me off suggesting I use a private staircase to the balcony with less stairs.

An usher guides me through a red velvet curtain by the apron of the stage to a set of narrow steps.
I crawl (on hands and knees) up these private steps.

Watching me struggle, the kind usher suggests I take the nearest seat; a private box hanging over stage-right.

I sit separate and regal -a lone, visiting dignitary. I feel important. I notice someone in the audience looking up at me so I sit up straight and refrain from touching my face or hair. When the play begins, I feel superior to the rest of the audience (I am so close).

"Superior Doughnuts" is entertaining and totally sucks me in. It's expertly written (I think). I realize I love a (one set) play.  This play reminds me of "Two Trains Running" by August Wilson I saw at the Signature (or maybe Fugard's "Master Harold" and even Inge's "Bus Stop"). I decide I will deconstruct Lett's play and use it to write my own.

_____________________

When the curtain comes down, I wait for most of the audience to leave and then cane my way (with patience and prayer) over the icy sidewalk of west 45th street - back to my electric bike. It takes fifteen minutes to unlock and mount my bike.

I bike home through sludge and demanding traffic. I'm not able to choose my route. (It's hard to describe, but the traffic forces my navigation because if I bike into too tight a corner - I can't back up, or get off the bike, or make a sharp turn. I must go with the flow).

I'm afraid the wheels of the bike will slip under a moving a car.

I get pushed by the angy traffic to west 44th and Tenth to a gas station. My tires are low so
I use this forced opportunity to fill them.

I see a sign for the pump. The air is free. There are cars in line. I get in line with my bike.

When it's my turn, I ask the man in line behind me to asssist me. This man (with a black, tired sedan) is cordial but shady. He pumps my front tire but selfishly moves on to his own car.

I object.

"Hey, my back tire! What about my back tire."

What can I do?  I'm weak. My voice is weak. So I relent. I sit on a snow bank and sulk (like a kid whose toy was snatched by a bully).

When this man is done, he hands me the hose and I fill my back tire (on my own). But the valve stem won't connect to the hose. Instead of filling the tire, I release the remaining air. The tire is (now) completely flat.  There is nothing to be done. I have a flat tire.

(My bike is too big to put in the trunk of a cab).

So I walk my bike home in the cold, New York, night. It's a ten minute walk to my apartment building but it takes me well over an hour. I worry about frost bite. (My circulation is bad). I worry I am destroying remaining muscle.


_________________

At 44th and eleventh, I ask a man (pushing a cart) for help. We are alone on a street dressed with snow, lit by two or three florescent lamp posts.  The man is fifty. The man is Hispanic. The man looks down and says "Hey, it's hard all over".

"No" I say, "I'm not asking for money. I just need help getting my bike over the ice onto the street."

"Sorry man, I didn't understand."

We slowly get my bike off the icy sidewalk onto the eleventh avenue.

When we're done, I thank him.  He asks where I'm going. I point to my building.  He says he'll unload the boxes from his cart and then catch up with me. I tell him it's okay - I'm fine now - I just needed help getting onto the street.

We wish each other Merry Christmas and I continue on my journey, alone.

______________________

I stop and sit on a fire hydrant.

I look up and see my apartment building prominent in the night sky. I can see a window of my apartment (maybe). It seems miles away. My sense of distance has been distorted. I'm a small bug or rodent on a freezing, nameless street - helpless. I'm having a Kafka moment.

____________________________

When I reach the front of my building, Spiro (my doorman) runs to meet me.
He takes hold of the handle bars so that the two of us are now pushing the bike, inching our way toward the lobby entrance. This slow procession leaves room for intimate discourse.

Spiro fills the emptiness by reassuring me I'll be okay.

(over and over, he says "don't worry, you'll be okay" - I didn't ask).

He says, "You'll get better, sir. Keep up the good work. There is a Chinese man in apartment 626 who had a stroke" he says. "When he came back from the hospital, he couldn't walk, but now he is better. Every day he tries and every day he gets better and better."

Through the cold, through my exhaustion, I confess to Sprio, "It's not like that for me Spiro, my problem is worse than a having a stroke".

Spiro says nothing.

_____________________

I'm in the lobby. James Taylor sings "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" from a boom box nestled near the big artificial Christmas tree.

I stop. I stand frozen and listen.
I feel my losses keenly; to be able to walk, to be able to sing.

The Music Box

The Music Box
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

ARNOLD STANG

Arnold Stang died yesterday.

I did my first commercial  with him (a cartoon) in 1974.
It was for a cereal called "Norman".

Arnold Stang was the voice of Norman. Norman was a caveman? (I think).
I voiced the boy in the spot.

We had a little dialogue.
It went something like...

Norman-    "Hey, how bout trying a little cereal?"

Kid -          "What kind of cereal?"

Norman -    "Norman"

Kid -            "Norman Cereal? You gotta be crazy."

Then we sang a little jingle.

"You'll be wild about Norman,
You'll be nuts about Norman,
You'll be nuts about, you'll be wild about,
You'll be nuts about...
Norman!
Part of a complete breakfast by Nabisco."

We recorded it in a studio in midtown.
There was a big orchestra.

Back then, there was a pack of little kids doing all the commercials.
They were from the city or New Jersey and they all had New York accents.
(Remember the Mikey kids from the Life Cereal commercial? That was my era).

When we started the session I decided I should use a New York accent. All the others kids had one. I figured it would make me sound more professional.

So standing on a box, leaning into a microphone, wearing headphones for the first time, I stood across from Arnold Stang and sang...

"Yule be wild dabout Noah-min.
Yule be nuts about Noah-min.
Yule be nuts about yule be wild dabout
Yule be nuts about Noah-min.

Pawt of a complete breakfast by Nabisco."

After a few takes, the advertising executive took my mother aside and explained to her that they hired me because I didn't have a New York accent; please see if your son would use his natural voice.  My mother  then clarified this to me, "they didn't want whatever accent you're doing, use your own voice honey" - the ad exec hovering nearby.

I was embarrassed and a little hurt, but it was also kind of cool, because it was the first time I understood myself as a marketable entity.

Oh! I get it. I'm the kid WITHOUT the New York accent.

At the end of the session I apologized to everyone in the studio for holding things up.

Later on the street, my mother told me I didn't need to apologize and she (of course) was right.
I've never escaped the angst of letting people down (in show business). Whether it's a commercial, a little film, or a play, I should be faultless. My performance should be easy, happy, light as a feather, and smooth. I'm hirable because I'm perfect (a professional).

This is far from true- and not such a great idea... so acting (even for a simple voice-over) can be painful (for me).

I remember I didn't know who Arnie Stang was but I could tell he was important.  I'd never seen an adult like him before.  His funny voice was like magic, his cartoonish face, exotic.  He understood exactly who he was and why he was hired and all the other adults in the studio backed off.   At aged ten, by working with Arnold Stang, I got a little glimpse of a semi-famous professional at work.

Arnold Stang didn't pay much attention to me. I was "the kid" hired for the spot. He probably had five other bookings that day.


_____________________________________


Arnold Stang, a character actor whose bespectacled, owlish face and nasal urban twang gave him a singular and recognizable persona, whether on radio or television, in the movies or in advertisements, or even in cartoons, died on Sunday in Newton, Mass. He was 91 and lived in Needham, Mass.

United Artists, via Photofest NBC, via Photofest

Arnold Stang showing a plane to Milton Berle and Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1956.

UNited Artists, via Photofest

Mr. Stang with Frank Sinatra in the Otto Preminger film “The Man With the Golden Arm” (1955).

The cause was pneumonia, said his son, David.
Mr. Stang considered himself a dramatic actor who could play serious roles. But even he was aware that with his signature heavy glasses and a manner that could be eagerly solicitous, despondently whiny or dare-you-to-hit-me pugnacious, his forte was comedy.
Like Wally Cox, who was a friend, and Don Knotts, Mr. Stang was a natural for roles requiring a milquetoast, a pest or a nerd. At 5 foot 3 and never much more than 100 pounds, he once said of himself, “I look like a frightened chipmunk who’s been out in the rain too long.” And in a story he frequently told, after an auto accident in 1959 that left him needing extensive plastic surgery, he said to the doctor, “For God’s sake, don’t make me look pretty.”
His memorable moments as an actor were oddly varied signposts of popular culture. He was the spokesman for Chunky, the candy bar, in the 1950s, delivering the slogan: “Chunky! What a chunk o’ chocolate!”
In Otto Preminger’s 1955 film about drug addiction, “The Man With the Golden Arm,” he played Frank Sinatra’s pal Sparrow in a performance that is often cited as a precursor of Dustin Hoffman’s turn as Ratso Rizzo in “Midnight Cowboy.”
On “Top Cat,” the animated television series of the early 1960s, he was the voice of T. C., a k a Top Cat himself, the leader of a mischievous cat gang. (The character was based on Phil Silvers’s Sergeant Bilko.)
He was one of two gas station attendants (Marvin Kaplan was the other) who witness the destruction of their station by Jonathan Winters in the 1963 lunatic film comedy “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”
Most sources indicate that Mr. Stang was born in Chelsea, Mass., in 1925, but according to his family, though he had relatives in Chelsea, he was born in Manhattan on Sept. 28, 1918. His father was a lawyer until the 1929 stock market crash and earned a living afterward as a salesman.
The Chelsea story was one Mr. Stang perpetuated himself; he told interviewers that he got his first job in radio in 1934 at age 9 after he wrote to “Let’s Pretend,” a New York children’s radio show, and asked for an audition. Told he could audition when he was next in New York, he took the bus from Boston, alone, the following Saturday and was hired.
“We were married 60 years and I never managed to get him to correct that,” his wife, JoAnne Stang, said in an interview Monday.
The truth, Ms. Stang said, was that her husband grew up mostly in Brooklyn and graduated from New Utrecht High School. He wrote the note asking for an audition from Brooklyn, and he was older than 9.
He began his show business career as a teenager — his first radio appearances were on the shows “The Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour” and “Let’s Pretend” — and he went on to perform on dozens of radio programs in the 1930s and ’40s, including soap operas, mysteries and comedies, and was often called on to play more than one role.
He was probably best known at the time for “The Goldbergs,” the long-running family series set in Bronx on which he played the character Seymour Fingerhood, the teenage neighbor to the title family, and later as a sidekick to stars like Eddie Cantor, Jack Bennyand especially Milton Berle.
Mr. Stang was a regular on “The Henry Morgan Show,” a showcase for Morgan’s astringent satire, often playing a complaining, goofball New Yorker named Gerard who traded banter and one-liners with the host. After Berle moved his radio show to television, Mr. Stang appeared from 1953 to 1955, bringing along his character, Francis, a pain-in-the-neck stagehand who bugged the star relentlessly.
In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1949 (Wally Cox, a skilled goldsmith, made their wedding rings, she said), and his son, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., Mr. Stang is survived by a daughter, Deborah Stang, of Brighton, Mass., and two granddaughters.
Mr. Stang landed on Broadway three times, the last being a revival of “The Front Page” in 1969. He was a regular on the 1960s comedy “Broadside,” a short-lived, distaff version of “McHale’s Navy,” and was a guest star on numerous series, including “Bonanza,” “Batman” and “The Cosby show.”
He was also the voice of many cartoon characters, including Nurtle the Turtle in the 1965 film “Pinocchio in Outer Space.” Other film credits include Otto Preminger’s 1968 gangster comedy “Skidoo,” with Jackie Gleason; “Hercules in New York” (1970), a comedy withArnold Schwarzenegger; and “Dennis the Menace” (1993), with Walter Matthau.
“He loved the cartoons, and he liked doing commercials, too,” Ms. Stang said of her husband. “But most of all, he loved radio. It offered him such a span of roles.”

Blue Skies

Blue Skies! Charlie here.

I hope you're in the Christmas spirit!
The snow (here) is great but I'm moody.

I'm still riding my bike, but my legs and voice are weaker.


(Rats)


Friday (before the storm) I rode down to Whole Foods on 24th and 7th. When I finished shopping and caned my way back to my bike, I had to ask a stranger to help me lift my leg over the bar! (The bar is pretty low).


Last night, I went to the Symphony Space on 95th to hear the Brandenburg Concertos... fantastic!

(I had to use two canes for the first time).


I've been off Rilutek this month. I'll be back on it in January. Maybe that's why I'm weaker?

I feel like I can meditate and pray my way out of this ALS. Am I nuts?

I read every day and go to the Christian Science Church in SOHO on Wednesday and Sunday. (My father's family were Christian Scientists). I was brought up a lax Episcopalian. I started going to the Christian Science Church after my diagnosis. It's been helpful, mind opening.

This morning I read a book called "Miracles"; a small book about tapping into the universal energy of G-d. I also read "Strunk and White's Element's of Style".

Both books stress the importance of clarity.

Daily, I put off researching. I'd rather get on my bike.

But I made progress today. I was on the phone with Medicare, Medco and Mitzumoto's office trying to set up a new prescription for January. I think I'm all set.


For the New Year?
I will research.

-Charlie

snow

snow storm West 42nd Dec. 19 2009
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

LUCILLE LORTELL

Before the snow arrives, I cab to Christopher Street to see a matinee of "So Help Me God".
Maurine Dallas Watkins wrote the play in 1929. This is its first production.

I love old plays but this one needs work: cutting, shaping, focus. And the Lortelle is the wrong theater for this play; the sound is dead; the sets are cramped. It needs a classic old Broadway house.

Kristen Johnson was hilarious (Tallulah Bankhead by way of Carol Burnette and Charles Busch) .

The play's message - (it's all about money and survival in the theatre - in life?) - is an ugly truth all theatre folk face.