RIP Willie Mays

I didn’t go baseball crazy until the late 1970s, so I missed all the hoopla by a handful of years. But anyone who knows a little about the game knows that one highlight of Willie Mays sprinting straight towards the outfield wall with the #24 on his back facing directly to home plate. The ball somehow magically drops in straight over the back of his head and into his waist-high glove.

Perhaps most pertinent here, Mays was a fixture in pop-culture commentary, by the likes of Woody Allen, Peanuts, and songs “Say Hey (the Willie Mays Song)” in 1954 by the Treniers and “Talkin’ Baseball (Willie, Mickey, and The Duke)” in 1981 by Terry Cashman.

Here’s the line on Mays, who has passed away at the age of 93 in Palo Alto, California, from heart failure:

• He played in the Negro League as a teen and then from 1951 to 1973 for the Giants, first in New York and then when the team moved to San Francisco. He missed time from 1952 to 1954 for his stint in the Army.
• A case can be made that he’s the greatest baseball player ever, including the full package of speed, arm strength, excellent fielding, home-run hitting, and hitting for average.
• He was the oldest living member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
• His nickname, “The Say Hey Kid,” was based on his optimism and his love for the game.
• Mays had a lifetime .301 average, with 660 homers and 3,293 hits. He was named to 24 All-Star teams and awarded 12 Gold Gloves. Ridiculous numbers.
• He finished his career third overall in home runs at the time behind only Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.
• He made more than a few of those over-the-shoulder catches but that famous one was in the 1954 World Series against Cleveland, and that was his only championship.
• Mays came along four years after color-barrier-breaking Jackie Robinson, which was fortuitous for Mays because Americans were getting TVs en masse so he became an even more massive superstar than would have been possible just a few years earlier.
• While Robinson became an outspoken hero of civil-rights causes, Mays laid low on that front and, in a different way, did his part to bring whites and Blacks together, if only because so many white fans enjoyed watching him play so much.

Bottoms reaches comedy-weird deep to become the new Wet Hot American Summer

Have you ever wondered what high school might be like if everyone said out loud exactly what everyone was thinking? 

No? Me neither. But that doesn’t stop Bottoms, on Amazon Prime, from trying to tell such a story. And it's a pretty outrageous coming-of-age, high-school movie.

Fans of The Bear who are sick of waiting for Season 3 later this summer will especially want to enjoy Ayo Edebiri's performance as a loser lesbian supposedly fresh out of juvie. Her comedy timing and facial gestures are every bit as strong here as in her TV smash hit.

Rachel Sennott co-stars as a wackier version of the same character she played in 2021's Shiva Baby (which isn't surprising since Emma Seligman directed both films; that one was good but this one is better). 

Perhaps best of all is teacher Marshawn Lynch of pro-football fame as a lazy and porn-distracted teacher who agrees to sponsor the girls' fight club as a way to protect themselves from the nasty and unually effeminate football jocks. The girls are able to get the club going under the guise of female empowerment, but, in true dirty-teen-comedy form, all they really start it for is to have a chance at sex with cheerleaders.

I was trying to put my finger on what this film reminded me about, but then I read a Seligman quote in which she described Bottoms as a "campy queer high-school comedy in the vein of Wet Hot American Summer but more for a Gen-Z queer audience." 

Anything described to be like Wet Hot American Summer (my 34th favorite movie of all time), count me. 

4.5 out of 5 stars

Hit Man shows that Richard Linklater can straddle the line of mainstream and independent

I've long espoused the mastery of Richard Linklater, who I now place as my third-favorite movie director behind Alfred Hitchcock and Quentin Tanrantino. And while his latest, Hit Man on Netflix, is not his greatest, it's about as entertaining of a new release as you'll find, offering fun for both rom-com and action-crime fans (and it has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes).

I just reviewed another Glen Powell movie, Anyone But You, but Hit Man (along with 2016's Everybody Wants Some!!) really proves that this man is a star. He pulls off the Fletch-like task of changing into multiple characters in order to transform as a univeristy professor into a guy who disguises himself as a hit man for the New Orleans police in order to catch people before they are able to kill. Further, Powell wrote the script with Linklater.

What I wrote about Boyhood, my favorite movie of 2014, still holds:

If you're a fan of Linklater's other classics like Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, Before Sunrise, Slacker, Fast Food Nation, and Bernie, then you will surely think this is brilliant.

The director is usually more daring than he is with Hit Man. There was the 12-year real-life span of making Boyhood, the adult-focused animation of Waking Life, and the all-in-one-day story of the "Before" trilogy. He sticks with a strong focus on dialogue, which keeps it in the "independent" realm but still makes Hit Man his most mainstream movie ever. It works.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Bye Bye Birdie flies like a butterfly through D.C.'s Kennedy Center

I have a bit of a rule that I really don't enjoy musicals. I know, I co-wrote Wiener Sausage: The Musical! Of course there are great ones out there like Hedwig and the Angry Inch. There are movies like La La Land, Grease, Yesterday, Willy Wonka, A Star is Born, The Doors, Sing Street, and the list goes on.

So, ok, I guess I tolerate and every once in a while love musicals, which made going to the Kennedy Center Thursday night to see Bye Bye Birdie a little bit of a risky situation. But, it turns out, you would have to be a seriously hardened individual to not get carried away in the relentless joy of this story of the age-old struggles between Ed Sullivan-loving parents and their risque-pop-star-loving teens.

Despite the fact that I really want to start going to theater performances again (after a lack of doing so over the past five years, especially after letting my Woolly Mammoth season pass expire), I probably would not have gone to Bye Bye without the added incentive of seeing my wife's cousin Caroline Aaron in action. She's a renowned actor well-known to audiences from her roles in Woody Allen movies, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Edward Scissorhands, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and many more. This was the first time I've seen her on stage, and she doesn't disappoint as the curmudgeonly, racist mother of a record executive named Albert who has dreams of leaving the business, settling down with his girl Rosie, and becoming an English teacher.

With Albert's main client, Conrad Birdie, getting drafted into the military, this seems like the time for Rosie to convince Albert to make a clean break from his occupation. She comes up with a plan for Albert to immediately write a song for Conrad to sing on the Ed Sullivan Show before he leaves and to give "one last kiss" to a lucky member of Birdie's fan club. That's where the other side of the story comes in: Kim from Sweet Apple, Ohio is a member of the fan club and wins the kiss, but this causes strife with her steady boyfriend Hugo and her dad, played hilariously by Richard Kind, of Red Oaks, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mad About You, and many others.

Bye Bye Birdie has a rich history. here are some interesting nuggets about the show:

• The script was inspired by Elvis Presley getting drafted into the Army.
• Conrad Birdie was a play on country singer Conway Twitty's name.
• The original Broadway production starting in 1960 starred Dick Van Dyke, Chita Rivera, and Paul Lynde.
• In this new production, Ephraim Sykes plays Birdie, and he is well known for his roles in Hamilton, Vinyl, and 30 Rock.
• "Put On a Happy Face" is by far the song I recognized the most before seeing the show.

All of the songs are catchy in the production, the orchestra is magnificant, and the dancers are incredibly talented. My minor complaints are that I think some of the numbers are a little too long and, with such a thin story line, the fare is air light (not necessarily a bad thing in these often dark times).

4 out of 5 stars

The Count of Monte Cristo is a tour de force of reading adventure

1844's The Count of Monte Cristo by France's Alexandre Dumas (how cool-looking is that author? what a rock star) has stood as my favorite adventure classic novel since my days as an undergrad English lit major. It tells the history of Napoleonic times in 1800s France but wrapped in the added excitement of an action/adventure modern-era-type flick.

I highly recommend the full-length, epic novel for anyone who doesn't know the story. I also just listened to the abridged audiobook from Naxos Audiobooks, which is available to anyone with a library card in the Hoopla app. It's only two hours and suffers by losing all the excellent suspense and character development of the full experience. I listened to parts of the unabridged, 52-hour audiobook and, sure enough, it's a lot better. But it's also 52 hours!

In the story, it's 1815 and Napoleon has just escaped from his exile in Elba, off the western coast of Italy. Edmond Dantès has just been named captain of a ship that makes runs between France and Elba and agrees to deliver some packages back and forth for some Bonapartists. A crewmate is jealous that Dantès gets named captain and, just as Dantès is about to marry his fiancée Mercédès, the crewmate conspires to spread word that Dantès is a Napoleon sympathizer.

Dantès is arrested and sentenced without a trial to life imprisonment at the Château d'If in Marseille. After six years in the dank place, Dantès is preparing to commit suicide when the Abbé Faria, an Italian priest, pops into his cell after digging a wayward escape tunnel. The Abbé helps Dantès figure out the many people who were involved in the constructed conspiracy to lock him up. Additionally, he turns Dantès into a complete intellectual over the next eight years and also informs him of a treasure on the island of Monte Cristo south of Elba.

That's all I really want to tell you. The tale takes off on an extended jam in revenge adventure. His kindness to those who have helped him through life stand in stark contrast to the subtle manipulations which he uses to slowly torture those who have betrayed him - and each are traits that are a joy to see as they unfold. Which way will he go with Fernand Mondego (his old best friend), Danglars (his former ship crewmate), Villefort (the crafty magistrate), Mercédès (his former fiancee), and others?

If I were recommending one ancient classic piece of literature, it might very well be The Count of Monte Cristo.

• Reading the full book: 5 out of 5 stars
• Listening to the full audiobook: 4 out of 5 stars
• Listening to the abridged audiobook: 3 out of 5 stars

Joaquin Phoenix's depiction of Napoleon is one for the ages

While there is plenty of great stuff to see on Apple TV, there is also a lifetime’s worth elsewhere. So I cancelled my subscription upon completing 2023's Napoleon - a great way to go out with a bang.

Joaquin Phoenix has built a legend with some of the greatest performances in modern film, including The Joker, Her, Walk the Line, Quills, and The Master. He is the perfect Napoleon Bonaparte and this movie touches nicely on the French leader's major war battles and personal conflicts. It could have equally been a 10-episode TV series to fill in many more of the endlessly interesting details of his life.

Here are some of the things depicted in the movie that everyone high-school age and over should know about Napoeon Bonaparte:

• The film's story opens in 1789, with Marie Antoinette getting beheaded for her sympathies to the supposed enemies of France. This welcomed in the famed Reign of Terror. 
• Napoleon Bonaparte is in the crowd to witness the beheading. He is a young ambitious soldier from Corsica who is promoted after an impressive raid of the British at Toulon.
• He marries Joséphine de Beauharnais, who had been locked up as part of the Reign, and they have a robust sex life but can't conceive children. They also are not faithful to each other. (More than 41,000 prisoners were released at the end of The Reign of Terror.)
• As the tables turn and the French Royalists are rounded up, the former prisoners and people like Napoleon move into the mansions of Paris.
• The Battle of Austerlitz is a key exhibit of Napoleon's strategic genius, as he lures the Austrian emenies into a trap that backs them onto a frozen lake where Napoleon annihilates them.
• In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia, only to find Moscow vacated in the dead of winter. Moscow burns, but France retreats, having lost an astouding amount of its military - estimated at more than half a million French dead.
• The failure in Russia causes the first of his exiles, with the powers that be shipping him off to the island of Elba. 
• After he sweet talks his way back into leadership, an epic Battle of Waterloo scene unfolds, which is actually the beginning of the end for Napoleon. After Joséphine has already succumbed to pneumonia (after their divorce), he also dies in another exile on the island of Saint Helena in 1821 - soon after witnessing an ominous fly in his drink.
• The movie notes that nearly 3 million people died in Napoleon's wars.

Whether he was a great man or something else, it seems difficult to tell - certainly from this movie. But it is great cinema. I loved it, and if you want some historical fiction with love, war, and more, you should watch it. Napoleon left me wanting to know lots more than I currently do about this wildly fascinating time in human history.

4.5 out of 5 stars

"Winning ugly" in tennis is all about finding your opponent's weaknesses

Since I've whole-heartedly gotten back into competitive tennis, former pro Brad Gilbert's classic Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis and Lessons from a Master has been a book at the top of my list to read. I'm going to sum up the most interesting bits in this three-part series. Here's part 1. 

First published in 1992, when Jim Courier and Monica Seles were each number one in the world, I'm finding the advice to be timeless, even through the Nadal/Federer/Djokovic era and into the modern Alcaraz/Sinner/Zverev one.

Gilbert was a winner when he played on the pro tour not because he was a better athlete than his competitors but because he thought a lot between points and matches. Timothy Gallwey’s philosophies, which I recently wrote about, are on the intuitive processes while Gilbert’s is on the analytical processes. Gallwey focuses on the inner game while Gilbert focuses on seeing what’s in front of you and doing something about it.

He says that by using the advice given in Winning Ugly, tennis players’ chances of winning each match will go up by 20 percent. 

Gilbert prepares for 10 minutes on his way to matches by trying to answer what weaknesses of his opponent to exploit. This will determine how he will serve, what parts of his own game he should rely upon, and where he wants to place himself most often on the court.

Exploiting opportunities is key, and Gilbert says it's even easier at the recreational level than the pro level. Only once or twice out of every 10 matches will you encounter another player who isn’t lazy and is actually thinking about a game plan before the match. Players usually just show up to play, but you can get a step up on them if you review your notes on that player (if you have played them before), arrive at the courts early and stretch to loosen up, hit around with anyone else who might be there for some light warm-up, and work on your serve before the match. That should almost be an assurance to win the match over your opponent, Gilbert writes. "Recreational players are usually long on running and short on thinking." 

I sometimes play guys who, two hours into the match, ask if I have any extra water. That should be a sign that they aren’t too serious, Gilbert claims. Therefore, the tennis bag checklist is crucial:

• Why do some people have seemingly way too many rackets? There’s good reason. If control is proving to be a problem on any given day (or even just over the course of the past three or four games), go to a more tightly strung racket (which will be a higher number). If I’m getting overpowered and need more power myself, I can go with a racket strung looser (which will be a lower number). I've always found stringing confusing. Go here for how it's done.
• Take tape and band aids. I could have used some in my last match when a toenail got crunched halfway through. 
• Along these lines, take two Advil or Tylenol or whatever pain medicine before and after a match and bring some in your bag. And bring pain rubs. 
• Even just a few minutes of stretching before a match will pay off. Opponents often just warm up their arms and hands. Focus on your legs. Running in tennis movements back and forth and up and back in the court, and kicking your butt as you run, will get the legs ready. "Gradual, gentle, smooth stretching, never strain," and especially stretch the groin. Finally, don't forget to stretch after matches before cooling down. 

In the warmup with the other player: 

• Continue stretching. 
• Get your eyes and body working together. 
• Begin to assess your opponent. 
• For defrosting your strokes in the short warmup, volley for a few minutes and stay on the balls of your feet, work on hitting deep with your baseline strokes and try to work on your weaker stroke (typically the backhand), hit a few overheads to help practice your serve, and practice tossing the ball 4 or 5 times before actually warming up your serve.

What to watch for when warming up with your opponent, especially if you’ve never played them before:

• When he's at the net warming up his volley, hit a surprise lob to see whether his footwork is quick or clumsy.
• When he's at the net, hit a ball near his feet to see if he bends his knees or drops his racket with the lazy man’s volley.
• When warming up at the baseline, hit the ball down the middle to see whether he favors the forehand or backhand. And does he hit slices or other unusual shots, does he have big looping strokes or compact ones? The strokes that are the prettiest in warmup are ugly in a match, so never be impressed in the warmup.

To deal with pre-match nerves: 

• Practice taking deep breaths, like you have asthma.
• To avoid heavy feet, stay on the balls of your feet, not only in warmups but in the important parts of a match. Tell yourself “toes not heels.” This works on your opponent's mind too. 
• Try to read the label on the ball as it comes to you. This will take your mind off your nerves and onto a pleasant distraction, even if you can't truly tell whether the ball says Penn or Wilson.
• Sing a song.

That should be enough for a while. I'll report back with more of Gilbert's advice after I've read another third of his classic.

Elvis turned in a strong acting performance in Flaming Star, a Western set in the 1800s

I was listening to a podcast recently with Quentin Tarantino discussing the films that had influenced him at an early age and I was surprised to hear him speak so glowingly about a movie starring Elvis Presley.

Of course I love "Suspicious Minds," "In the Ghetto," Don't Be Cruel," and many other Elvis songs, but I never found his movies much worth discussing. I recently switched my streaming live TV from Sling to Fubo and I was excited that Tarantino's suggestion, Flaming Star, from 1960, is available there. I really enjoyed it and it's easy to see the similarities with Tarantino's work (incidentally, he's my favorite director behind Alfred Hitchcock).

It may be a little nonsensical, but, in the movie, you never want to utter the sentence “I saw the flaming star of death.” That apparently means you are dying and need to crawl off into the wilderness to do so. Elvis plays a mixed-blood character named Pacer Burton who lives with his white father and brother and Kiowa Native American mother in the open hill country of Texas. He is torn between staying with his peaceful ranching family or siding with the Kiowa to avenge the racism by many of the other nearby white people.

Elvis is noted by many critics and fans for turning in one of his best acting performances. Another reason I really enjoyed the movie is that the acting overall is better than most Westerns, including strong performances from I Dream of Jeannie's Barbara Eden and John McIntire as the dad, who also famously played Sheriff Al Chambers in my favorite movie Psycho, also released in 1960.

Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando had been pegged to play the brothers in Flaming Star, but Elvis ended up getting the lead role as he was seeking more parts with less singing (he does sing and play a little guitar early on in the movie).  

Oh, and Elvis's song "Flaming Star" as part of the soundtrack is a really good galloping number that I had somehow never heard before.

4 out of 5 stars

Sherman Alexie's Part-Time Indian can help pre-teens understand and empathize with a world that is cruel to many people

Since my daughter is now 10, it occurs to me that there won't necessarily be a whole slew of nights left when I get the chance to read to and with her before bedtime. Back in March, I wrote about one of my favorite authors, Sherman Alexie, and how he has a modern classic book that is nearly perfect for pre-teens:

Next on my list from Alexie is his young-adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, from 2007. It’s listed in 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, which notes its revered status as a favorite on banned-book lists by school boards. It’s “controversial in the way life itself is controversial: unsettled, uneasy … devastating one day and comic the next.” Alexie also won the 2009 Odyssey Award for his reading of it as the year’s best audiobook.

We finished it tonight and the novel gets two major thumbs-ups from me and my daughter. Although most people will be attracted by the banned-book designation, there will be a handful of racists and prudes who will consider it a badge of honor towards their U.S. patriotism to not approve of this book. (There are a couple of sections about masturbation and other teen tomfoolery that I kind of mumbled through, but certainly nothing that is bannable and the tale itself is never less than page-turning.)

We read the 10th-anniversary edition and Alexie added details in a postscript about how the narrator, Arnold Spirit Jr., also known as "Junior," was more-than-a-little based off his own early-teen years. Junior is an aspiring cartoonist and good basketball player who decides to leave his Spokane reservation to attend a white high school. This irritates many on the rez, especially his best friend Rowdy, who is based off Alexie's best friend growing up named Randy, who would later die as an adult when he wasn't wearing his seat belt in a car crash.

Because of Junior's balancing act between the worlds of Native Americans and whites, I've never read a better description of the many ways it must feel alienating to live in the U.S. as members of reservation communities. The descriptions of alcohol abuse, violence and bullying, and abject poverty are harrowing.

Alexie began writing it as a memoir but then was convinced by an editor to turn it into a young-adult novel. Still, he noted that it's "about 78 percent" a true story. From the first sentence, when Junior informs us he was "born with water on the brain," Alexie opens up an entire world of a poor person with a disability and all kinds of other issues to deal with that, in my mind, can help prepare a pre-teen for the world and all the empathy that is needed to survive healthily within it.

5 out of 5 stars

Great Newspaper Reads: The legend of "Cannonball" and The Breeders keeps growing 30 years later

I've seen Kim Deal twice in her role as bassist for the Pixies - in New York and in Washington D.C. - but I've never seen The Breeders, which is often considered her "other band." But I would consider them both among the greatest rock bands ever, and an argument could be made that The Breeders' album Last Splash is better than any of the Pixies' records.

As The Breeders toured last fall, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Last Splash and the mega-hit "Cannonball," I missed the show in Silver Spring, Maryland, but The Washington Post had a great feature. Here are 10 interesting nuggets from that article and my 25 favorite songs by the band.

1. "Cannonball" was called the 22nd greatest indie anthem by New Musical Express, the 83rd greatest song of the 1990s by VH1, and one of the 500 best songs ever by Rolling Stone.
2. The band had already been through a handful of lineups, but the true magic happened when Tanya Donelly left to start Belly and Kim's sister Kelley Deal joined on guitar, even though she barely knew how to play the thing. That lack of knowledge made for some highly creative riffs unimaginable to any virtuoso - "more guitar strategy than technique" - and her vocal harmonies with her twin sister were from another universe.
3. When Kelley joined the band, she was working for a defense contractor in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio.
4. Kelley called Neil Young's guitar solo on "Down by the River," consisting of one note 38 times over and over, "the best f___ing solo ever."
5. Kim never explains any of her lyrics, and most of them are really tough to even attempt deciphering.
6. The whole myth that Kim was trapped in Pixies is false, she says, and that it was Charles Thompson/Black Francis/Frank Black's band all along.
7. The band broke up after Last Splash, but it was never anaything intentional. The whole thing just kind of collapsed via lack of communication, much of which led to a heroin addiction for Kelley, drugs and alcohol for Kim, a general retreat from the exhaustion of it all by bassist Josephine Wiggs, and a fight between Kim and alcoholic drummer Jim Macpherson that resulted in the two not speaking for 15 years.
8. The Breeders have recently opened some dates on pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo's tour, including at Madison Square Garden.
9. The Deal sisters still live in Dayton. Macpherson also lives there and is a carpenter.
10. The three of them, plus Wiggs, still regularly practice together.

My favorite Breeders songs (including the album and year)

25. Freed Pig (Head to Toe EP, 1994, Sebadoh cover)
24. Divine Mascis (Last Splash 30th Annoversary, 2023)
23. Little Fury (Title TK, 2002)
22. London Song (Title TK, 2002)
21. I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love With You) (Divine Hammer single, 1993)
20. Lime House (Pod, 1991)
19. Happiness is a Warm Gun (Pod, 1991, Beatles cover)
18. Huffer (Title TK, 2002)
17. Saints (Last Splash, 1993)
16. Shocker in Gloomtown (Head to Toe EP, 1994, Guided by Voices cover)
15. Hellbound (Pod, 1991)
14. Invisible Man (Last Splash, 1993)
13. New Year (Last Splash, 1993)
12. Safari (Safari EP, 1992)
11. Do You Love Me Now Jr? (Divine Hammer single, 1993)
10. So Sad About Us (Safari EP, 1992, The Who cover)
09. When I Was a Painter (Pod, 1991)
08. Fortunately Gone (Pod, 1991)
07. Off You (Title TK, 2002)
06. Full On Idle (Title TK, 2002)
05. Do You Love Me Now? (Last Splash, 1993)
04. Drivin' on 9 (Last Splash, 1993)
03. No Aloha (Last Splash, 1993)
02. Divine Hammer (Last Splash, 1993)
01. Cannonball (Last Splash, 1993)