Lunch with Academy Award Nominee Amy Irving

What was the one question that my mother had for me when I told her I was going to have lunch with Academy Award Nominee Amy Irving (for Yentl, in case you are wondering) ? The one question was: Who’s driving? I’ve been getting considerable name-dropping mileage out of the improbable meal---“dining off” of this lunch for a year now. Just consider: I’ve mentioned it twice already on this blog, and you barely know me. But my mother wasn't interested in the who's or the why's. Now, I should say it’s not that my mother is unimpressed with movie stars. She is something of a movie buff, and so you’d think she’d be interested in my having lunch with the Golden Globe-winning-star of Crossing Delancey. My mother is something of a gossip too. So she’s well versed in Steven Spielberg’s break up with Amy (what I’ve taken to calling her when I drop her name twice in the same conversation) and his rumored cheating with that peroxide tramp Kate Capshaw. Forgive me---I have to take Amy’s side on this. If you knew what I did, you’d do the same. You’d think my mother would like me to tell her the inside story. Not that I’m going to tell you here, but if my mother had been a bit more curious, or a bit more impressed, who’s to say that I might not have shared it with her? Though I’ve dined with the stars, I’m not above throwing the hoi poloi a bone from my table now and then.

Now, when it comes to driving, mom has fairness issues. She believes that whether it is an outing with an old Newark friend, Tony, or an Academy Award nominee, everyone should pull their weight. She always likes to point out whose turn it is to drive. She believed, that as Amy was once Mrs. Spielberg, and so, fabulously wealthy, it was always going to be her turn. As far as I can tell, though, Amy doesn’t drive. Not that I asked, but the parking situation around her (I don’t think I’m violating a trust here) Upper Westside Brownstone---which used to belong to Elia Kazan---is not optimum. Every place has its drawbacks. For instance, in the Bronx, where I live, roving bands of middle-school delinquents will strip you down to your socks for a Metrocard. But there’s plenty of parking. You see what I mean: there’s no free lunch.

Anyway, there I was, sitting in Kazan’s probably-blacklisted Brownstone for a late afternoon coffee with Amy. Did you see that reference to late afternoon coffee with the ex-wife of Steven Spielberg and only three or four of her staff? Sure does seem like I’m spending a lot of time with the Hollywood actress, doesn’t it? And she doesn’t seem to mind my company either---seeing as I was invited there a short time after our lunch together. Well, that’s because I’m discreet. I mean, I could be conferring or canoodling, as the tabloids say, with a famous actress nearly old enough to be my mother. But I’ll never tell. I bet now you’re dying to know what I was doing at Amy’s house late into the evening. I tell you what---my wife certainly was. Now, scroll down and take a look at that picture of me in that windbreaker. Aren’t you wondering how someone who looks like that came to find himself in such a situation? Isn’t it killing you? Wouldn’t you think a mother would be curious?

Not a bit of it. All she wanted to know was: “Isn’t it Amy Irving’s turn to drive?” I wouldn’t tell her my business was in Amy’s Brownstone until she expressed some curiosity beyond whose turn it was to drive. (To be Continued).

Rob enjoys a gondola, on occasion. 

Not Photogenic. No, not even a little bit. 

Those Annoying Literary Types

Would-be Literary novelists.
I have sat next to these people at writers’ conferences, as I’m sure you all have. They believe that inverted clauses, convoluted sentences turned in on themselves, and piling abstraction on top of abstraction is what makes for literary fiction. They have a half-remembered sense that Henry James was hard to understand, and so straining for a Jamesian strain is the recipe for literary fiction. But James is never anything less than clear in his sentence-level intent and execution (once you get a sense of how those long sentences work). But with these other faux-literary writers, obscurity seems to be the aim. After a reader struggles through a morass of inactive interiority, soggy poeticism, an absence of dialogue or action, a comment like “I don’t get it---I don’t understand this sentence, this page, this scene” might elicit a satisfied “Exactly.” My wife tells me there are other things that are more harmful in the world than self-consciously literary fiction. Like George W. Bush, Fear Factor, and global warming. That’s true. But is there anything more annoying than this combination of self-satisfied smugness and wrong-headedness? Okay: George W., again. I’ll be quiet now.

Saffron Prisoners on Parade

I want to thank the New York Times for the gift of the Saffron Prisoners Picture (FrontPage; 3/4/05 www.nytimes.com). As we ween ourselves from the departure of Cristo's gates, what a delight to see saffron-clad detainees artfully arranged in symetrical groups of three. What do they mean? Perhaps they mean injustice and a violation of the Geneva Convention? Who can say? They are Bush and Rumsfeld's gift to us! Some cavil that they cost millions, or perhaps hundreds of billions. To these naysayers I say, you do not understand---as long as they mean something to Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez and Cheney, that's enough for me.