San Francisco

 I first began to think about San Francisco when my favorite baseball team, the New York Giants, moved there in April 1958 when I was 12 years old.  The relocation didn't bother me as I lived 286 miles from New York City.  Adding another 2,510 miles had no effect on me personally.

Fourteen years later (1972), I arrived in San Francisco for the first time in my brand new green Fiat 124 Sport Coupe (along with my ex-wife Bonita).  I even made it to Candlestick Park to see my Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 8-0.

In 2008, I made my second trip to San Francisco (along with my wife Cristina and friends Kevin and Connie), this time in a rental car.  We stayed in the same hotel (at 940 Sutter Street) where Judy (Kim Novak) lived in the 1958 classic Alfred Hitchcock film, Vertigo.

"At 5:12 AM on April 18, 1906 (115 years ago today), a major earthquake struck San Francisco.  As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across the city and burned out of control for several days.

More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core.  Modern estimates (of the death toll) put the number in the several thousands.  

More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless.  Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere.  Rebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale."

On October 17, 1989 (my late brother Ted's 47th birthday), my Giants and another San Francisco earthquake came together.  Just before the start of the third game of that year's World Series at Candlestick Park (5 PM local time) between the Giants and the Oakland A's, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake occurred, causing the game to be postponed...for ten days, the longest delay in World Series history.      

 

Mike Parr

During my freshman year at Penn (1963-1964), I lived on the fifth floor of the Class of 1928 Dormitory, upper quad, 37th and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia.  There were 33 of us in 11 rooms.  You can do the math.  

In the middle of the year there were rumblings that many of us (not me) were dissatisfied with our roommates.  As a result, the Resident Advisor (RA) on our floor devised a plan to change many of the room assignments in order to return to peaceful coexistence.

I stayed in my room, but I got two new roommates: Ralph Pincus from Pittsburgh and Mike Parr from Baltimore.  My old ones were Steve Sandler from Boston and a name I forgot from (pre-Disney) Orlando (metro area population then 230,000; now 2,002,000).  

Ralph invited me on my only trip to his hometown for a Jewish holiday weekend.  Nice guy, Ralph.  We met again at the Class of 1967's 25th reunion in 1992.

On the other hand, Mike Parr was memorable.  He was a rich kid,  destined to join a lucrative family business after graduation.  

Mike once showed me (at my request) his 27 belts resting in his dresser drawer.  I had one belt .  Who needs more than one?

Mike was good-looking: tall, blonde and well built.  Plus he had oodles of self-confidence.  Especially with girls.  At mixers, he had no trouble meeting and picking them up.  

Obviously, Mike was someone I wanted as a friend, someone who could teach and advise me.  And he became my friend.  

Mike got his girlfriend to fix me up with her friend, Phyllis Green, a freshman at Temple University.  We dated a few times.  Mike gave me some pointers.

Mike could sweettalk anybody.  Once he bought non-refundable tickets to a concert, but had to cancel at the last minute.  He told the ticket agent he needed the money to go home for his mother's funeral.  He got the money.  His mother was fine.

Unfortunately, Mike was lazy and lacked motivation.  We had the same 8 AM class.  Many times I couldn't get him out of bed in time.

After three semesters, Penn determined Mike wasn't making satisfactory progress and sent him packing back to Baltimore.  A pity!  I wonder what became of Mike Parr.    

The Maltese Falcon

 In 1941, John Huston wrote and directed the classic film noir, The Maltese Falcon, which starred Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Jerome Cowan, Ward Bond, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet (nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, won by Donald Crisp for How Green Was My Valley).  The film was nominated for Academy Award for Best Picture (also won by How Green Was My Valley).  

The Maltese Falcon is based upon the 1930 novel of the same name, written by Dashiell Hammett.  In 1990, it was listed as the 10th best crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association.  

Sam Spade (Bogart), a private investigator in San Francisco, is hired by a female client (Astor) who is worried about the whereabouts and safety of her sister.  Spade's partner (Cowan) agrees to follow her when she is to meet her sister's boyfriend.  Turns out her story is a complete lie and the partner is murdered.  

The real story is that the female client, whose name is O'Shaughnessy, along with two others, Cairo (Lorre) and Gutman (Greenstreet), are desperately seeking an extremely valuable statuette of a bird (The Maltese Falcon).  So valuable that three people are murdered to get their hands on it.

In reality O'Shaughnessy killed Spade's partner and Spade turns her in to the police.  At the end of the book, which I recently finished, Spade meets his late partner's widow.  

In the movie version's ending, a policeman (Bond) holds the statuette (which turns out to be fake).  He asks, "What is it?"

Spade responds, "The...stuff that dreams are made of."  It is one of the most famous last lines in movie history.  

Apparently, Humphrey Bogart suggested this line to John Huston (who was nominated for Academy Award for Best Screenplay, won by Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller for Here Comes Mr. Jordan) who added it to the film's script.  For years I didn't know the whole story behind this line of dialogue.

Thanks to my wife Cristina, we now know that Bogart was paraphrasing a line from Shakespeare's The Tempest.  A character named Prospero says, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."  Cristina came across this revelation while reading a book about the great French author, Marcel Proust.  

Before going to Hollywood, Bogart was a stage actor on Broadway, appearing in 18 plays from 1922 to 1935.  As such, I believe he must have read The Tempest.      

Two Women, Chapter 3

One evening Ted arranged a Zoom call with Monica on his laptop.  Even on the computer screen, she looked gorgeous.

They talked for almost an hour.  It started getting romantic.

After the call, Ted thought about when he could make another trip to Chapel Hill.  Zoom only whetted his appetite for the Brasileira.

However, a minute after the Zoom call, Mona called Ted on his cell phone, just to say hello.  This created a perplexity for him.

Ted enjoyed speaking to Mona, just as he had with Monica.  And then he got confused.

At one point, Ted called Mona, "Monica."  There was a silence on the other end of the line.

Finally, she said, "Who's Monica?"  

Douglas Kenyon

 From September 1950 (kindergarten) until December 1956 (first half of the sixth grade) I attended the Fitzhugh Park School located at East Tenth and Bridge Streets in Oswego, NY.  For the first year, my 12 year-old brother Paul walked me home from school.  

Afterwards, I (at 6 years of age) walked by myself the six blocks to East Fourth Street.  Then, after crossing East Bridge Street, I would meander through the East Side Park to our house at the corner of East Third and Oneida Streets.

I would walk back and forth twice a day as I joined the rest of my family (parents and two brothers) for lunch at home and then returned to school for the afternoon session.

Once, my mother asked me if I looked both ways before I crossed the busy East Bridge Street.  After thinking about it, I responded, "I don't remember crossing East Bridge Street."  But, I had to have crossed it.

Sometimes I started walking home from school with my friend Douglas Kenyon.  There are two things I remember about him.  One was that his body produced an excessive amount of saliva.  Why?  I don't know.

The other was one time when we arrived at Douglas' house a few blocks from school.  His father, the Reverend Kenyon, took the two of us in his car and drove me the rest of the way home.  I remember sitting by the passenger side door with Douglas in the middle next to his father.

All was quiet until we arrived in front of my house.  Then Reverend Kenyon launched into about a ten minute sermon about how I, a Jewish boy, had to accept Jesus Christ as my savior or I would be damned to hell for eternity, no matter how good a person I was.  

He didn't frighten me as much as I feared my mother's reaction to being late for lunch.  I was too polite to leave the car before Reverend Kenyon finished.  

My brother Paul came out to the car and asked what was the delay.  I told him I would be in soon.  Reverend Kenyon paid him no mind.

Finally, Reverend Kenyon finished and I left the car.  I didn't mention to my family what had just happened.

I lost touch with Douglas soon after as his father was assigned to a church in another town.  But, I never forgot the time we were all together in that car parked in front of 30 East Oneida Street.

Einstein

In November 1956, my family moved from the eastside of Oswego, New York (30 East Oneida Street) to its westside (327 West Seneca Street).  As a result, in January 1957 (at 11 years of age) I transferred to the Kingsford Park School (from the Fitzhugh Park School) for the second half of the sixth grade.  Three years later, I graduated after completing the ninth grade.

On my first day at the Kingsford Park, my mother drove me to school, but insisted I go in by myself.  I was very nervous, but in retrospect, I'm glad she did.    

I remember being escorted to my classroom.  Our teacher asked my new class a lot of questions.  I raised my hand multiple times and always provided the correct answer.  One of my classmates (Billy Richards) was so impressed he referred to me as "Einstein."  Who?

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879 (142 years ago today).  His parents were non-observant Jews.  

At the age of seventeen, Einstein enrolled at the Zurich Polytechnic School in Switzerland.  There he met Mileva Maric, a Serbian woman and a fellow student.  They married in 1903.

After graduation, Einstein got a job in the Swiss patent office evaluating patent applications.  His specialty was "the transmission of electrical signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time."

In 1905, Einstein "published four groundbreaking papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy."  He was only 26 years old.  

In 1908, Einstein was appointed a lecturer at the University of Bern.  The following year, he became an Associate Professor in Theoretical Physics at the University of Zurich.

Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics."

Also in 1921, Einstein visited the United States for the first time.  He wrote his observations.  "What strikes a visitor is the joyous, positive attitude to life...The American is friendly, self-confident, optimistic and without envy."

In 1935, with the rise of Nazi Germany, Einstein applied for American citizenship.  He took a position at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University in New Jersey.

In 1939, Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt "recommending the US engage in nuclear weapons research."  This was the beginning of the eventual development of the Atomic Bomb which effectively ended World War II in August 1945 (when I was born).

Albert Einstein became so famous for his theory of relativity that strangers stopped him on the street to ask for its explanation.  He got around this problem by denying he was "professor Einstein."

      

  

A Face in the Crowd

A Face in the Crowd is a 1957 dramatic film produced and directed by Elia Kazan, written by Budd Schulberg and starred Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal.  It was based on a short story (which I recently read), Your Arkansas Traveler, also written by Schulberg. 

In the film, Lonesome Rhodes (Griffith), a charismatic guitar playing drifter, is discovered by Marcia (Neal), a radio station producer in rural Arkansas.  

"She invites him to speak to the (radio) audience and sing while playing his guitar, and his raw voice, folksy humor and personal charm make him instantly popular.  Marcia witnesses the charismatic Rhodes ad-lib his way to local area popularity, effectively criticizing local politicians along the way."

Eventually, Rhodes's popularity extends to him becoming a TV star in New York City.  "As his fame, influence, and ego increase, Rhodes is enlisted to improve the appeal of a presidential hopeful."     

Marc Fisher (a senior editor for The Washington Post) wrote the following in an article published in the newspaper on February 8, 2016:

"Trump’s rule-smashing romp may have no precedent in the annals of presidential campaigns, but the template for his remarkable rise was laid out in a little-known film masterwork half a century ago.  A Face in the Crowd stars Andy Griffith as “Lonesome” Rhodes, a folksy, charming Arkansas traveler who soars to the pinnacle of American celebrity and political power.

In A Face in the Crowd, Budd Schulberg created a character who dares to say what regular folks privately think; who has few, if any, filters; and who gets away with rogue behavior because he’s charming and, eventually, successful."

Donald Trump and Lonesome Rhodes?