Pop Culture Musing for a Wednesday 8/31/16

Winona Ryder in the Netflix series, “Stranger Things”

Inside the Upside Down: Called “the show of the summer” by the New York Times, Stranger Things, airing on Netfilix, is not ordinarily my type of fare, but with a window open on the binge front, and with all the plaudits it has received – and the fact that Winona Ryder is back in the spotlight in her role as a mother whose young son disappears under mysterious circumstances – well, that sealed the deal.

Pitch-perfect in its depiction of a small midwestern town in early-Eighties America, the series, created by the thirty-something Duffer Brothers (themselves born in 1984), also borrows liberally from such defining films of the era as E.T., Poltergeist, and Stand By Me, as well as assorted offerings by Stephen King. (The font for the title looks straight from a King novel.)

Millie Bobby Brown as “Eleven”

Horror and fantasy not particularly being my cup of tea, I was most surprised by the emotional connection that Stranger Things was able to wield via the terrific child actors at the heart of the story. They wrap themselves around your psyche in all sorts of peculiar ways, none more so than the astonishing Millie Bobby Brown, the young British actress who plays the telekinetically enabled and unusually named “Eleven.” Suffice to say this little girl has quite the remarkable powers; she hooks up with the three boys searching for Winona’s missing son, and is on the lam from a laboratory where government agents used her as a guinea pig and potential weapon in the fight against the Russians (remember the Cold War?)

Anyway, her performance is really something to watch; she has limited dialogue, so expressions must convey all she feels, and every one of them cuts to the quick. Stranger Things is worth seeing just for the joy of encountering such a great new talent.

Oh, and back to Winona. How perfectly appropriate that she would be cast in a project that takes place in the decade which saw her emergence as one of the iconic actresses (Heathers, Beetlejuice) of her generation. Here, her acting has just the right amount of jitteriness required for a character who’s borderline nutso (due to the circumstances, of course). And just the necessary number of “Winona-isms” without which the occasion would not be complete.

So welcome back to Winona, goodbye to the summer…and here’s to a season two (just announced!)

Pop Culture Musing for a Tuesday 8/4/15

Love, Again: There’s a saying about true love stories never really having an ending, and I thought about that in a very literal sense when I had the chance to see a production of Love Letters, the highly successful Broadway play by A.R Gurney that recently began a national tour with Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal in the lead roles.

For those who may or may not remember, O’Neal and MacGraw starred in a rather famous movie called Love Story, from a phenomenon of a book by Erich Segal (it eventually sold 21 million copies) that came to the screen in 1970. It can be described as The Fault in Our Stars of its time, an all-out tearjerker that immediately created superstars of the two actors who played the protagonists (more due to their physical attractiveness than for their actual acting talents, it should be said).

O’Neal and MacGraw in “Love Story” (1970), above, and reunited once more, below.

Seeing the film as a youngster, I would have been hard-pressed to believe I would be watching the pair on a theatre stage 45 years later, obviously a bit weathered for wear, but surprisingly, still with touches of the chemistry that contributed to Love Story’s timeless appeal. As the characters in Love Letters sit at a desk on a barren stage reading correspondence from a relationship that spanned almost 50 years – while never actually looking at each other – it was easy to imagine the Melissa and Andy of the play as senior versions of the Oliver and Jenny of Love Story.

Which proves there’s something to be said for nostalgia. Looking around at the theatregoers, it was pretty clear what the target demographic was for Love Letters, which is essentially designed as a vehicle for past-their-prime stars to pull in audiences who remember them from their heyday. But the writing has its moments (the play, after all, was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 1990) and for the veteran troupers O’Neal and MacGraw it provides some eerily reminiscent allusions that recall scenes from their career-making movie of decades ago.

If, as in the iconic line uttered by MacGraw in Love Story, “love means never having to say you’re sorry,”  sometimes it can also mean never having to say goodbye.

Pop Culture Musing for a Friday 2/20/15

Let’s Hear it for the Boys: It says something about the depth of the male performances this Oscar season that a number of amazing portrayals could not be recognized by the Academy thanks to the five-nominee cap in the acting categories. There was justifiable uproar when David Oyelowo’s powerful reenactment of Martin Luther King in Selma was not included in the final cut for Best Actor, but he was in pretty good company, most significantly Ralph Fiennes, in his wry and wonderful turn as the concierge in Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, as well as Timothy Spall’s iconoclastic depiction of the British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner in the beautifully shot period piece, Mr. Turner.

Personally, I found Bradley Cooper in American Sniper the weakest (though by no means undistinguished) link in a field that’s notable for a couple of performances — by Steve Carell and Michael Keaton — that go against the grain for the actors in question. An unrecognizable Carell, so familiar for his comedic talents in other venues, left me more than surprised by his haunting transformation into John du Pont in Foxcatcher, playing the troubled heir to an American fortune whose privileged life culminated in grisly tragedy. Michael Keaton was also an unexpected revelation as the washed-up, middle-aged actor seeking artistic validation in Birdman. It’s difficult to find humor in schizophrenia and desperation, but Keaton managed to balance the pathos with a deft sense of absurdity that verges on the transcendent.

The two Englishmen, Eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch, who round out the list of Best Actor nominees, are also wonders to behold. In The Theory of Everything, Redmayne crafts a performance that is so inordinately difficult at its core: having to convey both wrenching physical disability as well as soul-stirring emotion through indelible facial expressions that serve as windows into the complex personality of the legendary physicist Stephen Hawking. And Cumberbatch, as the ingenuous computer scientist Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, brings a breathtaking intelligence to a role that, in lesser hands, may have proven distantly academic, but instead lingers by way of its human dimension.

Add to this overcrowded list of brilliant male performances that of J.K. Simmons, left, nominated for Best Supporting Actor as the pathological music instructor in the stunning film, Whiplash. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Simmons was moved to the supporting category in order to ensure a win (though I’ll also issue a shout-out to Ethan Hawke in Boyhood, who probably would have won had it been any other year). There’s nothing “supporting” about Simmons’s performance, which is front and center and indescribably overpowering as a jazz professor whose idea of pushing (or shall we say, punishing) his students towards greatness leaves a lot to be desired. (And gosh, some remarkable — and not nominated — work as well by Miles Teller, as the main object of Simmons’s sadistic derision.)

So who will win on Sunday?  Doesn’t matter. There’s not a loser in this bunch.

Pop Culture Musing for a Thursday 12/18/14

Wizards of Greed: Leave it to corporate cupidity (and I mean you, Comcast) to upset a perfectly nice weekend afternoon. This is nothing near an apocalyptic anecdote, just one of those minor aggravations that remind of the seeming inability to enjoy anything these days without some sort of money-grubbing on the part of those insatiable behemoths that control the telecommunications process.

To continue the story, we happened to check out Comcast’s “On Demand” movies on a recent Sunday and ran across The Wizard of Oz, which was listed as “Free.” With a catch, of course: no less than ten minutes into the film we’re bombarded with at least five minutes of commercials, most of them pitching Comcast’s Xfinity services. I figured it was maybe a one-time interruption, but several minutes later, same deal. (At that point, we said our goodbyes to Oz.) Then, to compound the displeasure, I saw movies like Miracle on 34th Street and Meet Me in St. Louis (old as the hills and which also happened to be broadcast elsewhere for free that day) being offered at $3.99 a pop.

Consider this a roundabout introduction to some thoughts on the ongoing debate about “net neutrality,” and which pits that same avaricious offender, Comcast, along with other broadband giants like AT&T and Verizon, against believers in the concept that users of the Internet should have free and open access to high-speed service regardless of their usage.

Comcast is not happy with the fact that a large chunk of its resources is consumed by byte-intensive websites like Netflix and YouTube, and would prefer we pay extra for the privilege, freeing up their faster speed lanes for bigger-pocket, ostensibly business, subscribers. AT&T and the others apply the same idea in their tiered (non-Wi-Fi) data plans for mobile devices, where you are allowed a certain amount of high-speed data access and then are “throttled” down to lower speeds after you meet your cap. It’s a simplistic explanation of the issues involved, but you get the picture. Big business trying to wring that last penny out of all of us.

It will be up to the FCC to decide, but in the meantime, excuse me while I dig up that old video of Wizard of Oz. At least it’s commercial-free.

Pop Culture Musings for a Tuesday 9/16/14

A Piece of Work: Finally caught up with the documentary about Joan Rivers that was first released in 2010, an insightful, behind-the-scenes look at the comic legend whose recent death sparked an outpouring of accolades from colleagues and audiences alike. I was long a fan of the gutsy comedienne, one of the few whose incisive humor could literally reduce me to tears. The film captures many candid – and humanizing – moments, revealing an indomitable spirit that refused to be marginalized despite advancing age or changing times. Rivers had a habit of cataloging all her jokes Rolodex-style, and here’s hoping that some of the best will eventually make it into a book.

Sweeping Towards Gold: Rev up those brooms. In the anything-can-become-an-Olympic-event department, last week marked the 10th annual Housekeeping Olympics, where teams competed in such riveting endeavors as bed stripping, linen folding, and laundry stacking. And shower scrubbing. And toilet cleaning. “It’s really funny,” said the founder of the festivities. Uh-huh. (Bet Joan would have loved this one.)

Bite of the Apple: So I really don’t get the backlash against Apple for offering the new U2 album as a freebie to its customers. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Actually, I found the whole concept sort of groundbreaking, as well as a clever move on the band’s part to generate sales for the rest of the U2 collection. Don’t like it? Don’t want it? For heaven’s sake, just delete it. (And stop whining.)

Where Broken Hearts Go

What about a place, a museum actually, where you can leave the memento that most captures your feelings about a failed relationship on public display? The Museum of Broken Relationships, in Zagreb, Croatia, named “Most Innovative Museum” at the European Museum Awards in 2011 is, believe it or not, just such a venue.

Pieces from its collection are currently part of a traveling exhibition on view at the Southbank Centre’s “Festival of Love” in London through the end of August. The museum itself was founded by a couple, Olinka Vištica and Drazen Grubišić, after their own breakup in 2006. (The two obviously remained friends.) The idea was to preserve personal stories about love’s end, symbolized by items of special significance and the roles they played in the arc of those rocky romantic journeys. More are added as the exhibit tours the world, as all can feel free to make their own (anonymous) contributions.

Those bequests can encompass both the weird (the “Divorce Day Mad Dwarf,” shown left, a scruffy gnome thrown at the windshield of an errant husband’s car) and the predictable (a teddy bear with an “I Love You” heart). And the poignant: a bottle filled with tears shed after a break-up. All are remnants of that most exalted of emotions gone sour.

One of the oddest is the “Ex Axe” (below), which a spurned lover used to systematically destroy an ex’s furniture after her departure. “The more her room filled with chopped furniture, acquiring the look of my soul, the better I felt,” reads the accompanying note. And when she came back for her effects, they were “neatly arranged into small heaps and fragments of wood. She took that trash and left my apartment for good. The axe was promoted to a therapy instrument.”

Therapeutic relief is among the main motivations for these emotional cast-offs (as is, sometimes, revenge), and all are shaped by varying degrees of irony, humor, and of course, a bit of rage.

“I believe people embraced the idea of exhibiting their legacies as a sort of a ritual, a solemn ceremony,” wrote Vištica in the book (or “Love Pictionary”) that documents the museum.

As the song goes, don’t go breakin’ my heart.

(Image/top: via Catchsmile Love Image Collections)

Pop Culture Musing for a Thursday 6/26/14

Family to Go: If you can’t beat ‘em, you might as well make ‘em up. Such was the case with Suzanne Heintz, a Colorado-based art director who got fed up with the when-are-you-going-to-get-married question 14 years ago, and opted for a ready-made family of her own. Voila! Two mannequins — a husband she named “Chauncey” and a daughter she dubbed “Mary Margaret” — fit the bill, and one of the quirkier artistic endeavors I’ve run across was born.

Heintz’s photo series, Life Once Removed, which kind of evokes Cindy Sherman landing in Stepford territory, is still going strong: Chauncey and Suzanne “renewed” their wedding vows earlier this month (though with a twist) and their adventures have traversed the globe, as Heintz schleps the dolls along for photographs taken around the world. The whole point is to satirize images of what we’ve all come to view as “perfect lives” and women’s stereotypical roles within that framework, as well as documenting the everyday routines of familial relationships, fake or not.

Is this taking the pursuit of art a bit too far? Perhaps, but actually, some might be a little jealous. Chauncey’s not bad-looking (and he’ll never develop a paunch), and many parents would probably be delighted to have a kid who can’t talk back at them. (Of course, Mary Margaret won’t ever grow up and leave the nest, either.)

Somewhere, there’s an unreality show in the making.

(Photos: © Suzanne Heintz)

So Who’s Cool?

Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1986

American Cool, an exhibit that features the “100 coolest Americans” throughout history in photos chosen by curators for the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, is an attempt to catalog one of those ineffable qualities that can only be described as “you know it when you feel it.” (I’ll call it a combination of singular style with a tantalizing touch of insouciance. An iconoclastic streak helps a lot.)

Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918

The eclectic exhibition, mostly culled from personalities in the fields of music, film, literature, and sports, includes some obvious choices — Miles Davis (whose defining jazz album was called Birth of the Cool), as well as Humphrey Bogart and James Dean, Elvis and Sinatra. Not-so-obvious: the poet Walt Whitman, singers Neil Young, Carlos Santana, and Selena.

But beyond the inclusion of the four divergent and groundbreaking artists whose images from the exhibition are shown here, lovers of the arts will be disappointed to find that many of their coolest heroes just plain didn’t make the cut.

Surely the legendary conductor, Leonard Bernstein, was way cool to lovers of classical music? Same goes for the opera singer Maria Callas, who hit some pretty cool high notes in her day. If the eminent essayist Susan Sontag was picked (justifiably so, though Truman Capote was inexplicably missing among the writers), perhaps the experimental modern composer Philip Glass might have merited a nod?  Annie Leibovitz, whose pictures of Johnny Depp, Michael Jordan, and Bruce Springsteen are among those on display, should have had a slot of her own as “cool” photographer. And there’s not a single figure from the world of dance — unless, of course, you count Fred Astaire — or theatre, for that matter (Tennessee Williams, anyone?)

Jackson Pollock, 1949

Five years in the making, American Cool is broken out in four sections (“The Roots of Cool,” “The Birth of Cool,” “Cool and the Counterculture,” and “The Legacies of Cool”). Jazz musicians are heavily represented, which makes sense, as the origin of the term as it is used now is attributed to the saxophonist Lester Young, who first popularized it in the 1940s.

The criteria for the selections, of which three of the following qualities had to met in order to qualify, were:

• An original artistic vision carried off with a signature style

• Cultural rebellion or transgression for a given generation

• Iconic power, or instant visual recognition

• A recognized cultural legacy

“The big question that we kept asking ourselves,” co-curator Joel Dinerstein told Smithsonian.com, “is, did this person bring something entirely new into American culture?”

In many cases, “yes,” as far as those who made the list. But no surprise that one person’s cool is often another’s “huh?” American Cool, which runs through early September, can make for some heated discussion…

Andy Warhol, 1964

Photo credits:
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Dmitri Kasterine
Georgia O’Keeffe: Paul Strand
Jackson Pollock: Arnold A. Newman
Andy Warhol: Bruce Davidson

Pop Culture Musing for a Monday 12/23/13

Stop the Presses: Let’s see: Brad Pitt turned 50, Justin Bieber said he may retire from music (what a loss!), and The X Factor crowned a winner. Some of the items that constituted noteworthy entertainment “news” over the past few days.

But what seriously gets me going is the over-abuse of the term “Breaking News” on the cable news networks. The kicker was turning on CNN last week and actually seeing the “Breaking News” banner atop the headline, “What the Duck?” as the lead story on one of its evening news programs. Of course, it was all about those controversial comments made by Phil Robertson, below, the scruffy paterfamilias of the confoundingly popular reality series Duck Dynasty. Earth-shaking all right.

Really?

It makes you wonder what the networks will employ when something really big happens. I mean, in the old days, “Breaking News” had to do with assassinations, sudden deaths, huge natural catastrophes, Challenger-explosion kind of things. “Breaking News” meant something. Now, one is so inured that maybe a color coding alert, such as was used for terror threats, may be appropriate: red = the real deal, orange = sort of, yellow = not so much … you get the picture.

“Breaking News” should also, by its very definition, be “live news.” Another questionable practice is regularly slapping the breaking news motto on taped programming. Grab viewers as they surf by and get them to stop, no matter how misleading the means.

So much for journalistic principles (as the ghost of Walter Cronkite cringes).

Auto Aesthetics

A detail of a tail light from a Type 356 Gmünd Coupe, manufactured in 1949 (shown below), is just one of the cool artistic touches to be found in the Porsche By Design: Seducing Speed exhibition, which opened last weekend at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) in Raleigh. A collection of 22 Porsches — including a couple of famous ones belonging to Steve McQueen and Janis Joplin — span the history of the fabled German automaker since its inception in the 1930s.

It also reminds how cars traverse so many mnemonic highways as well. My own Porsche memory is of a silver 944 from long ago. The attraction was purely visceral; I was no speed freak, and the Florida landscape is not particularly noted for its autobahns. It’s the 944’s lovely lines, especially from the front, I will always remember.

A burgundy MGB, from the last year the convertible was manufactured, was first to capture my heart. The moment I encountered that little beauty, which belonged to a college boyfriend, I knew a similar one was part of my future. Mission eventually accomplished — but alas, hearts are meant to be broken, and unlike the Porsche, the British roadster was not renowned for its engineering excellence. Gas ended up flooding the interior, among other temperamental issues, and the love affair sadly came to an end (at a mere 10,000 miles).

Most beautiful car ever? I’ll go with the Jaguar XKE convertible, at bottom, the sleekest and most gorgeously timeless piece of machinery ever produced. A moving work of art if ever there was one.

Artistic overtones color much of the Porsche By Design exhibit, which runs through January 20. “They are rolling sculpture,” NCMA’s director said, and it’s believed that this is the first design show comprised exclusively of Porsches. The automobile-art connection is the result of ongoing efforts to procure wider audiences for museums.

Everyone has a car story — or two.

Jaguar XKE convertible

Pop Culture Musing for a Wednesday 7/17/13

Summer Camp: With the addition of 2013’s Sharknado to the annals of campy horror films, this cinema lover is reminded of a cornucopia of other classics that have defined camp through the years, ranging from the works of the high master of the category, John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Polyester), to memorable Japanese offerings (the so-called “nuclear monster” movies of the 1950s), to some in a niche of their own (Mommie Dearest).

But there’s a little jewel that holds a special place in the camp catalog for me. Though I was a kid when I first saw Hot Rods to Hell on TV, I immediately sensed the extraordinary kitsch potential in this B (times three) movie, with its faded Hollywood stars (Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain) as the adult leads in an unintentionally hilarious concoction about a neurotic white-bread family “terrorized” by a group of teenaged hot-rodders. (The plot really is besides the point, though a terrific recap can be found here.)

A favorite scene has a cantankerous and semi-decrepit Andrews, behind one of the biggest steering wheels known to man, urged by an hysterical Crain to drive faster as they’re pursued by their speed-loving tormenters across the fake sands of a California desert. “I’m already going 40,” he snaps.

Sure enough, Hot Rods eventually made it to cult status (at one time, even a website was devoted to its unforgettable cheesiness), and its following is certain to have expanded via DVD and Netflix.

This year’s Sharknado benefits from a perfect storm of timing and topic — summer and sharks — along with weather phenomena in recent news, that, together with its absurdity, assures an entry in the chronicles of camp. Hot Rods, released in 1967, shows the real deal is timeless.

Where movies are concerned, the truly terrible always — and thankfully — endures.

Scrabbled State of Mind

I’m nowhere near app crazy, but I don’t know what I would do without Scrabble on my iPad. Like so many other aficionados, I have my own biases that apply to the game — adored vowels and unloved consonants, of course — as well as a kind of amazement at the incongruities that I often run across in this world of wordplay I admit consumes way too much of my time.

Since I use solo Scrabble as a way to relax, not to stress out, my opponent on the Pad is always NORM (as in “normal”), as a few encounters with his older, more artificially intelligent brother, HARD (as in “self-explanatory”), left me frazzled. (Youngest sibling, EASY, plays with the kiddies.) There are some advantages in competing against NORM: he doesn’t place seven-letter words, along with their 50-point bonuses, for example. (Fine with me!)

Lately, I’ve made a point of remembering some of those weird words that NORM often generates, so I can look up their definitions later. I don’t consider myself a slouch in the vocabulary department, but expressions like “dhow,” “mulct” and “foveae” can be stumpers. As both a lover of art and a language buff (though curiously never a big fan of crossword puzzles), I find these new discoveries little creations in themselves.

Color My World

Best and worst lists were a dime a dozen at the end of 2012, but here’s one accolade that caught my eye: “Color of the Year.” It’s an annual designation that serves as a forecast decreed by Pantone, the venerable provider of color standards for the printing, design, and publishing industries, and which is well-known for its color wheel and Pantone Matching System (PMS).

Pantone’s “Color of the Year” for 2013: PMS #17-5641

For 2013, Pantone has chosen Emerald (or more specifically, PMS #17-5641) as the color to watch, for its influence on trends, tastes, and moods, and its expected impact on everything from home décor to fashion. Last year, the company tapped #17-1463, or “Tangerine Tango,” as its star, because it “provided the energy boost we needed to recharge and move forward.” (Quiz here about previous “Color of the Year” winners.)

Though not everyone is on board with this year’s selection (“For many people, it’s a flashback to your parents’ living room and big green couch,” says one interior professional), Pantone claims that Emerald is “the color of growth, renewal, and prosperity – no other color conveys regeneration more than green.”

(I decided to check out the PMS chart to identify the shade I’ve been most drawn to lately. Turns out it’s #315, which I guess is sort of a mix of teal and peacock blue. Somewhere in my subconscious, I remember it as the color of my favorite ink for the fountain pens we used in grade school. Maybe the fact that I went into the writing profession wasn’t a coincidence.)

But back to our hue du jour. Even Downton Abbey has been brought into the conversation, with some seeing the emerald color’s associations with luxury as a perfect complement to the American audience’s fascination with the opulent English miniseries. A bit of a stretch, of course, but no harm in a little (colorful) hyperbole…

Green permeates an interior from the series “Downton Abbey”

Pop Culture Musing for a Thursday 9/6/12

Famed sunglass manufacturer Ray-Ban is celebrating its 75^th anniversary this year, and though the ad campaign exhorts consumers to “be part of the legend” (post your own photos and all that), I think I’ll mark the occasion with four real legends looking gorgeously iconic in their R-Bs…

Brief Encounters

Most of us equate architecture with the idea of permanence; after all, it’s one of the three precepts espoused by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius – durability, utility, and beauty – that have propelled builders since antiquity. But a new phenomenon, “pop-up” architecture (also known as “temporary” architecture, or even “urban interventions”), has shaken that idea to its very — excuse the pun — foundations.

The scale of the concept ranges from huge to small, from boutiques and grocery stores to entire neighborhoods. The current London Olympics fall full-force in the supersized category, where the imposingly impermanent includes the Basketball Arena (detail shown above), which was intended as a temporary site since inception, with almost two-thirds of its building materials destined for reuse or recycling. The facility’s textured shell and portal frame will eventually travel to Brazil for the 2016 Games.

The realities of difficult economic times have played a large role in the growth of these transformable venues, many of which are easily disassembled or refashioned for longer-term needs, and which come in all shapes and sizes, encompassing all levels of imagination. In Winnipeg, Canada, the pop-up huts (above), designed for those braving the cold as they skated along a frozen river trail, were winners in the temporary-architecture category at this year’s Azure Awards. In New York City, the LOT-EK design firm transformed shipping containers into walk-in “stores,” below, complete with shelf space, cash registers, and fitting rooms. (More amazing examples are featured in the book, Temporary Architecture Now!, by Philip Jodidio.)

An idea that’s “so retro it’s become radical,” according to New York Times writer Allison Arieff (citing, as one past example, the temporary bookshops that have sprouted up along the Seine River in Paris for centuries), Arieff also points to the flexibility inherent in impermanence as an incentive for designers and planners to experiment with new structures and services without the time-consuming bureaucratic burdens necessary for the creation of brick-and-mortar buildings.

As for this year’s Olympics, it looks like London will have served as a testing lab for what is already becoming one of the defining architectural trends of the decade. In addition to the Basketball Arena, both the Aquatic Center and the Olympic Shooting Gallery are scheduled for disassembly and recycling, and the Olympic Stadium itself will be shrunk down to a smaller community venue.

In a twist on the old saying: Now you see ‘em … and now you may see ‘em again.

(Photo/top: Bryn Lennon / Getty Images)

Pop Culture Musings for a Monday 7/2/12

Bring on the Cute: …and the calories. July is National Ice Cream Month. Designated in 1984 by then-President Ronald Reagan, its original proclamation (and National Ice Cream Day on July 15), called for Americans to observe related events with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.” Our favorite flavors? Vanilla, chocolate, cookies ‘n’ cream, strawberry, and chocolate-chip mint, according to the International Dairy Foods Association. So go ahead and indulge (it’s practically a patriotic duty).

And the Best Actor Award Goes To: I have no idea who the actor is at far left in this commercial for Ally Bank, but I have to say I like his style. The scene is a grocery store, where he graciously allows another customer (right) to cut in front of him in the line, thereby losing out on the windfall that would have been rightfully his for being the establishment’s “one-millionth customer.” But no typical sour-grapes reaction here; it’s the subtleties of his facial expressions that are priceless. In case you’ve missed it, it’s worth a watch (link above).

Marriage Impossible: News of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes break-up hit the entertainment world like a tsunami on Friday, and as the gossips and show-biz pundits speculate about the possible reasons for the split, my first thought was how seriously unhappy this woman looked whenever I ran across a photo of her. And the pictures seemed to get progressively worse. Perhaps her independence from what looked to be a highly draining situation will bring the lilt back to those mournful eyes.

[Update: 8/3/12: Happy Katie! ]

Color Her Barbra

Among the goals since the beginning of this blog has been to try to hit all the “marks,” so to speak, as far as creative heroes whose work has impacted me in ways I carry around to the present day. I’ve been meaning for some time to get around to one of those who multitasked in the entertainment category, Barbra Streisand; I think the occasion of her 70th birthday this month is more than perfect timing.

It’s a vivid childhood memory; everyone has one, a moment when a movie star or pop star or whatever star is etched in your mind in a way you understand is permanent. Such it was with me at the age of nine, seeing Funny Girl for the first time in a dark and cavernous 1960s movie theater, like so many that disappeared with the advent of the multiplex. I was mesmerized by what I saw (and heard) on the huge screen; so much so, I stayed for a second showing (guess I was spared the typical kid’s ADD), despite its clocking in at nearly three hours – with intermission.

As the encomiums for this real legend (not a throwaway description here) follow in April, I think of Streisand as such a constant along the road of life, with unbound admiration for her artistic courage, tenaciousness, and passion. But most of all the talent.

Pop Culture Musing for a Tuesday 11/29/11

Is it Live or is it Marilyn?: What a daunting challenge to recreate an icon on the level of Marilyn Monroe and come away not only unscathed, but glorious. Of the few actresses I can think of who could attempt such a feat, Michelle Williams would not have been among the first to come to mind. In My Week With Marilyn, she pulls off an amazing performance that goes way beyond surface physical transformation to encompass the troubled psychological depths of a tragic legend. If Monroe’s luminous sexuality had a bit of a hard-edged tinge, Williams’ take is more softly scintillating, adding emotional contours that go a long way in helping to understand the woman who was the most famous of her time. A wonderful moment has Williams as Monroe asking “Shall I be her?” as she approaches an impromptu crowd, and in a blink of an instant, switches the light on her other self, the Marilyn the public always expected, in all her splendor. Oscar, anyone? (A shout-out also to Kenneth Branagh, in a masterly portrayal of the great Laurence Olivier.)

Apple of My Eye

With the news that Steve Jobs was relinquishing the reins as CEO of Apple Inc., I remembered the Mac Classic that still sits in a closet, so reluctant am I to give up a keepsake that marked my gateway to the future that was personal computing. In the early ‘90s, that little dinosaur was the only way for me to stay productive when away from the office (floppy discs and all); I still recall the thrill when the tiny black-and-white monitor with the Happy Mac icon first lit up on the desk in my bedroom and I was off and running.

The Mac Classic

Macintosh was a savior after a traumatic initiation into the world of computers, via a journalism internship at The Miami Herald when I was in college. Back then, the only operating system was known as DOS — complicated and scary, it left such a sour taste that I was sure if I ever saw a black screen with green characters again I would scream. But in my magazine years, along came the Mac, then the state of the art in desktop publishing. And it was transformative. Took to it like a (mouse) to water. So intuitively simple and unintimidating — I was able to forget all the previous trepidation that could well have left me technologically challenged forever.

The rest of the Apple story is of course history, but I must admit to unfaithfulness along the way. This Machead succumbed to the practicality of the times, unloyally transitioning to the imitator Windows, even bypassing an Apple iPod for a Microsoft Zune. (Ok, so the Pod didn’t have FM, what can I say.)

But as with any great love, one always returns. The iPad will eventually sit alongside its granddaddy in that crowded closet. And the Jobs legacy endures.

Gloria Ongoing

“I’ve learned only one thing: No matter how hard it is to do it,
it’s harder not to do it.”

Watching Gloria: In Her Own Words, a documentary about Gloria Steinem now airing on HBO, made me think of how this icon of the feminist movement impacted women’s lives in ways deeper than I realized in my formative professional years. (A time in the ‘80s when, as a magazine editor, my frustration at the lack of financial parity with a male art director – because he was married and had a family and I didn’t – was typical.)

Polarizing aspects aside, I don’t think it’s exaggeration to say that most working women owe some little debt to Steinem, who took such a simple concept, economic fairness for half of the population, to the streets, and to the publishing world with the groundbreaking magazine Ms., in an in-their-face fashion that could not be ignored by the powers that were.

She didn’t do it alone, that’s for sure, but (here we go again) as one of the more “attractive” faces of the movement, she got the lion’s share of the attention. (The sad and sexist ridicule by such antediluvians of the network news establishment as Harry Reasoner and Howard K. Smith has to be re-seen to be believed.)

Listening to her now is a reminder that feminism is really only a part of the larger word “humanism” when it comes to addressing the continuing inequality that exists in so many sectors of society. And we’ve come a long way (maybe) — in no short measure thanks to pioneers like Ms. Steinem.