How many weeks now, HFCS-free?

I went to a restaurant and ordered a Coke to see. I tasted it. I hated it. However many weeks this is into not consuming high fructose corn syrup anymore, you can really taste whatever that is they put in Coca-Cola, instead of real sugar, is not real sugar. It tasted cloying and artificial, and my entire body as well as my tongue were really turned off. I didn't finish half a can of it and left it in its glass on the table. At this point, the only things I can drink are cold water, orange juice from concentrate with no sugar, and sangria. Yesterday, though, I wanted to see what my reaction would be to my former addiction. Would I start craving a Coke again? I had to find out. I tasted it.

Gross.

One Less

Alec Baldwin reports he's done with acting and is going to exit the industry, according to Reuters. When you leave an industry because you authentically are, in your heart, concluded and done with it, do you typically announce you're leaving? -- or just leave? I read Baldwin's statement, and my first thought was, "Somebody's not getting the PR they want this Christmas." My second thought was, "Future SAG President." Not to slag the star type, but I notice many of them tend to be shallow, selfish people whose view of themselves, the world, and how to behave towards others is often a bit... shall we say... "slant"? Producers have learned to view goodbye cruel world announcements from actors cynically -- and amusingly, so has the audience.

But what disturbed me reading Baldwin's farewell were what the actor listed as the reasons movies are made. "The goal of movie-making is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success," explains Baldwin, "and I never had that."

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend about how difficult it is for real actors today in the film and television industry. Both of us felt that business has become crowded with people who arguably are in it, clogging every entrance and opportunity in it, because "it's exciting", "ooh, it's so glamorous", and they "want to be a star". People like this get lip collagen and breast impants and crowd the auditions my sister, a real actor, goes to, their headshots cram talent agency shelves real actors' resumes should lightly rest upon, they sing desperately on American Idol, rap about champagne brands, feed the entire Dolly Dinkle industry, and coo to me with envious red reptile eyes, "A TV producer? You're so lucky."

They also crash White House parties and tell the police their little boys got lost in the sky on renegade balloons.

If Alec Baldwin is telling the truth why he thinks movies are made, our industry should rejoice his departure, because a person who really thinks a 100-year old form of passionate artistic expression whose purpose is to share thoughts, feelings, dreams and imagination exists to "to star in" and be "a soaring critical or commercial success," is not really an actor but someone who wanted to be a celebrity. Baldwin's final statement is the tell: "I never had that."

Can't you just see the toddler lower lip pout in that sentence?

This is the kind of actor I despise, the self-aggrandizing diva who shows up on your set drugged out and in sunglasses and an ascot, swaggers around coming on to male or female crew, spends every moment between takes making sure the entire set knows how great he is and how lucky we are to work with him, moans if his parking isn't taken care of, refuses to eat with the other cast members, and eventually becomes the president of the Screen Actors' Guild. I'm not kidding. If you review all the union's presidents since 1960, you'll notice all were failed actors; if you do a little homework and interview the directors and producers on the few sets they graced, you'll find -- without exception -- all were hostile, self-important divas whose behavior alienated most of the crews they worked with, and Word Got Around. That was how they lost work, and eventually, they wound up in charge of SAG where their grandiose demands could be spread out across an entire industry to ruin actors, tilt their priorities from good performance to "special treatment", and arguably poison Hollywood. I've met those actors. I won't hire them.

So thank you, Mr. Baldwin, for telling us all what your true priorities are and probably always were the entire time you "worked" here. Don't let the door bang you in the butt as you leave. Somewhere, an actor who acts because he must act in something every day or he will die will finally get the shot he deserves because a wannabe who was in his seat finally left the building.

One less. I think I'll pop some champagne this evening.

Can You Hear My Fist Banging, Folks?

Tears are rolling down my cheeks tonight because I've accidentally discovered a short animated segment I feel everyone age 35 to 44 needs to see. It's no secret Generation X wants the good times back, the old times back. It's my belief we can have that. That we can have it NOW. That all we have to do is stand up, face the Baby Boomers, their Generation Y children, and Generation Jones (the emotionless bastards between us and the Boomers in age, who only seem to care about money, and who blink at Sesame Street and the cartoons of our childhoods, then say, blankly, "So what did that mean?") and we need to say ENOUGH:

Enough: we will no longer accept the blame for your dot com bubble; enough, we will no longer accept Auto-Tuned fake music on our radio stations; enough, we will no longer accept trashy, oversexed, over-violent TV shows and movies; enough, we will no longer allow children to be compromised in school and forced to grow up too soon; enough, we will no longer sit still and be made fun of; we will no longer let you disempower and disenfranchise us; we will no longer play into this system that isn't working, we won't work your 9 to 5, we won't sell out, we won't give in, we will no longer be silent. We will no longer allow Generation Y to usurp our adult moment in history, and let the Boomers reap the profits from them like dauphins. It's our turn now. You have had your turn. It's now ours. And from now on, what we say goes.

All it takes is each of us, all of us, saying that with one unified voice, then standing together as one and enforcing it. We need only rise as one, shout "Yop", declare it, then do it.

I've always been afraid I'm destined to be one of the Generation X-ers who climbed the highest, yelled the loudest, and risked the most danger to speak out us all, make our voice known, return our values and our memories to radio, to movies, to television. Sure, the shows I create and the network I'm building are part of that. But I never felt it for certain until tonight. An extremely gifted Italian animator named Bruno Bozzetto, who belongs to our parents' generation, put into flash what I've never put into public words. It's lit me on fire. It is time for Generation X to rise, to stand up. Bozzetto has produced a short cartoon that, if it doesn't wake you up after seeing it, nothing will.

With that, I leave the cartoon to do the talking. Here it is in all its glory. Wake up, Gen X-ers. This cartoon is about us. Please listen to it. It's time to fight back and do something. It is time, nothing less, folks, for the Generation X cultural revolution. This is our call to arms.

When to Hold Em, and When to Fold Em

I've got to do something to keep these essays shorter. Anyway, today's article is about the great movies of the 1970's. As my friends and colleagues know, I'm in the midst of pre-production with nine very short days to go before shooting starts, and that can be a crazy time. To keep sane, I'm watching movies right now that remind me why I got into this business. When time crunches, and budget pays your puppetmakers and part of your storage, but leaves none to get your hair done (and you're a girl and therefore vulnerable), sometimes you need the reminder!

I notice that my cinema choices this gloomy evening are veering towards Seventies movies whose Act Threes parallel the "you will die if you fail" crises of television production and filmmaking. First, I watched Star Wars 4: A New Hope. Then I watched The Blues Brothers. Then I noticed both films are kind of about the same thing. They also share production aspects, especially where their scoring is concerned. I'll touch on the former briefly, then rant the latter.

Thematically, Star Wars and The Blues Brothers were feel-good movies aimed at the general audience of the Seventies. It was the post-Watergate era, the CB radio craze period. Despite a pretty fair decade, Americans felt under pressure from government, police and other authority. Punk, the ultimate exercise in anarchy, was beginning to curdle and pop across the Atlantic. It was a time for the underdog, the little guy. Instead of siding against the little guy, during the Seventies, Hollywood cheered him on. The movies of the era reflected this sentiment.

Star Wars looks, on the surface, like a science-fiction space opera about a young man with a special destiny encountering a wider universe and becoming a man. Yes, it's about that. But Star Wars was also a film about the triumph of the little guy against The Man. The good guys formed a Rebellion and were called Rebels. The Stormtroopers and The Empire were the bad guys. The entire movie tabulates various incursions, insults and aggressions by The Empire against the generally simple folk of a thousand backwoods worlds who merely wanted to live their lives and trade peacefully. Along come aliens, droids and humans from a dozen worlds who band together, are assisted by The Force, and defeat the bad guys in possibly the single greatest cinematic nailbiter ever shot to celluloid -- the Death Star battle.

The Blues Brothers seems, on the surface, to be a feel-good buddy comedy about two shiftless but likable musicians, a jailbird and his anal, cop-obsessed Bert of a brother, who take on the mission of saving their childhood Catholic orphanage by mounting the tour of the millennium to raise dough for its delinquent tax bill. And yes, that's what it is. But The Blues Brothers was also a movie about two off-the-grid underdogs unrepentantly giving the authorities the ass-kicking of their lives and (almost) getting away with it. (I also consider The Blues Brothers one of Hollywood's most overtly spiritual movies, but that's another rant for another time.) What is The Blues Brothers but a cinematic celebration of the triumph of the little guy?

And Hollywood, during the Seventies, was full of such celebrations: Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Love and The Midnight Auto Supply, The Paper Chase, Smokey and the Bandit, Planet of The Apes, Close Encounters of The Third Kind, The Sugarland Express, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Saturday Night Special, Let's Do It Again, and Blazin' Saddles. And a whole lot more. In fact, looking back, memory seems to tell me the entire decade of the Seventies was a Hollywood orgy of DIY anarchy put to film stock. The dirty dog directors who helmed these popcorn exploits became, during the Eighties, the captains of movie industry. Steven Spielberg. George Lucas. Francis Ford Coppola.

The Eighties were also the decade the underdog died. When Dan Aykroyd tried to continue the celebration after 1979, with Dr. Detroit -- another entry in the little guy compendium, following the Seventies cinema recipe to the letter -- it died on contact. Not even Steven Spielberg prevailed. 1941 was wrapped and handed to him stillborn. Ronald Reagan, authoritarian, was the new man in charge, and out with DIY president Jimmy Carter went the adorable shaggy optimism of the decade. It was a new era, and Hollywood, to quote Steely Dan, "got the news."

So there's shared theme.

But what I also notice, in at least two of these films I'll discuss today, is that directors then, as opposed to now, knew the importance of music score to their movies. They knew that music in fact has so much power in your production, you can't cheerily set it loose everywhere to dominate every scene, every frame. In certain scenes, the music is a lead character and must accompany the action. But in other scenes -- two of which I'll mention -- the music is sufficiently important that, to correctly treat the action, it must be left out, making the scene musicless. A way of putting this casually is to quote Kenny Rogers from his Seventies hit "The Gambler": where scoring is concerned, "you've got to know when to hold em", and "know when to fold em."

WHEN TO HOLD EM

John Landis is one of my five favorite directors. Richard Donner I love for his rock-steady storytelling, assured crane shots (best in the business) and broad, clean sense of humor. John McTiernan I love because he edits while shooting: he actually lines up his shots in such a way editing becomes like connect-the-dots. Die Hard 1, for instance, is such pure cinema ballet there is almost no one who has seen it who cannot quote all the dialogue in correct sequence and who does not know exactly which scene is next at any given point in the film. Danny DeVito I love because his comedy is so cruel, his sense of humor so wicked; and he is a very underrated visual talent. War of The Roses is devastating visually as well as comedically. The Rose house becomes darker and more sinister with each scene; the closer to meltdown the couple gets, the darker and nastier the shots and set become around them.

John Landis, however, I just love for his sheer boyish crush on the medium of film: watch him on a set and he is infectious. His grin glows like a 300 watt softbox; he's ebullient; he jumps, snaps his fingers, shakes his fist "YESSSS" and even jigs. Watch a shot go right and he pounces, shivers and does a toddler dance of glee. Even his mishap on Twilight Zone: The Movie -- which I feel was never his fault as director, but more the stunt coordinator's; I hope the judge has visited a set since and learned this -- failed to dampen John's spirit. He's like the Ner Tamid of Hollywood filmmaking. Feel down about the business? Want to quit production, wanna leave? Watch "The Making of The Blues Brothers". John's middle name ought to be shamash. You'll be taking an angry call from IATSE with a smile in your voice, "Hello-o-o?"

Landis loves music. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi fully infected our bearded boyish brio ball with a taste for the blues, and Landis never recovered. He packed Blues Brothers full of Stax / Volt single after single, demonstrating how music, utilized correctly in a film, becomes another character in it. Who can imagine the escape from the Palace Hotel without that long, extended band riff going on and on, until the cops suddenly look at each other and realize, "Hey, this song has been playing for an awful long time uninterrupted; where the hell are The Blues Brothers? They're not on stage! They must be -" Look of outrage, spring up from table. "Shit!"

George Lucas, on the other hand, is sager, slower, more wizardly. Speaking of "The Gambler", I would not want to play poker against Lucas: ever. He makes no tells. (Has he ever?) He just sits there, this congenial round bearded ball of Zen, and you get the feeling you could tell him his entire budget has been blown times 80 and John Williams refuses to work with him. The Lucas reaction would be a shrug, a Wallyish, nasal, "Oh well." And off he'd go to some shed in the back for about eighteen months and emerge with an even more lucrative movie than the one he lost.

There's a debate on between me, my brother, and about six thousand people online whether old George is a great storyteller and a brilliant conceptualist, or a rather scattered and lucky, not so talented storyteller and the greatest conceptualist known to man. Whatever he is (I can just hear him say, with a shrug, "Eh. I'm just a guy.") Lucas does know the power of music scoring, and he wisely made John Williams the Ace of Spades in his favorite deck many decades ago. The two together, as a team, pretty much are undefeatable in the genre. Lucas only wants the music where he wants it; and where he doesn't want it, Williams does not put it.

The Death Star Battle is a prime example. It starts out lushly orchestrated; it's my favorite of all John Williams's compositions and has been since 1978, when my brother got the soundtrack album (on vinyl, thank you). There are great leaping Eric Korngold swoops and blasts that will place your heart in your throat during the tense early moments of that scene: who can forget the quiet suspense and fear in the score as a worried Princess Leia and Rebel administrators watch the layout showing yet another Rebel fighter lost, and the Death Star inching perilously closer to perfect range to destroy the base? The spiraling horns as Wedge and Luke tighten it down in the trench, and Mark Hamill delivers my favorite Hamill line, "It'll be just like Beggars' Canyon back home"?

Remember the dark, swirling menacing of lower brass and percussion as Vader coolly pilots his own Tie Fighter up the trench, closing in on our heroes? Or how about this? The timpanis and brass at full throttle the exact moment Han Solo appears from out of nowhere in the Millennium Falcon, sends Vader and his fighters flying, then says, sending the audience into paroxysms of ecstatic movie theater applause I still remember from 1977, "Alright, kid, you're clear! Now let's blow this thing and go home!" These are examples of musical auteur John Williams showing his genius, and George Lucas, as visual auteur, knowing it belonged there, on those moments.

But what you may not remember, without rewinding both those movies and watching them once more to see, is that these scenes are also examples of knowing where music does not belong.

AND NOW, WHEN TO FOLD EM

During the most important part of Act Three -- when Jake and Elwood put pedal to metal streaking through Chicago attempting to escape the police and get that $5,000 to the tax auditor in Daly Plaza in time -- The Blues Brothers has no music at all.

That's right. Check it again.

The exact moment The Bluesmobile smashes through the open daylight police barricade sending wood pieces and fleeing police officers in every which direction, the blues soundtrack drops out to dead silence, leaving only that magnificent foley CRACK and the ensuing skid of some of the best union stunt driving work in cinematic history to tell what happens next. From that moment on, until Henry Gibson's priceless Illinois Nazi leader spots the car blurring past his own -- three minutes and fourteen seconds -- there is not a note of music: instead, it is a symphony of police sirens, skidding tires burning rubber, angry gun shots, and occasional dialogue punctuated often by loud automobile collisions. The music steps wisely back and allows foley to serve as music. The results are unforgettable and legendary. Having placed us under this spell, then Landis breaks it by launching Wagner's "Flight of The Valkyries": and I bet you not only smiled faintly remembering and hearing the piece suddenly start in your mind, but can recite me every line of dialogue and tell me every scene that happens next, right to the plunge and crash of the Pinto. Because that scene cannot be embedded from YouTube, here's another Landis scene restraining music and choosing to restrict soundtrack so that it behaves almost as an actor:

George Lucas, in Act Three of Star Wars, plays the same game. Gold Leader announces to the base he is launching the attack run they've all been planning since practically scene one of the movie, and Darth Vader takes a Tie Fighter from his private bay in counterattack. The Rebels enter the trench of the Death Star to attempt to destroy it. Here is the most crucial battle of the movie. Lucas instructs Williams to back out, and the soundtrack falls to suspenseful silence.

For three minutes and thirty-three seconds, there is no music whatsoever in Star Wars. As in Act Three of Blues Brothers, the foley serves as soundtrack: and what an effective soundtrack it proves to be. Ben Burtt, sound designer to Star Wars, treats us to a delectable smorgasbord of sharp, searing fighter rays, deep, sonorous explosions and taut, tense military dialogue, edited tightly by Lucas's then wife, Marcia into a wicked brew to which Seventies audiences had never been exposed. In 1968, they'd seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, so courtesy of Douglas Trumbull they were moderately used to breathtaking special effects in space; but unfortunately, too many actual scientists were involved in Stanley Kubrick's film, so there was "no sound in space". The optics of 2001, jawdropping though they were (and still are), were rendered curiously mute, but that was the right choice for that film. In Star Wars, with battle scenes like this, sound effects were going to have to be part of the game, and Ben Burtt earned every ounce of that Oscar.

My point is, the directors of The Blues Brothers and Star Wars each made the choice to remove the music for approximately three and one half minutes during Act Three of their movies, and in each case, the dramatic power of both scenes was heightened. Each scene became memorable. Spielberg, between both these powerhouse films with a powerhouse movie of his own, made the same choice in Act Three of Close Encounters of The Third Kind. After instructing Williams to duly whip up audience emotion until Roy Neary reaches the Devil's Tower, once the ship appears at last, confirming Roy's hunches and finally conferring justice and relevance upon his two-hour, family and job-wrecking mission, the scientists, Roy, and movie audiences are left with no music but instead one of the most awe-inspiring sequences in American cinema: the beings using color and light to communicate at length for the first time with mankind. Steven Spielberg knew the importance of music, as Lucas and Landis did. Thus informed, he made exactly the right choice.

So sometimes, knowing how powerful music is and what it can do to your production includes knowing where it is best included and better excluded. I think I've mentioned before that in my silly mind, music is used best by a producer as a chef would garlic: with restraint. It is also best used as an experienced gambler, according to Kenny Rogers, handles money. All together now:

You've got to know when to hold em
Know when to fold em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run
You never overdo scorin'
When Act Three is on the table
There'll be time enough for scorin'
When the movie's done.

Hey: It's Black Friday Eve, so...

Let's get this 2009 Christmas Season underway with a little night nostalgia. First stop, Rankin-Bass's charming 1974 animated special 'Twas The Night Before Christmas. This won't be a typical, exhaustive Generation X fanboy review of the cartoon, because there are many of those easily had by leaving this blog and Googling. So many have written so many so better. Instead, it's my brief, subjective paean to what I feel is a monstrously underrated cartoon, which affected my childhood for reasons you might not find on those other, better blogs.

First, Twas The Night Before Christmas is the most Broadway musical-sounding of all the Rankin-Bass holiday specials. If I had the backers, I'd produce a live Broadway version of it. It would beat out its competitors and become a legend. This is the one musical Generation X would come see in New York City. (That is, if done right.)

Twas The Night Before Christmas also has the best songs Maury Laws has composed. "Even A Miracle Needs A Hand", with its faintly Joe Raposo-ish bells and melody, is the perfect response to all those Law of Attraction addicts out there who oddly miss the lazy Little Matchstick Girliness of sitting idly wishing: you can't just sit on your butt and expect a miracle to occur. God is not a removable part of the equation, either. God's will is still part of it. To help your maker, get out of your easy-chair and expend some effort. Joel Grey makes you feel the lyrics. His voice is strangely affecting, pretty. His Joshua Trundle, likable husband and dad clockmaker, refuses to let an act of sabotage get him down. After his brainchild town square clock is destroyed by a pissant mouse who thinks he speaks for "all of us", Trundle loses the city's confidence and is impoverished. However, he upbraids his children when they grouse unhappily about whether there are miracles -- and launches into this song. But it's far from the best song in the cartoon.

"There's More to The World (Than Meets The Eye)", with its clockwork tempo and earnest, climbing bassline, is my favorite Maury Laws song. ("My World Is Beginning To Happen", Jessica Claus's showstealer ballad from Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, runs an extremely close second.) Maybe "There's More to The World" affects me more because most copies of Twas The Night Before Christmas produced after 1974 curiously omit this bassoony song and its animated sequence -- rumored to be because Father Mouse, its singer, uses a lyric containing the retro meaning of the word "gay". But as a child, I loved this sequence. Years later, my memory somehow was accurate enough to assure me a leprechaun figured in it. I finally obtained an untampered copy of the original broadcast, and sure enough, it does. "There's More to The World" is the most meticulously storyboarded sequence in the cartoon, animated so simply and wonderfully. As moments go, it is magic. Why is it never included on the DVD?

"Christmas Bells Are Calling (Santa, Santa)" is the straight-forward end-of-musical Broadway curtain-dropper. Its opening seconds, heard at the conclusion of the cartoon special when Joshua Trundle's town clock finally works for real, will bring you chills.

Jerome Coopersmith, the screenwriter, opens the special grandly and with much suspense. Human father lies awake in bed, studying the clock by his candle, recites the titular poem, then says, "If only I could sleep. If only I knew." Your attention is caught immediately and you wonder what's keeping Pa in His Cap awake on Christmas Eve. But then mouse father, living below the wood planks of the Trundle family house, recites the same poem and repeats the hook. "If only I could sleep," he says, referencing the mouse of the poem. "If only I knew."

The special rolls smoothly, telling the tale of a meddling mouse son -- marvellously voiced by Tammy Grimes, which see below -- who, in eerie foreshadowing of the know-it-all chutzpah of certain folks on the internet, presumes he knows without having been there or seeing it whether something is true, then acts upon it, libeling Santa as a myth, and causing the latter to shun the whole town of Junctionville as revenge. When Father Mouse phones the North Pole to investigate, viewers are treated to a subtle Laugh-In/Lily Tomlin joke: when asked if the line is working, the mouse operator who answers says in a nasal Tomlin accent back to Father Mouse, "The equipment is in working order." Father Mouse learns that his bookish, snobbish son Albert is behind the letter and, when punished, Albert retaliates by sabotaging the clock to prevent the town from the horror of continuing to be fooled by believing Santa Claus, who was intended to hear the clock's chimes and visit on Christmas Eve Night, exists -- and prove himself right.

Trundle, unaware this mouse has interfered with his clock, attends its debut operation in the midst of Junctionville town square -- only to watch in disbelief as the clock experiences a severe malfunction in front of the entire village. The town and mayor turn upon Trundle, send him home, and take back their clocks from his repair shop, impoverishing him. The story sails along nicely from there, giving almost all the cast members memorable musical numbers, and the two sole animators full freedom to express their incredible genius.

Two animators! Two Japanese Top Craft animators, Tohru Hara and Tsuguyuki Kubo, hand-drew every frame of every character of a thirty-minute Christmas special. Today we witness dozens of animators for stuff like The Simpsons -- whose animation isn't even as good. (It's also how I know as fact a small company like mine can compete with and recreate the magic of these kinds of specials. Give us a few more months.)

Legendary actress Tammy Grimes, however, lends the cartoon its motivation by voicing Albert Mouse, arguably the albeit repentant villain of Twas The Night Before Christmas. Continuing the tradition of adult female voice talent playing male child cartoon characters, like June Foray before her, Ms. Grimes continually amazes me with her performance. Albert, confronted by his father about his vile internet-style letter, responds with an aloof arrogance you can literally feel coming out of your speakers. "Yes, Father," he replies when initially called -- with a comma or period, not a question mark, and you can hear it. Just to be sure you get it, when Father Mouse mentions the letter, the boy repeats it: "I said, 'Yes, Father.'"

Period.

Specious displays of surface intelligence follow: Albert Mouse is quick to attempt to dazzle even his own father by mentioning Copernicus and Kepler whenever the clock becomes the subject of the conversation, a lizard-tail trick intended to mislead the listener from what he did to ruin the town's Christmas and divert listener attention to his "genius". Online we call this putting up a strawman, and Tammy Grimes makes it more effective by deliberately choosing as an actress not to be in on the joke; she plays Albert sincerely, as if Albert himself believes implicitly in the innocence of what he is doing. You end up open-mouthed at the character's selfish assumption of perfection and morality: Albert is convinced he is right and sees nothing wrong in his behavior, even when his father shows him grieving children in a hospital ward who are crushed Santa will not be visiting their town ever again. It takes overhearing the Trundles sing a religious song to finally reach him: at last cognizant of how his act of moralist prudery wrecked lives outside his own, after watching the Trundles smile through the poverty he created, Albert is shaken to his core and at last repents. This is where Tammy Grimes, in my opinion, earned what should have been an Emmy nomination.

In a cracked, broken sob, Albert refrains the Trundles' "Miracle" song in a darker, lower key. Perhaps hearing him, Father Mouse enters Albert Mouse's bedroom to find the boy in kneeling position, arms crossed over his head, face down sobbing by his bed. Grimes, at this moment, ceases doing voice talent for the character -- and begins to audibly act.

When George Gobel as Father Mouse asks what's wrong, "My fault," she sobs. "All my fault. I ruined everyone's Christmas." Father Mouse responds that he already knows and that Albert is honest for admitting it. Albert corrects him: "No, that isn't it. It's something else. Mister -- Mister Trundle's clock. In the village hall. I-I wanted to see how it worked -- s-so I climbed up into it. And..." Gobels chimes in: "Kerplunk?" The child answers, "Kerplooey."

Father Mouse, for an instant, is outraged: "You broke the clock?"

Grimes absolutely blows the following lines away: "I didn't mean it, Father. I'm so-r-r-r-ry...?" (The hypens in "sorry" are the closest I can get in writing to how she says it. There is even a vague, pitiful uptick on the second syllable, suggesting a question mark, but what Grimes is actually doing is perfectly rendering the loss of pitch control a child's voice often has when he or she is crying while speaking. I notice these things and am blown away she did.) "So sorry," the boy insists, compounding his shame -- which is intense and clearly audible.

Father Mouse fusses at Albert and tells him he has to correct the thing he did. Suddenly Grimes brightens, her voice taking on the age-old, classic stage enthusiasm of the Broadway veteran she was. "That's it," she makes Albert Mouse crow suddenly. You can almost see him swing a fist in sudden resolve. (Haru and Kubo in fact detected and animated it. The scene where he swings his fist on Grimes's statement starts this blog entry.) "I'll fix the clock by midnight. Then Santa might --" he starts. Maury Laws brings back the orchestra in a new warm major key full of hope and optimism. But George Gobels, voice taut with uncertainty, tests the child: "You believe in Santa?" (Almost a Windows "Are you sure you want to delete?" prompt of vocal skepticism.) Tammy Grimes sells it and wins that Emmy: "I don't know. I don't know. But I've learned I've still got a lot to learn."

The way Grimes performs that one repeated line, "I don't know. I don't know", gave me chills as a youngster and does today. To me, by itself it's reason to watch Twas The Night Before Christmas today. Because at that moment, on the voice of a former Broadway actress who knew the right thing and did it, a simple 1974 Christmas cartoon surpassed the ordinary and became transcendent.

Part One

Part Two

Tammy Grimes's excellent plot point portrayal of Albert Mouse's character finally experiencing shame and finding redemption is in Part Two.

Isn't it fun reading character analysis into a 1974 children's cartoon probably not intended to carry such cultural complexity and meaning? Only from Generation X, folks! Ignore the appearance of a disturbingly mustacheless Santa, which caused me squirmy discomfort as a child, but please do enjoy.

(My thanks go to Mr. Jerome Coopersmith for discussing this special, and his writing in it, in 2007. Thank you, sir. You totally made my year!)

Why I'm Not Married

I've finally figured it out: it's because Frank Sinatra and Joseph G. Raposo are no longer with us. Because had I been worthy, I would have said yes to either magnificent man. Frank Sinatra: the classy, wise, handsome Italian-American gentleman with that smooth voice like sweet cognac, capable of making you take anything and give away worse. "Cock your hat," Frank would warn younger, more immature fellas. "Angle is attitude." (Swoon.) Frank Sinatra was a man's man: tender to the weaker sex, he knew a man's place well, and a woman's place better.

If you went to dinner with Frank, no holds were barred and he hit you with everything. Your chair was pulled out for you to slide the satin and sit. Roses on the table. The waiter had better be fast and right. The dining, to die for. Champagne if you were lucky. Jack Daniels if luckier. If you got out of line, Frank would never hit you -- he never hit a lady, it's said -- but the look in his eye told you you were fortunate he didn't. A man like this appreciates when his woman is a lady: the kind who keeps the house looking fabulous and then has the nerve to look just as fabulous when he gets home -- then cooks a man's meal with all the trimmings. A woman like this, Frank Sinatra would have treated like gold: or warned the lucky buddy who won her that he had better, or he would answer to Frank in her name. Where are the men like this? Today's men wear baseball caps, know nothing about cocking a real hat, would never wear suspenders or cologne, and on a date, you're blessed to get McDonald's, dear -- and hold open the door for him, while you're at it.

Complain and you'll be fed a sermon about how the culprit's feminism: not him being derelict in his duty as a man to ignore feminism and do what a man's got to do. Today's man seems to accept feminism as his excuse to maltreat women: after all, that's what we deserve, right? Or isn't it instead that this kind of man has been hunting a reason to be let off the hook of male responsibility a long time, and feminism is the perfect excuse? Frank Sinatra would have glanced at feminism, lifted his eyebrows and puffed his cheeks, shaken his head, and walked past the poor creatures touting it so he could find the lady down the road from them, who knows how to be a lady and let him be the man, and treat her right.

Joe Raposo, who admitted he was far from perfect with women, nevertheless looked down on his considerable gifts in our eyes. He thought himself overweight and criticized himself for it: missing completely his deep brown eyes with long lashes, the full kissable lips, the thick curly black hair crying out for female fingernails -- his cuddliness, his strong arms, his crushing, safe hugs. The snazzy style of dress. The phenomenal songwriting talent and almost maternal love of children. Joe was a teddy bear, said Jim Henson once. Bears, as we know, can be teddy or grizzly. Harm a child or a woman near Raposo and I bet I know which bear you got. He was also a sensualist, something everyone who knew him knows. His sense of everything he encountered was heightened: a good-tasting meal was fantastic. A fine drink was superb. A velvet skirt, soft to us mortals, was to Raposo exquisite. Take that where it leads you... wink.

I remember once one of Joe's sons was extremely angry with me when I finally had to tell him I was not interested in son but in love with father. But in the end it was probably Shakespearean: no man wants to be upstaged by his immortal father. However, the son is from a generation that'll never match his father's. Such men were Men, with a capital M: they inhabited a world of ready scotch and sodas, cigarettes, tough talk, good hats cocked just right, women's place there and men's over here, and time-trusted rituals that put the two together. We can say all we like of present times, but I miss those earlier saner days. We women had a place and knew it, and the alledgedly freer one feminism claims we won has resulted in confusion, gender hatred, and the vanishing of true men from our culture. So, since we're still not paid all that much more on the dollar compared to men, exactly what did we win?

Amelia Earhart, in the pre-feminism days, flew a plane over the Atlantic and went anywhere she darn well pleased. Coco Chanel built a fashion empire. Madame C. J. Walker became the world's first black millionairess. Cleopatra was queen of the entire Egyptian empire, and nearly Rome's.

I don't see men as having blocked these women from achieving their famous successes. Rather it probably happened like it does now: "Oh, so little lady, you, want to do so-and-so? Alright, fine, lads: let her do it." And then they stand back, refuse to help you, and let you do it. If you succeed, you have their respect: they'll celebrate you with drinks, slap you on the back, and you become one of the boys. (Not a few also look at you with that peculiar turned-on male smirk, intrigued by you, and later ask you out, impressed by you. This has happened to yours truly.) If you fail, you won't be coddled and you can't pull Sobbing Little Girl to get out of it; you failed. The trick is, however, men will let you try later, again. It's the male rule: don't hector a guy when he's down. If he fails, he can expect to be joked on about it. But when he tries again, you play fair and let him. How many women are this fair, especially with other women?

I'm sad this evening, because I'm listening to Sinatra sing, and once upon a time, in my twenties, marriage looked like fun -- but the males in my circle were the baseball cap-wearing fellas who felt I owed them a buck and a quarter for being female, the kind who heard a woman say she wasn't feminist and laughed, and told her to make him a sandwich and pass the remote -- unaware that in a world not spun off its axis, the man earns the sandwich and remote, clean house and meal by being an alpha male and making her feel safe to love him. And no: wearing Dockers, and liking tits and baseball, does not automatically make one alpha male.

It instead took an indefinable Something Frank Sinatra, who is singing Christmas songs on my stereo, did enormously. The Something at which Joe Raposo, in his quiet gentle way, also did wonderfully. Tell me a woman would not feel cherished, safe and treasured in the arms of either man on this cold Thanksgiving night in New York.

On this night, I hear Sinatra's satin, but think of crisp black wool: Joe's favorite coat (yes, Nick, I know about it; I've seen it), the long one that swung behind his ample frame as he walked the Lower East Side on his way to E. 11th or Midtown to rehearsal and made him look so swanky, so upper-class. I think of the one instance I got to hug him and he me, and inhaling, I smelled a masculine cologne I have never been able to identify and have never found since. I thought one thing: "Daddy." Strange but true. It was the female brain, blending together the basenotes of safety, feeling cherished and warm in the arms of someone stronger who would protect me, with the higher topnotes of masculinity, familiarity, and love. Together they spelled "Daddy", and I remember oddly thinking that.

And Joe and my father are completely unalike, as different as can be.

This particular Generation X female is not married. It's not for lack of being asked. Goodness unfortunately knows. I've broken three male hearts saying no (and if they read this they'd know who they are). It's because our demographic responds to nostalgia; we saudade things. Past experiences, songs and moods haunt us. Having been hugged by Joe Raposo, and heard Sinatra singing, I do not think I will ever be able to open my heart.

I just wish I had a time machine, could don my heels and perfume, forget feminism existed, go back to about 1960, and start again. I'd marry either of 'em, if they asked.

I would vacuum Frank's living room carpet and cook Joe the crispest bacalhau ao forno he ever had. There is a part of me that likes cooking, baking and cleaning house. Why is it sinful to say that aloud today? If there were a man doing these shows for me, I'd be happy to give him the public glory and whisper ideas to him in secrecy. Other women's probable anger reading this in the future tells me how much has been lost by our society, and how tough it will be for men and women ever to truly relocate each other in love, and start together in innocence again.

For Northern Calloway

Here is an Italian music library song from the 1970s, remixed as a tribute to Northern Calloway, David from Sesame Street. The original fragment was about one minute in length, truncated to a sample on a crate digging site I like to listen to. Not much of a song at all. But it reminded me of the Seventies: what they in essence were all about. All it needed was a little editing to lengthen it, make it a radio single, and maybe add some minor touches.

I opened Audacity and started to play around. The closer the experiment became to being a real song, the more I found it reminded me of David. His broad, infectious grin, his sly joking manner, his flirting with Maria, and his impossibly sunny spirit. I decided to pour everything I liked about Northern Calloway into this song. So here it is. Mr. Calloway, this remix is dedicated to you and what you gave a generation on Sesame Street -- an alternative vision of black men. Instead of a hip-hop thug, you were what I remember black men in the Seventies were: cheerful, optimistic, loving, and most of all, vulnerable. David was capable of sadness, sorrow, hope, imagination and laughter. Never a macho pose. It is impossible to imagine David carrying or using a gun. Like Stevie Wonder, he was of another time. A time in America I wish would return.

Here's to you, Northern.