ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE BERKSHIRES

Drove up from Jersey with my youngest (who almost has his permit so can help with the drive next time) through the Autumn color fest to see his fifteen-year-old nephew, my grandson, play drums on the street in the all instrumental jazz and funk and reggae band Highland, along with the five other fifteen-year-olds in the band on guitar, bass, electric piano, trumpet and sax.

They were so good, they had over two hundred bucks thrown in their guitar case after playing for less than two hours! People would hear the music and stop to dig it before they realized how young the band was, and then when they got it, their smiles would broaden and in many cases their hips would start swaying.

I suck at filming with my iPhone and all that, so have no footage to share, and though I saw many folks filming I've only seen a couple of short bits on Facebook and can't figure out how to share them here, so this photo taken of the guitarist Ethan, my grandson Donovan on drums and the hand of the bassist, Zepher, will have to suffice for now. (The photographer is my grandson' friend Cooper.)

Wish you had been there.

TRIBUTE TO HARVEY SHAPIRO

I took part in a reading last night at Poets House in Manhattan, a tribute to the late poet and friend Harvey Shapiro. Twenty-five people read poems they had selected from Harvey's books (some even reading from a posthumous book that'll come out next year). I can't think of a better way to remember and pay tribute to a poet.

Unless you've had a documentary made on you, and even then, depending on the filmmaker's biases or perspective, there's nothing like someone's poems to create the sensation that they are there, in the poems, speaking directly to you. That's how it felt last night.

Lots of Harvey's friends and family, lots of old friends of mine I hadn't seen in a while, some for decades, many decades. It was good. It was moving. It was inspiring. It was a tribute to a fine poet (I recommend you get hold of his new and collected poems: THE SIGHTS ALONG THE HARBOR, a wonderful collection that deserves to be on any poetry lover's bookshelf) and a good man.

RIFT FOURNIER R.I.P.

Rift was one of the feistiest folks I've known, and I've known a few. I met him early in my Hollywood years where he was producing independent film and TV projects. One of the most important things about him in my personal history, not mentioned in this otherwise relatively informative obit, involves how we met. My old friend Hubert Selby Jr. was working for Rift when I visited him at the L.A. office Rift had at that time (1983) which he was whizzing around in in his wheelchair making wisecracks at my expense and we'd just met.

I remember working for him at one point myself, writing a film I believe that never got made, or maybe, as was more often the case, I was script doctoring and it did get made (ah, memory). Every time I ran into him over the years that followed he would enthusiastically and/or sarcastically describe his latest project, no matter how "big" or "small" in Hollywood terms, with the same clarity and commitment. He was one of a kind in the Hollywood I knew and made it a richer and more fun place to work. He will be missed.

ALICE MUNRO NOBEL

Shorty story great, Alice Munro, as won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, and it couldn't happen to a better writer. Some commentators have noted that though the prize is often given to a writer because of their politics or the part of the world where politics is causing problems, giving it to this quiet self-effacing Canadian whose stories are about relationships and seemingly avoid any kind of politics is an anomaly.

But I wonder. Maybe the Nobel judges wanted to honor what seems right now like one of the only places on earth that isn't falling over itself to self-destruct. Canada is looking awfully civilized and successfully cooperative compared certainly to its neighbors to the South, and for that matter the East and West.

But whatever reasons may be behind the choice of Munro, I'm happy she was chosen, and though I don't agree with her being compared to Chekhov, except in that they are both brilliant craftspeople at the art of the short story, I do agree that like Chekhov she deserves to be read for generations to come, as long as humans still read.

I also hope it's a sign that the Nobel for Literature will start rewarding the many great women writers of our times. I'd love to see Alice McDermott be next.

SHUT UP, SIT DOWN AND EAT

Caught this at The Players tonight on MacDougal in The Village with my good friend John Restivo, who I thought would enjoy it since he's Italian, and he did. As did the row of women behind us who were singing along to Dean Martin's That's Amore coming over the house speakers before the show and swapping stories about their Italian families.

But you don't have to be Italian to laugh the loudest, as I think this Irish-American did, at this original mashup of stand up comedy and serious play. The four stand up comics who star in it, and co-wrote the "plomedy" (along with another writer whose name I can't find on the Internet and I left the program on the counter at the pizza joint in Penn Station getting a slice while waiting for my train) as it's being called, are Tina Giorgi, Eric Tartaglione, Chris Monty and Joe Moffa. And my old friend Eve Brandstein directed it.

Hey, if you're Italian, or not, don't miss this if you can get to The Village on a night when it's playing, or if it travels to a city near you in the future. It's just what my friend John and I needed, a night of laughter with a few pulls on the old heartstrings thrown in. 

THE MOST ELEGANT ANALYSIS

NOT SURE WHERE THIS CAME FROM BUT HAD TO SHARE IT

Brilliant. Had to repost: 

Oct 2008: "You'll never get elected and pass healthcare."
Nov 2008: "We'll never let you pass healthcare."
Jan 2009: "We're gonna shout you down every time you try to pass healthcare."
July 2009: "We'll fight to death every attempt you make to pass healthcare."
Dec 2009: "We will destroy you if you even consider passing healthcare."
March 2010: "We can't believe you just passed healthcare."
April 2010: "We are going to overturn healthcare."
Sept 2010: "We are going to repeal healthcare."
Jan 2011: "We are going to destroy healthcare."
Feb 2012: "We're gonna elect a candidate who'll revoke healthcare NOW."
June 2012: "We'll go to the Supreme Court, and they will overturn healthcare."
Aug 2012: "American people'll never re-elect you-they don't want healthcare."
Oct 2012: "We can't wait to win the election and explode healthcare."
Nov 2012: "We can't believe you got re-elected & we can't repeal healthcare."
Feb 2013: "We're still going to vote to obliterate healthcare."
June 2013: "We can't believe the Supreme Court just upheld healthcare."
July 2013: "We're going to vote like 35 more times to erase healthcare."
Sept 2013: "We are going to leverage a government shutdown into defunding, destroying, obliterating, overturning, repealing, dismantling, erasing and ripping apart healthcare."
Oct 2013: "WHY AREN'T YOU NEGOTIATING???"