MICKEY ROONEY R.I.P.

They say Mickey Rooney just passed. He was a fixture in my life when I was a boy in the 1940s, and continued to be up until recently. Not just because of the old movies of his that play on TCM and other retro channels now and then, or because he continued to pop up in movies and on TV, or because he was in the news last year or so as the face of elder abuse when a stepson ripped him off for a few millions.

He was the biggest star in Hollywood for several years when he was just a teenager. The biggest box office star. He was the first teenager to be nominated for an Oscar. He helped make other young people into stars, like Elizabeth Taylor in NATIONAL VELVET and JUDY GARLAND in the Andy Hardy movies and then the others they teamed up for like BABES IN ARMS.

He also married the woman considered the most beautiful in Hollywood, Ava Gardner, when they were young. The first of seven marriages. And he could do it all, comedy, drama, satire, farce (although his farcical "Japanese" man in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S he regretted when some saw it as racist rather then comic). And, still a teen, he was a really good drummer.

He started in vaudeville when he was just a baby, and as a toddler, the way I heard it, was tossed around the stage by his vaudeville parents as part of their act, and sometimes dropped. (As, if I remember correctly, Buster Keaton was too.)

He had a lot of friends in Hollywood, but also a lot of folks didn't like him when he was at the top because some thought he had gotten too big for his britches, as they used to say. I remember on my first Hollywood sound stage when the camera man called for a "Mickey Rooney" and I thought the actual man was going to show up. But he explained it was a very slow and short tracking shot. When I asked why that was called a "Mickey Rooney" he said, "It's a little creep."

Well, the little guy seemed to usually have the last laugh. Definitely one of, if not the, longest show business careers in history. As aggravating as his sometimes too-eager-to-please young movie persona was, I still love watching his early movies, as well as some of his later classic acting jobs like in REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT.

R.I.P. Mick.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETER CASE

Peter just hit 60 today, and I welcome him to a decade I'm done with and dug a lot of. I have fond memories of when we shared a house in Santa Monica with my piano in it, and one of the highlights of my life was jamming together.

You may remember him as the lead man in The Nerves and then The Plimsouls. But I remember him and know him still as the solo songwriter/singer/guitar playing genius of the meaningful performance.

Here's him with The nerves singing the lead on a song Blondie later made famous:



And here singing lead with the Plimsouls on one of their hits:


Lastly, here's a recent example of his talent, pay attention to the guitar solo about halfway through and the improvisational riffs on the theme toward the end. Peter, may you have 60 more good years, and may I be there for as many of them as the fates allow brother.


Ah hell, I can't resist. One more, his closing song at the same McCabe's live gig, a real treat:

KURDISTAN (ANOTHER LATE NIGHT MINI-SORT-OF-RANT)

There was a great news bit on VICE tonight about the Kurd region of Syria. Which made me think, how come the same kind of at least non-Arab world opinion and support that the creation and defense of Israel as a Jewish state hasn't occurred for the Kurds.

Here's a stateless people who, unlike many of those who settled modern Israel, were not dispersed into a worldwide diaspora but rather have lived in their "homeland" as part of Turkey, Iraq and Syria etc. since those countries were created and the the Kurds were portioned out to them.

I've always admired the Kurds for their seemingly natural nobility (and beauty), but even more so for their more modern (than fundamentalist Islamists at least) conceptions of gender equality (VICE even showed young women fighters looking like "American" college girls with weapons) and democratic government. Isn't it time they had some support from those who purport to be for those things.

Especially in their part of Syria that is now under attack not only from Assad but from the fundamentalist Islamists who don't dig those things. Free Kurdistan!

STILL MORE OF THE LITERARY LIFE

Me, poets Terence Winch (holding drink) and Doug Lang (sitting with mustache) Folio Books DC c. 1975?

Novelist Jane DeLynn, my oldest son Miles, me & composer Rain Worthington NYC c. 1978?

The late great poets Ted Berrigan (in beard) and Tim Dlugos (in suit and glasses), actress Penelope Milford, me, the back of my son Miles' head and my daughter Caitlin NYC 1982

Me, poet/writer Beth Joselow, poet Lynne Dryer and novelist Bill McPherson, DC c. 1990?

Poet Simon Pettet, me and poet Annabel Levitt Lee in Massachusetts 2002

Me and poet/writer Bill Lannigan, Maplewood NJ c. 2003

Poet/writer Burt Kimmelman and me, New Jersey c. 2011?

SORRY TO SAY

Then the first one in the new month is at Fort Hood. Something's wrong with that reality.

ANOTHER FAVORITE QUOTE

"It's never right, you know, because it doesn't have everything in it. So you keep going until you've put everything you can into it, and then you're out of it. Then you go on to the next one."  —Willem deKooning (from an interview in The New York Times)

MEDORA

If you've never watched any of the "Independent Lens" documentaries on PBS you're missing something. I caught MEDORA tonight, a documentary on a small rural Indiana high school basketball team that's really about small rural Midwestern "American" communities that are slowly dying.

It's a heartbreaking as well as inspiring glimpse into the lives of teenagers and their families and community and the ways they face the problems teenagers anywhere encounter but with added challenges particular to communities like Medora, Indiana.

It made me sad, it made me smile, it made me almost cheer...for the small victories that count as big ones there. Worth checking out. Here's the trailer, but it doesn't do the flick justice.