Across The Universe
I’ve collected four NBC Universal Visitor Passes (white, blue, yellow and purple, if you’re playing along at home) in my 96 hours on the back lot.
They’ve been long hours, some chained to my computer here in the Abbott & Costello Building (a parking lot with one floor of offices, really; also, home to CSI), others racing up and down the hill in a golf cart to rehearsals, read throughs, and look sees.
Truth is, I’ve been looking at computer screen and television monitors most of the time. In between, though, I’ve seen a few noteworthy things.
Example. Yesterday afternoon, my boss called and asked me to run the pre-show format up the hill to review, which Ryan and I did. We met him at what’s called “The Producer’s Table,” where Movie Awards producers Mark Burnett, Lee Rolontz and Garett English were managing rehearsals.
We sat in the narrow Gibson Amphitheater rows reviewing segments, promo breaks and TRTs as all sorts of chaos swirled around us: Andy Samberg rehearsed his opening monologue, jib cams swooped and swayed, crew members finished off set elements, and dozens of automobile-sized, rainbow-striped, lightening-spewing LED monitors zipped and crackled. Pretty distracting. And pretty cool.
Likewise, Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine’s is parked just outside Stage 24. And there’s a motley assortment of movie vehicles gathering dust in the tram parking lots just behind the famed Gibson Amphitheater: Michael J. Fox’s “Back To the Future” Delorean (Doc Brown’s, actually), Smokey & The Bandit’s Trans Am, and The Adams Family’s hearse.
The portion of the lot destroyed by last year’s fire is almost completely rebuilt.
The weirdest thing, though, is when the Universal Studios tram rolls by, and four-cars worth of tourists crane their necks to ascertain, “Is he famous?”
Nope, nothing to see here; just me doin’ my job.
Sway & Samberg Talk Popcorn, Pimp Cups & Penises
Yup, that’s what two degrees and fourteen years in the workforce’ll get a guy: oversight of riveting headlines like “popcorn, pimp cups and penises.”
It’s late (12:59 am PT), I put in a fifteen hour day and concluded it with two beers, so lemme’ explain quickly.
Our job here is to cover all of the build up to the 2009 MTV Movie Awards: behind-the-scenes stuff, rehearsals, the red carpet, etc. And then, of course, we’ll be all over the big show itself.
There wasn’t a ton of action in the Gibson today; the set’s still being built, the lights are still being hung, the script’s still being polished. So we visited “Twilight” director Catherine Hardwick in Venice Beach, went for a hike in Runyon Canyon with “Hellboy” villian Luke Goss, and shopped for a dress with “Hills” star Stephanie Pratt (who had a thing or two to say to Paris Hilton).
And, at two o’clock this afternoon, Sway interviewed Movie Awards host Andy Samberg. Our young, demure producer returned from the shoot brimming with enthusiasm.
“Andy was great,” she said. “He really warmed up to Sway. They talked about hip-hop and pimp cups and…”
She began blushing.
“We probably can’t use the funniest part,” she stammered. “Andy says he prepares for big shows like this by, um, dipping his junk in a bathtub full of Ben Gay.”
Which is when my eyes grew wide, a smile overtook my face and I said, “Actually, that’s what we should break out; that’s the gold.”
Yup. Popcorn, pimp cups and penises. Sorry Walter Cronkite, sorry Comm Law 101 Professor White, and sorry mom and dad; that’s my gig. (That and fifteen hours in front of a PC and a fistful of craft service peanuts.) Enjoy, America!
Life In Technicolor
The Sheraton Universal City Hotel sits astride a great, cement-covered slab of dirt just over the hill from the Hollywood sign. My tenth-floor, corner room overlooks the San Fernando Valley: Van Nuys, Reseda, Northridge. The 101 is a stream of red and white light winding northward towards the Ventura Highway.
Universal Studios — home of The Invisible Man, Jaws, Flash Gordon, Conan The Barbarian (and O’Brien, for that matter), Fletch, The Breakfast Club, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (among others) — sits just below my tenth floor window.
I’m here in sunny Southern California for once again the 2009 MTV Movie Awards. This year’s annual homage to mainstream film will be hosted by SNL’s Andy Samberg and feature Eminem and Kings Of Leon. My job is to oversee some 200+ on-air newsbriefs, plus numerous online blogs, articles, photos and videos.
Our offices are in what’s called the Abbot & Costello Building on the Universal lot, just down the hill from the Universal Ampitheater. Desperate Housewives and CSI shoot in the surrounding soundstages, and Technicolor Headquarters are right next door.
Technicolor was the most widely-used color film processing method of early cinema, providing hyper-realistic, saturated levels of color to films like The Wizard of Oz, Rear Window, and Funny Girl.
Not that I’m seeing a terrific amount of actual color here. With the notable exception of our annual walk-through tour of the Gibson Amphitheater (including a backstage littered with graffiti from acts like The Who, Eric Clapton, Robert Plant, Styx and Pope John Paul II and a green room complete with a cherry-red grand piano), I spent all thirteen and a half hours of my workday staring at a rented PC. When I did sneak out, though, the sky was an unfettered blue punctuated by palm trees rustling in the flower-scented breeze.
The Hollywood Dream and the machinery that sells it to the rest of the world is all around, really. Now if we could just find time to relish it…
The Barking Crab
It seems to me that the best experiences in life come at a cost. As uber-rare, stomach churning, temple-throbbing, cold and clammy, cotton-mouthed, bloodshot and dizzy hangovers go, then, Sunday’s was well worth it.
Imagine…
A dull gray morning yields to a summer afternoon exploring the heron-strewn edges of the Mystic River with dear friends. You pass Bunker Hill and Old Ironsides, then break into the expanse of Boston Harbor, pausing an instant at the end of Logan Airport’s southern approach, scraping the bottom of 747s passing just inches overhead.
You steam towards harbor, the sun setting over the Boston skyline a fiery, smudged red. The skipper docks on the South End, his passengers spilling forth with laughter and smiles.
Pitchers of local brew are poured. More friends arrive. A young band — its frontman’s Takamine strummed clear through the pickguard — takes the stage and begins rendering perfectly serviceable Wallflowers, Oasis and Radiohead covers.
The eight of you fall into your waiting picnic table, a blurred tumble a hugs and laughs, sing-a-longs and outbursts. When appetizers arrive, you notice that it’s approaching ten o’clock, but think nothing of the fistfulls of calamari anf peel-and-eat shrimp.
The lobster arrives. Your wife ties a plastic bib around your neck, and you grimace for the camera, rip the prophylactic from your neck, and pose some more. You devour it in an instant, a slurry of butter and beer.
Later, you stumble into the cool, evening quiet, descend to the dock, and climb aboard the boat. But the tide has risen. The bridge just ahead looks perilously low. So you slingshot yourself to the bow (miraculously managing to avoid an icey-cold swim with the fishes), lay on the bow, and navigate the windshield mere centimeters from the rusty underbelly of the overpass.
When the skipper calls for one more port of call and one more round of IPA, no one argues. And with the blank-faced bouncer, the guy in the wolf hat, the BC Rugby captain, who would you want to?
Still, when morning breaks through the blackout shades of your hotel room, you choke down two Excedrin, strap on your running shoes, crank up your iPod, and drag your corpse through Boston, swearing every last drop of beer, but grinning all the way.
My American Idols
I shuttled between mixing “Feels Like Home” in my bedroom studio and “American Idol” on my living room flat screen tonight.
I caught Black Eyed Peas “performance” (freaky nails, Fergie), Cyndi Lauper and Allison Iraheta’s “Time After Time (like the pants, Cyndi, but not nearly as deep as Tiff and my version), Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” (great sport coat), and Kara DioGuardi’s bikini moment (no complaints).
As a media executive (especially one with a hand in a few not-insignificant live events himself), I had to appreciate the spectacle: the swooping jibs, swirling spotlights, and super-slick production. The show’s producers didn’t miss a beat. They milked every ounce of narrative from the night, from interviewing Lambert and Allen’s parents (and cutting away to their breathless expressions innumerable times), to cheap, celebrity audience cameos, to manufactured surprises (like when castaway Tatiana Del Toro stormed the stage to sing “Saving All My Love” as “security” chased her off). They even gave Simon a few lines of apparently genuine monologue.
Meanwhile, I was tweaking EQ, levels, pan and affects on my currently 27-track cover of The Nadas “Feels Like Home.” It’s painstaking, repetitious, tedious stuff; not unlike staring at an eye chart all afternoon. “This better? Or this? This better? Or this?”
There are nine tracks of vocals, six tracks of drums, six tracks of guitars, two tracks of bass, two tracks of tambourine, and an egg shaker. The percussion, for example, were twenty minutes on their own: two tambourines panned 100% left and right with the shaker dead center. The vocals — a single verse track, doubled chorus melody and three, doubled harmonies — were two hours on their own.
I paused my production just long enough to watch the final moment, the glorious instant when over one hundred million American votes were heard. And though I was both surprised and pleased with Kris Allen’s win (much as I like Lambert and relate to his show tune-loving, Duran Duran looking ways), and find him significantly more authentic (if you will) than most of the other contenders on the show, I was still left cold.
I couldn’t help think of all of my musician friends, each one struggling in his or her own way, slogging it out night after night in some honky tonk bar room, or beer-stained basement, or rinky-dink recording studio. And I felt a little cheated.
It seems to me winning American Idol is like banking on winning the lottery instead of a lifetime of reasoned savings, or liposuction instead of exercise. They’re what my father refers to as “microwave” solutions. Sure, they’re quick and painless, but do they last? Do they mean anything? Are they good for you?
Here’s to Kris Allen, then. Moreover, though, here’s to the real American Idols, the Casey Sheas, Raining Janes, and Nadas of the world, the kids singing along to a record player, or dancing with tennis rackets for guitars. They’re the real winners, because they’re in it for the love of the song, the sound of the band, and the warmth of the crowd, not the Golden Idol.
Street Fair Rules
The balloons were Trojan Horses, really, or slight of hand at best; mere diversions intended to lure the children closer before handing off a pamphlet to the smiling parents gently instructing, “What do you say?”
Once in Ethan and Edward’s hands, the shiny, green and orange West Side YMCA helium balloons trumped all of the action at the Amsterdam Street Fair. They stood mesmerized in the center of the street, oblivious to the steady stream of strollers, bikes and pedestrians, the barking Gyro vendor, and even the mixtape salesman playing bongos.
Balloon activities were limited: letting the string slide through their little fingers then catching it before it floats away, and bopping on another on the head and giggling.
Head bopping, though, provided limited returns.
There may be nothing more heartbreaking than watching a helium balloon slip from its mooring and float slowly out of reach as a child’s delight turns to dismay and then, disaster: soul-crushing, heart-wrenching, tiny-little tears that spring from the corner of bright, blue eyes and plummet to the concrete like rain.
The parental response, of course, is reasoned explanation. I’m not sure either of them can hear through the din of sadness, disappointment, or rage; clouded vision and rushing ears. Can any of us? Theirs was buck passing.
“But Edward made me!”
In the end, the tears dried (though they would not be the afternoon’s last), and the Y was more than happy to provide additional balloons (and pamphlets).
Still, for the life of me, I can’t shake the sight of Ethan’s face in that instant between absolute, unfettered joy and utter, profound disappointment. It’s an impossible lesson to learn: world’s change in an instant, then float away forever, leaving us with nothing but an empty strip of ribbon.
Things To Text In Denver When You’re Bored
I spent this afternoon tracking vocals on my cover of The Nadas “Feels Like Home” for the band’s forthcoming tribute record.
I don’t know what I was thinking. Mike Butterworth hits a superhuman high note in the chorus, one I can only nail consistently in falsetto. I’ve seen him hit higher notes on a radio show hung over at seven o’clock in the morning. For me, though, it’s a stretch. Then there’s the four hundred layers of backing vocals. Sweet Jiminy Cricket on a popsicle stick!
Somewhere in the middle of this flailing, I popped out of the iso booth (aka my closet) for a drink, and decided to holler at Mike. Ends up the The Nadas are in Littleton, Colorado preparing for a show at The Littleton Polo Club. I’m guessing there are neither horses nor mallets involved. Anyway, here’s the actual textual correspondence.
BW: Dude, I’m tacking vocals for “Feels Like Home” right now and I have just one thing to say: I don’t know what I was thinkin’ tackling something you sang (and Jon produced)!
MB: LOL! You can do it!
BW: I’m tryin’, but dude, I gotta’ tell ya’: you got some pipes!
MB: Thank you, sir.
BW: Any advice as to how should I approach the tune?
MB: Well, it started as a “sell out” theme song for the city and grew to be one of my faves.
BW: Should I drink any specific beverage for inspiration?
MB: Well, it was written mostly while in Mexico, so tequila, tequila, tequila.
BW: That’s advice I can heed.
MB: Remember there are no wrong answers. Looking forward to your twist on it.
BW: Tryin’. I’ve recorded a hundred covers, but never had to face the band afterwards!
MB: LOL! You’re fine!
BW: Play a good show. Tell the gang hello.
Notice how he encourages me like a proper label honcho? Good man. Now back to the iso booth, er, closet.
All Stars
I’m pretty sure it’s the oldest thing I own: a tattered, No. 80, nine-inch, horsehide-covered, cork and rubber-centered regulation baseball with with seven faded words written in capital letters: 1981 Pinto North All-Star Ben Wagner.
I hit the first RBI in that all-star game, a triple. It was a scorching-hot July Fourth at Ridgeland Common in Oak Park, Illinois. There was red, white and blue bunting and everything. Of course, it was tee ball, so that triple didn’t add up to much of a baseball career, and doesn’t mean much now. But it did then.
They were simple days. Chris and I spent entire afternoons roaming Forest Avenue, cutting through backyards, swinging from rooftops, and playing basketball, football, hide and seek, maul ball, kickball, and Wiffle Ball.
Wiffle Ball. Now, that’s where I picked up my real baseball chops. The teams were small, and always the same: Chris and Sean against Ben and Dusty. It was the eldest brothers against the youngest.
Sean and Dusty Wells lived across the street. We spent every day together for nearly five years. And then they moved to Nashville, Tennessee. Sean’s now a golf pro there, married with two daughters. Years pass when we don’t correspond, but the memory of those carefree days and cricket-song nights running through backyards are constant. Last night, he sent me an email.
My daughters and I went out and bought a yellow wiffle bat and ball a couple weeks ago and of course. How many wiffle ball games do you think we played in the time we lived on Forest Avenue?
Life is different now. Neighborhoods aren’t the same: computers, DVDs, video games. There aren’t kids their age living around us and they go to school eight miles from the house, so they don’t ever run home, throw their book bags on the floor and head out. Besides, life isn’t like the old days when our parents would say, “Be home when the lights come on.” They hardly get to go outside at all without one of us around.
Every night when I leave the girls room I wonder, are they having as much fun as we had? I certainly hope so, but is it possible? My memories of the Oak Park years are the best. We did so much! Sports, kick the can, block parties, talent shows, more sports, ten versions of tag, snow, etc etc.
You and Chris were such a big part of my life back then. I just wanted you to know that you’re thought of every day and night.
A full day passed before I was able to respond. Sean’s email jogged all sorts of memories of kick the can, hide and seek, touch football and — of course — Wiffle Ball. Those were sweet, meaningful times. I’m grateful we had them. These days, though, it’s twelve hour days in front of the computer. It’s branded advertising, advertorial, and integrated marketing. It’s smoked glass skyscrapers and a Cliff Bar for lunch.
I’m not a parent yet (God willing, it’s just a matter of time now), but I appreciate your point as a grown up kid myself. My job’s a real m*therfucker. It’s not quite how I imagined grown up life would be. There’s less joy, less play, less sunshine. Everyone tells me kids’ll help recalibrate that, and afford me some perspective. And I hope so. Because rare are the days (even with marathons and triathlons) that I’m outside more than a few minutes.
With my job, my new(ish) marriage, and imminent fatherhood (to say nothing of the economic downturn), I’ve been wrestling with “growing up” and all the losses that go along with it quite a bit. Lately, I’ve just been trying to remind myself that it is what it is, grace and beauty and meaning are how you approach them, and where you find them, and how you remember them. We’re blessed to have some great memories, and more yet to be made.
For heaven’s sake, let’s put on a talent show in the garage soon.
There’s no going back there myself. I get it.
But maybe what Sean’s inadvertently telling me is that there’s a road ahead that looks a little like Forest Avenue.
Someday, if for only a second.
Run, Part II (Or, Know Your Enemy)
Who needs the self help section at Barnes & Noble? I have an iPod.
I don’t need to tell you that last week was a motherf*cker. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Ask John Edwards, Manny Ramirez, or Allison Iraheta. They all had tough weeks. Heck, ask anyone on Earth these days: economic meltdown, unemployment, foreclosure, global warming, war, famine — I could go on.
For me, it was the constant (not for attribution, repetition or attribution) barrage of workplace b.s.: knuckleheaded oversight, missed opportunities, fiscal impossibilities, political wrangling, and general bureaucracy. “Don’t beat yourself up too much,” my boss said. But I did. I never made it home before nine o’clock, and when I walked in the door, I felt like I’d been kicked in the nuts all day.
It was that kind of week.
Adding insult to injury, it was first week of physical therapy regimen that has me in the gym at seven o’clock in the morning, and my third foot treatment that left me bloody, limping, and unable to run. In fact, my feet were still too bloodied to run Saturday morning.
When Sunday came, then, I was dying to make tracks. The sky was crisp and blue, and I had a fresh playlist to get me through the mileage. Ends up, the randomly-selected, set-to-shuffle collection had a story to tell.
The Fray’s “Over My Head (Cable Car)” paced my first few blocks, the slow, steady uphill to Central Park. It’s been something of a theme song since 2007 when my supervisor got laid off just a few days before my thrilling, terrifying walk back from Tiffany. I’ve often felt like I’m in over my head since. It’s never fun, nor easy, even when I remember that’s how we grow: by stretching.
The Wallflowers’ “Everybody Out Of The Water” hit as I settled into Central Park South. It’s a curt, almost-jarring song off the band’s “Red Letter Days” LP. “The city’s been leveled, the hills are in flames,” Jakob Dylan sings. “The streets are cracked open and they’re pushin up clay.” I synched my footfalls to the beat, cognizant that I was running too fast, but eager to disperse the week’s excess frustration.
Flashback to Friday night. Long after the office cleared out, I cranked Green Day’s new single, “Know Your Enemy,” over and over. Sure, the song’s derivative of The Clash. But I relished the terse bursts of electric guitars, the crisp drums and slick production. Sunday morning, though, the song came to mean something more than its sound.
“Know Your Enemy” hit my earbuds somewhere around 79th Street. The wind was whipping up white caps on the Hudson. At some points, it blew me sideways. I struggled against it as the intro — a tinny, compressed pre-chorus — exploded into the full-fledged chorus of the song.
Do you know the enemy?
Do you know your enemy?
Well, gotta know the enemy
And it dawned on me: I’m the enemy. All of this is in my head.
As I ran south towards home, Everclear’s Art Alexakis sang, “They cannot hurt you unless you get them.” And I thought (for the third time since sixth grade) of the transitive property. “If I am the enemy,” I thought, “And they can’t hurt me unless I let them, then I can’t hurt me unless I let me.”
Sure, times are challenging. It is what it is. But it’s all in my approach, right?
It was crystal clear to me that my playlist had stories to tell as The Verve “Lucky Man” began playing as I turned off the promenade, and jogged across the West Side Highway. I grinned when I recognized it, and thought, “Yes, I am.”
The punctuation mark, though, came with Paloalto’s “Breathe In.”
Life’s a dizzy, far to busy
Never stops
Feeling heavy, try to steady
It’s all you’ve gotBreathe in
Breathe in
Breathe in
Look what’s all around you
Back home, I stepped into my apartment a changed man (if only for an instant).
Broken Glass
Sunday afternoon, long after the hangover recovery run, the ham, egg and cheese sandwich, the last cup of coffee and final page of The Sunday New York Times, Abbi and I sat on the couch channel surfing.
In my experience, asking my wife if she wants to watch a documentary tends towards a gentle “No thanks.” When I happened upon
Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. He studied the flute as a child at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and entered an accelerated college program at the University of Chicago at the age of 15, where he also studied Mathematics and Philosophy. Then he went to Juilliard School of Music where he took up keyboard as his main instrument, and founded the Philip Glass Ensemble. He lived in Paris for the French New Wave, and Soho when it was a wasteland of vast artist’s spaces.
In the intervening thirty years, he composed more than twenty operas (including his seminal debut, “Einstein On The Beach”), scored Errol Morris’ “The Thin Blue Line, Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show,” and Martin Scorsese’s “Kundun” (among many other films), and co-founded the Tibet House with Columbia University professor Robert Thurman and actor Richard Gere. Plus, he’s pals Chuck Close, Allen Ginsberg, Ravi Shankar, Paul Simon, David Byrne, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Patti Smith, and Leonard Cohen.
The filmmaker (“Shine” director Scott Hicks who clearly has his subject’s confidence) follows Glass through his 70th year as he scores Woody Allen’s “Cassandra’s Dream,” and prepares for the debut of his opera, “Waiting for the Barbarians.” It’s a remarkable intimate portrait. We meet his siblings, his fourth wife, and four children, and follow from his downtown home to his uptown office to Nova Scotia vacation home to his yogi, spirit guide, and Tai-chi instructor.
It’s a moving and compelling film, to be sure. Glass (about whom I confess to having known little) comes off as driven, hypomanic and obsessive, even. He is clearly compelled to create, to keep moving at all time, always scribbling notes, banging out parts, and conferring with collaborators even at the expense of his family. He seems abuzz with a rich, potentially unquenchable inner dialogue, an almost-palpable outward seeking, and a sense that time is running out.
As the film builds to crescendo, Glass is frantically dashing towards the premiere of his new opera, “Waiting For The Barbarians.” The opera’s finale is intercut with a moving interview with his wife, Holly Critchlow. She appears to be at a breaking point, feeling disconnected from her husband due to his numerous projects. Glass, meanwhile, narrates the final lines of the visually stunning opera.
“I am walking down a long road to nowhere,” he says. “My life is a stupid and ugly dream…”
The final shot is of Glass, Critchlow, and their two children walking on their stormy, Nova Scotia beach. “It’s rough out there,” he says to his son, who then leaps a small creak to join his mother and little brother. Glass stands alone, then, staring out to see, as he reads the final line of “Waiting For The Barbarians” in voice over.
“And yet I keep walking.”
Tears were streaming down my face as the film faded to black. Outside, the afternoon’s gray drizzle had turned to the evening’s falling rain.
* * *
The rain was still falling on Tuesday as I limped from the dermatologist (see also: “Warts & All”) to the 59th Street subway. The station was immensely-crowded, its commuters rain-soaked and miserable. ‘It’s rough out there,’ I thought.
“Glass: A Portrait Of Philip In Twelve Parts” was still very much on my mind. It hit a nerve in me, a raw one: the same one that Abbi and I have discussed almost daily since we met. It’s The Revolutionary Road Conundrum. What makes a man? What marks a life? What does it all mean? Why am I here? And when do I find out the answers?
I rode the N train downtown listening to WNYC’s Studio 360 podcast. Host Kurt Anderson was interviewing British artist Jeremy Deller who, in an effort to prompt conversation about the war in Iraq, loaded a bomb-ravaged car onto a flatbed truck and drove it clear across America. The title of Deller’s project? “It Is What It Is.” It’s what soldiers say of war: “It is what it is.” There’s a beautiful, circular simplicity to it, like a snake eating its tail. “It is what it is.”
I stepped out of the subway at 42d Street, and slowly climbed the stairs repeating the phrase over and over in my head. Times Square was clogged with traffic and tourists, strewn with pools of garbage, urine and exhaust. I looked up towards my office, its mighty concrete crown lost in the soot-choked clouds. It was ugly and stupid.
And still I kept walking.
