Rant #434: Two Comics Not Standing

Two comedians who reached the zenith of their craft in the late 1960s and early 1970s passed away last week.

David Frye was one of the top impressionists in the country, but was forever linked with Richard Nixon. During the Watergate era, he reached the pinnacle of success with his dead-on impressions of the scandal-ridden President.

He had everything down pat. The facial mannerisms, the way Nixon talked, everything. He was perhaps Nixon's greatest impersonator.

He had several best-selling record albums centering on his impressions of Nixon.

After several years at the top, Frye fell just as quickly as Nixon did.

He was so inextricably tied in with Nixon that when the President resigned and lived the solitary life for the rest of his life, Frye's career waned. He did other impressions, but none as well as Nixon.

He continued to perform, but was not the presence he once was--he was basically the Vaughn Meader of his day.



Charlie Callas is another story.

Callas began his entertainment career as a drummer, but the way he looked--wiry build, tall and lanky, almost like a human rubber band--made him the focus of the bands he was in.

His fellow musicians noticed that Callas had a knack for comedy anyway, and encouraged him to trade in his drumsticks for a microphone.

And he did to great acclaim.

When he wasn't appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show or on The Tonight Show or on every other major entertainment show of the 1960s and 1970s, he was drawing big crowds in Las Vegas.

He also appeared in a number of movies, never the star, but you knew he was in the movie by his presence.

Since the 1980s, he did mainly standup, and his star faded from television as the talk show faded. He was among the veteran comics who were basically squeezed out by the in-your-face, newer comics.

But he kept performing into the early 2000s, and had been in semi-retirement when he passed.

Both Frye and Callas left excellent legacies behind. Anyone who mimics a President has to take a listen to Frye's comedy albums, while rubbery comic actors like Jim Carrey certainly owe a debt of gratitude to Callas.

May they both rest in peace.

Rant #433: The Teaching Profession

Today is the 25th anniversary of the Challenger catastrophe, where teacher Christa McAuliffe and her fellow crew members perished seconds after the Challenger lifted off its launch pad.

I guess for kids born in the 1970s, this is a major touchstone, much like the JFK assassination was for us baby boomers.

If you hadn't realized the world wasn't perfect prior to these happenings, you certainly did right after.

I remember that I was 28 years old and just really getting my feet wet as a productive member of the community. I had two jobs--I was a teaching sub during the day and in the evening, I worked at a real estate office as a clerk.

I needed both jobs, as although I was actively searching for a regular teaching job, I had to take what I could get, and what I could get was a job as a sub, probably the worst job in America. But what was I to do?

Anyway, my personal dream was almost over. I couldn't get a regular teaching job, I was engaged to my first wife, and I needed steady work. I had worked in the real estate office part-time, they knew what I could do, and it was at this point that I was transferring over to full-time work in that office.

I think I was still subbing here and there, but I was nearly at the point where I worked full-time in the real estate office.

I remember that as we worked, we turned on the radio so everyone could hear the blastoff. This was such an anticipated flight because of McAuliffe, the first teacher chosen to be sent into space.

She wasn't an astronaut, and I think most of us thought that she was one of us. If she could travel into space, maybe one day we would all get the opportunity.

Well, that opportunity faded as we listened to the report. Seconds after liftoff, the Challenger exploded. There were no survivors. To this day, we don't know if the crew died instantly or if they didn't.

But they were gone.

The world listened in horror as this happened.

In the office, as we busily were typing away and basically using the radio as sort of "white noise," everyone stopped what they were doing. We crowded around the radio to hear more.

"Could what we heard happened actually have happened?" we asked over and over.

And, of course, the answer was a resounding, "Yes!"

McAuliffe and her crewmembers are remembered, not because they were the first to perish in man's quest to conquer space, but because of the young teacher on board. Numerous schools are named after her, and there are many school programs in place in science that exist because of her.

But what of the profession she so proudly represented on this flight?

Way back when, I could not get a full-time teaching position, and alas, times continue to be tight today.

More and more school districts are closing schools, laying off teachers, and not giving young teachers a chance to show what they are worth.

New York City alone has closed dozens of schools in the past several years during the reign of Michael Bloomberg, and has laid off teachers at an alarming rate.

My daughter received her teaching degree last spring, and continues to be without a job. She can't even get an interview. She is basically biding her time for a few more months, and then I think her dream may have to take a back seat to reality, as happened to me 25 years ago.

Teaching has taken a big hit, and I don't know how long people like my daughter can hold out.

The profession will lose these bright young minds, and they will never regain them.

Somehow, I don't think this was the message McAuliffe was taking with her into outer space 25 years ago, and the children born in her aftermath, like my daughter, who strived to become the next generation of teachers, are not being permitted to live out their dreams.

Who to blame? Well, I honestly don't know.

All that I know is that when the need for teachers arises again--and it will, this is a cyclical thing--I don't know if my daughter and others like her will be available.

Like me, they will have turned their backs on the profession they hoped to pursue.

It was a shame 25 years ago, and it is a shame now too.

Rant #432: Snow Go

We got hit again with about a foot of snow. This, coupled with what we got yesterday and my own recent health issues, has made this a helluva week for me.

And at this point, I don't know if I am going to work or not.

I woke up at 4 a.m., ate breakfast, walked the dog, and started to dig my wife and my car out and shovel the walk.

It was still snowing, and coming down pretty hard at the time.

After doing this, I came back into the house, totally pooped.

(No, that is not me in the photo. I did a better job than this guy did, I can tell you that.)

Again, I am not 100 percent yet from the cold that I have had the entire week. It really was something of a shock to the system to be shoveling like I did at that hour, but I had to do what I had to do.

My wife, who is a bank teller and who was supposed to open her branch today, was called and told she didn't have to be in until 11 a.m., so there really wasn't much of a need to continue to dig her out until maybe an hour and a half before she has to leave.

Something to look forward to!

My son's school district contacted us by email and phone--he is off today, as the schools are closed. He was supposed to take his math mid-term, but that has been postponed.

Me, I don't know anything about my work. The past couple of years, we have never closed during a workday, no matter what. They used to have a weather plan, but they don't anymore.

All that I know, I have a foot of snow on the ground around my house, and the street has not been plowed. Based on past experience, the plow won't come around until mid-day.

I will be lucky to get my wife's car out of the driveway. She has four-wheel drive, which will help matters.

My car has front-wheel drive, and unless they do a good job plowing, I am stuck in my house.

Happily, this didn't happen on a Friday. I get paid tomorrow, and no, as I think you can figure out, we don't have direct deposit. So either I am there or I don't get my check.

I hate the snow, I really, really do.

Rant #431: A Cold In the Cold

I am sick.

I have been for the past few days. I have this miserable cold, which is affecting my sight and my throat. My voice is very raspy, and my eyes very watery.

My nose ... well, the less said about that part of my body, the better.

Mount Vesuvius never poured out more molten lava than that part of my body.

In fact, on Monday, I had one of my all-time sneezes. Thank goodness no one was near me when I sneezed--they would have been hit by flying debris.

I kind of figure I got this thing from my son. My son caught a draft from running outside with his track team about two or three weeks ago, and he had the sniffles for a while.

I am sure he passed it on to me.

And every parent knows that when you pick up a cold or some virus from your kid, you get it worse that the kid did.

And I did.

I know that I had a fever on Sunday, when the cold hit me full force. But it was a Sunday, so I just stayed in the entire day.

I went to work the last two days--don't know how I did it, but I did.

Yesterday was a rough day. I am surprised I made it the entire day, but I did.

But today ... well, I won't be going to work today. I feel lousy. I will probably go back to bed after typing this rant.

I had every intention of going to work, and that is why I am typing this so early in the morning.

But it just isn't going to be.

Hopefully I will be better tomorrow with some more bed rest and a relatively calm day under my belt.

Having a cold in the cold really leaves me frigid.

Speak to you tomorrow--I hope.

Rant #430: Exercise Is Good For You

Physical fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne died over the weekend. He was 96 years old.

He was among the first of the superstar physical fitness personalities, and probably was the first using the then-relatively new medium of television as his springboard to success.

As a kid, I remember watching these syndicated shows, which I believe were run in New York City on Channel 11. They were in black and white, and featured LaLanne, a chair, maybe one other prop, and his beloved German shepherd.

And that was it. No fancy gizmos, nothing that would cost the viewer an arm and a leg to own, nothing like that.

And unlike most exercise gurus of this time, he appealed to women. Homemakers were the biggest chunk of his audience.

Sure, it was bare-bones TV at its finest, but it made LaLanne a household name, even in households that didn’t know a bench press from a bench warmer.

LaLanne, in his signature jump suit, would do jumping jacks and other relatively simple-to-do exercises during a quick half hour show, all the while his dog would be walking in and out of view.

LaLanne believed that anyone could get in shape, and he showed you how it could get done. Not only did he preach physical fitness, he lived the lifestyle, and was one of the first celebrities who pumped up the idea of healthy eating as well as an exercise regimen, leading to better overall health.

His fame spread, and he appeared on numerous TV shows, always in the character of Jack LaLanne, fitness guru. A lot of those appearances were satires on what he was famous for, but LaLanne took it all in stride. I am sure he believed that however he was able to get out the word on physical fitness, the better it was, and he was really good at selling this concept …

So good that in later years, he resurfaced on TV as the proponent of a juicing machine. Sure, it was an infomercial, but it was entertaining because of LaLanne.

And many of his original TV shows are finally finding their way to DVD. The physical fitness concepts he proposed 50 years ago are as valid today as they were in the 1960s.

So every time you see a commercial for one of those gadgets that will cost you lots of money to own, or see one of today’s fitness gurus go through the motions on what you should be doing to gain good health, think of LaLanne.

Without him, it is doubtful whether these gadgets and people would ever be able to be hawked, or be as visible as they are, without the guy who started it all more than 50 years ago.

Rant #429: Old Friends

I really enjoy revisiting my youth. Unlike things that I hear from other people, I can rightfully say that I had a terrific childhood, especially between the ages of seven and 14, those wonderful years when one moves from being a baby to becoming a young adult.

This weekend, I once again revisited those years, as I helped to assemble five of my friends from those days back in the mid 1960s and early 1970s into one place for the first time in over 40 years.

The Internet is a wonderful tool when it works (the reason for the lateness of this post is that the Internet was not working earlier). It can be used for so much good, but people find so many bad things to use it for too.

But let me focus on the good. The get together would not have been possible without the Internet.

The Internet draws us together as people, no matter where we are in the world. As long as one has Internet access, that person is as close to you as the keyboard in front of you. You just have to know where to direct yourself when you type, and Voila!, you can be there.

Anyway, over the past number of years, I have been trying to reconnect with my past by contacting my former buddies from those wonderful growing-up years.

First, I connected with people on something called Delphi Forums, a precursor to My Space and Facebook. I could not believe that I wasn’t alone in the pursuit of the past, and Delphi Forums allowed me to investigate that past.

But it had its limits. It wasn’t that well known, so only a handful of people actually visited it. But I did, and for 10 years it was the place to re-meet and re-greet my former friends.

Then the Facebook Revolution began, and there was no holding me back in my pursuit of these people. I initially hesitated to join Facebook, because my daughter had had some problems on another social networking site some years ago.

But when I finally joined, I found dozens of my old buddies on the site. Further investigations on sites like Classmates.com found others.

I have contacted so many old friends through these sites, and I am completely amazed that they actually remember me from the old neighborhood, Rochdale Village in South Jamaica, Queens, New York.

My comments about my old neighborhood are also included in a book about that place, and its place in New York City history.

None of this would have been possible without the Internet as the intermediary.

Now fast forward to this past Saturday. Through trial and error and some luck, I was able to get in contact with several of my old friends from the building I lived in, and after a couple of false starts, we finally met for breakfast this Saturday.

Even though I was battling the early onset of a cold—which became full blown on Sunday—I had an extremely enjoyable time. It is as if we had never left each other. We conversed as if we had been doing so for the past 40 years, talking about the old neighborhood, what we did after we left, and what we are doing now.

It was really a super morning!

The picture accompanying this rant shows myself and my buddies. We agree that circumstances may have pulled us apart, but we are still all joined at the hip forever because of our youthful experiences together.

Hopefully, we can get together again, possibly this summer.

There’s nothing like meeting up with old friends again to make this 50-plus year oldster into a kid again.

And I love that feeling!

Rant #428: Snow More

It is Friday, January 21, the day before my parents' 55th wedding anniversary (congratulations!), and it is snowing again in the Northeast.

It's the fifth major storm that we have weathered during this winter season, and we aren't even out of January yet.

I was out digging at 5 a.m. this morning. The snow was still coming down, but I had to get two cars dug out, my Kia and my wife's Jeep. It really wasn't that difficult, but anything is difficult at 5 a.m. in the morning.

The roads are terrible. I guess the plows don't wake up that early in the day.

So it's another snow. It's funny how your perception of snow changes according to your age and your situation.

Growing up in Queens, I didn't care about snow at all. It gave me another reason to get my sled and careen down the side of a slight hill that we had near my development's shopping center. I know I didn't have a care in the world back then.

Now, as an adult, I dread the snow. I hate driving in it, shoveling it, having anything to do with it.

When my kids were young, I would put them on their sleds and be a sled dog, dragging them around the block behind me. It was tiring, but they had fun.

Now, I just hate the snow. It is a nuisance that I can live without.

After a few winters that weren't much of anything, we have now had at least three winters that have been just horrible. Well, that's what you get from living in the Northeast.

Once solace that I have is that pitchers and catchers report to spring training in about two to three weeks. You know that when that happens, the warmer weather is right around the corner ...

But first, we have to get through February and March, and if this winter so far is any indication, I will be counting the days until April, in between snow shovelings.