John Williams Strikes Back

S, with Arthur Fiedler in Boston

In 1980, composer John Williams replaced Arthur Fiedler as conductor of the Boston Pops after his scoring of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. The following is the last conversation to take place between the two musicians:

John Williams: I saw a city on the Charles.
Arthur Fiedler: [nods] Colleagues you have there.
John Williams: They were in rehearsal...
Arthur Fiedler: It is the future you see.
John Williams: The future?
[pause]
John Williams: Will they tank?
Arthur Fiedler: [closes his eyes for a moment] Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.
John Williams: I've got to conduct for them.
Arthur Fiedler: Decide you must, how to serve them best. If you leave now, conduct them you could; but you would end all that they have played, and diminuendoed.
John Williams: That's not true. That's IMPOSSIBLE!
Arthur Fiedler: The possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.

Che Guevara Doesn't Look Like Inigo Montoya

On the Southeast Corner of Central Park, NYC

The only time I had ever seen Che Guevara was on those t-shirts everyone wears of him in that monochromatic, Photoshop style. As such, I never really knew what the man looked like. My only other image of him was that of being anachronistically played by Mandy Patinkin in the Andrew Lloyd Weber Musical Evita. While Che was a Marxist revolutionary from Argentina, Mandy was avenging his father’s death by the hand of a six-fingered man. Both of their missions might have been prone to bloodshed, but when I saw Che's statue on the southeastern corner of Central Park, I realized that the two men looked nothing alike.

This was a surprise to me, as in some of my previous posts I thought that my background in theater had provided me with all of the education I needed in world history. This post serves as a reminder to us all that, despite the fact that a man can sing in a soprano range to music about Argentinian dictators’ wives, he doesn’t necessarily fit the description of militant revolutionaries in other ways.

I Am Going to Jumpstart the Economy Myself

The Financial District, NYC

There is a lot of talk right now about our floundering economy. Unemployment rates are up. Our nation's GDP is down. We haven't seen a bull market since the 1950s. I've decided that our country needs help, and I'm the one that will have to give it to them. I've created a list of three things that I am going to do to jumpstart our economy:

1. I am going to find every Monopoly and Life game at every garage sale in the country and infuse our markets with the fake bills. This currency will, after all, be more valuable than the dollar.
2. I am going to pretend that the last eight years never happened.
3. I am going to wear a suit made of question marks like that creepy guy that tells us his book will teach us how to get free money to write a novel.

This is exactly what our country needs: inflation, denial, and fraud. Without the proper combination of these measures, we will have to tell the homeless person that panhandles to us that we're pretty much about to become his neighbor.

Bonus.

Chubby

Allie, in Rochester, NY

Says Allie:

'Chubby was apparently "the most beloved" of all firefighter horses in Rochester. But, he was also the last firefighting horse in Rochester, which begs the question: Where did he go wrong? What about Chubby made the firefighters say, "Yeah, this horse thing really isn't working out for us anymore?" Possibly, it was Chubby's ability to turn firemen to stone. Turning them to stone did make them fireproof, but it also rendered them unable to continue fighting fires. This, as you can imagine, led to major staffing shortages in the fire department.'

Dear Brooklyn

Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, NY

Dear Brooklyn:

I write you today to offer my apologies for not visiting more often. Even though you’re part of the same city that I’ve lived in for nearly ten years, not one of the four apartments I’ve lived in has ever existed in any borough other than Manhattan. While I know that as a municipal corporation you’re above hearing excuses for my behavior, I thought you might want to know why my visits have been so few and far between:

1. I’m intimidated by your size: If you were a stand-alone city, you would be the fourth largest city in the country. You’ve even taken a step up from when you were included in the opening credits of Welcome Back, Kotter, when you were only the fifth largest city.
2. I’m confused by your name: You’re called “Brooklyn,” and yet you’re also known as “Kings County.” Not only do I not get this, but this confusion has caused me to overlook how my own borough suffers from the same dichotomy.
3. I’m still bitter about the “Sensation” exhibit: I know it’s not your fault but that of a mayor that I never voted for and am happy to be rid of, but the censorship surrounding that exhibit still makes me cringe.
4. I don’t understand the G train: I can never get on the right platform for that train, and when I do take a ride, I wind up in Queens. And don’t even get me started on Queens.
5. The Wonder Wheel at Coney Island scared the crap out of me when I was a kid: I suppose I wasn’t really the manliest of seven-year-olds, in the end.

I hope you’ll forgive me. I hope that my apology brings with it a new era of malteds and visits to brownstone apartments, and that you’ll welcome me with your open, second-most-densely populated arms.

Best,
Neil

Constitutional Delegate not a Fan of Broadway Musical

Iain and Beth with John Dickinson in Philadelpha, PA

How much do we really know about John Dickinson? This man from Maryland and Pennsylvania is known for his refusal to sign the Declaration of Independence and for coming out of retirement to participate in the Constitutional Convention. What is less known, however, is his distaste for being made out as the bad guy in the Sherman Edwards/Peter Stone musical 1776.

“I don’t understand why John Adams and Ben Franklin get to be the protagonists, and I’m stuck being the show’s primary adversary,” Dickinson was reported as saying. “Everyone knows that the bad guy never gets the good song. Hell, even Lee from Virginia gets more of a show-stopper than I do, and he’s barely even in the second act.”

“It’s true,” Caesar Rodney from Delaware said, “Dickinson’s song ‘Cool, Cool, Considerate Men’ is easily the lamest song in the entire score. They even have to dance the minuet, which has to be the worst choreography ever to grace a Broadway stage.”

“The next time Dickinson feels bad about being the primary source of conflict in a staged show,” John Adams said in his characteristic abrasiveness, “He should reconsider his stance as a loyalist to the crown.”

Edward Rutledge, a delegate from South Carolina and Dickinson’s fellow conservative, declined to comment.

Hans Christian Andersen's Fear of Ducks

Central Park, NYC

One of the lesser-known facts about Hans Christian Andersen is that, when he neared the end of his life, he found himself suffering from Anatidaephobia. This is the fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck was watching you.

A person might be inclined to think that this fear stemmed from being haunted by his "Ugly Duckling" story, much like Peter Davies was haunted for being the namesake of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan character. The truth, though, was that before he started telling stories, Hans Christian Andersen wanted to rid Denmark of ducks. As a young lad, a duck stole his smørrebrød as he was trying to read a really large book, and he declared his vengeance on the entirety of the anatidae family of birds. He never got further than setting his intentions, for his mother then called him in for leverpostej sandwiches, which he liked better than smørrebrød anyway.

Still, though, whenever he found himself reading a really large book, his guilty conscience plagued him and his fear emerged. It was a phobia that haunted him until his dying days.

The Immigrants

"The Immigrants" in Battery Park, NYC

In 1855, Battery Park became a processing center for immigrants coming into New York City. Though it would be succeeded by Ellis Island some forty years later, it served its purpose and was a vital step in helping people from other countries to claim better lives.

There was Molly, who was thrown out of her country for walking around on her knees and pantomiming the "YMCA" song even though it wouldn't be written for another 125 years. Then there were Larry and Michelle Drexel, who had a newborn baby and didn't actually plan on going to America, but their insistence on always staring up at the sky caused them to take several wrong turns and wind up in New York City instead of the general store to buy more diapers. The Drexels were followed by their friend Stan, who did everything the Drexels did and therefore kept staring at the sky with his hand on his heart and mistakenly ended up in America as well. Martin was another immigrant who came through Battery Park, and he came because he had heard that America was a place where a man could crawl around on his hands and knees and shake hands with imaginary rabbits in peace.

When the Battery Park immigration office closed down to make way for Ellis Island, they became more firm about who they accepted and began asking people important questions, such as whether or not they shake hands with imaginary animals or ever look at the ground.

The Castle Ikea

The Subway, NYC

Today, I created a reading area in the bedroom of my new apartment. I obtained a bed and turned my futon into a full-time couch. I placed my dresser between the two pieces, but in order for it to be a reading area, I needed a lamp. Where, though, might I find a lamp that was both affordable and awesome?

The answer was simple: Ikea.

Though I had never been there, I decided to go to the Brooklyn store. I wouldn’t have to wait until the weekend for the free shuttle to Elizabeth, NJ or make the trek up to Paramus. I took the subway down into Red Hook this afternoon.

"Ikea?" said a man on the street when I asked him for directions. "That's probably two or three miles away."

Two or three miles? This was bad news, for my poor sense of planning had not only put me in the middle of a seedy part of Brooklyn that required me to walk under the BQE and past several deserted garages, but it also placed me in the middle of a snow storm.

The good news, however, was that it wasn't two or three miles. It was probably only half a mile, and when I had the store's magnificent blues and yellows in my line of vision I felt like Sir Galahad in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when he thinks he sees the Grail over Castle Anthrax. While Galahad was greeted by Carol Cleveland and a castle full of randy women, I was greeted by an Orgel lamp for only $9.99. Still, though, it emits a soft but efficient glow.

And, it is awesome.

George Washington at Valley Forge

The Financial District, NYC

During the winter of 1777-78, George Washington’s Continental Army was in desperate shape in its fight against the British. After the Army failed in its attempt to stave off the advancement of British troops into Philadelphia in September 1777, it made its camp in Valley Forge, PA. Nearly 2,500 of Washington’s 10,000 troops died from disease and exposure in the six months the Army attempted to recover from recent battles, so Washington was often seen on his knees with his fists clamped together in supplication to his Creator while his horse watched from behind a tree.

Washington knew he needed to improve his army’s effectiveness against the British, but how? He hired Prussian-German army officer Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Madrich Estonich Valvonet Candor von Steuben to be the army’s inspector general. For his role, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Madrich Estonich Valvonet Candor von Steuben came to Valley Forge and trained the troops in a new military model. Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Madrich Estonich Valvonet Candor von Steuben’s model included training the soldiers in full military dress uniform, teaching them how to use the bayonet, and cursing at them in French and German.

Before Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Madrich Estonich Valvonet Candor von Steuben’s arrival at Valley Forge, Washington’s situation seemed bleak. After the arrival of Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Madrich Estonich Valvonet Candor von Steuben, they won the Revolutionary War.

This was good news.