Yummy’s One, the movie pitch

“In a Shanghai noodle factory place where I once used to be no where doing nothing.”

                                                               -Traffic

                                                                 Last Exit

Yummy’s Chinese Cookery. Take-out place of my misspent youth.  If only my misspent adulthood were as sweet.

Soon, to be a movie.  Since it’s a natural for a series, I’ll call the first one, Yummy’s for Dummies.

Starring: Delivery boys on bikes: the Paul Revere’s of moo shu pork and chicken chow mein. Bookies who showed up every day for their money but never ordered anything. Assistant supermarket managers from across the street who are fairly boring.  

My two younger brothers have cameos. The three of us worked there, in the days before incestuous, paranoid nepotism clauses.

Pete, the owner who never outsourced a job outside the neighborhood.  Pete's wife, Gloria, who was always there, getting in the way on Friday nights when it got busy.

Take us to court, all us kids worked there 'off-the-books'. The statute of limitations has run out on the matter. Like Chinese food gets when you leave it in the cardboard container in the fridge.

When the actual movie will be shot I do not know.  Or, as Steve once said to a hungry customer calling in their orders over the phone when woman asked how long will it be?  The answer now, as then, is: “About six inches”.

She laughed.  Only then I got an inkling life was going to be fun.

But Yummy's also taught me that life was also a mixed bag:

When one outraged customer who charged into the take-out place one morning, held up a clear plastic sandwich bag and shouted out, “Look what was in my egg roll” was once told, “Hum”.

Inside the bag among a few shreds of Chinese cabbage – the remains of an egg roll from the night before – a Tipotilo cigar butt.  About 1/8 of an inch of cigar affixed to a white, nicotine-stained plastic piece that Chan would hold between his teeth as he shredded vegetables for the egg rolls.

This movie has everything:   

Chefs and sex.  Like when Paul delivered an order to Parker Towers apartments and never came back.  

Is it animated, ask studio exec?  No but…

It has a built-in, captive audience.  The hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not millions of still-to-this day residents and former residents of Queens, NY around the globe.  All the people who, for years, were snickered at for living in Queens.

What do you hear for music?   

Traffic.  Remember, In a Shanghai noodle factory. Oh. No? I continue...

 

It takes place when the Jets played in and won the Super Bowl.  A very busy day take-out, The streets were empty.

And, just think, if you could draw from the deliver boys who made more money on the game than on tips that day.

Maybe it will appeal to all Jet fans, of every era.  And what if we got Tim Tebow to give it a thumbs up, well, then we’d really have something.

"We?  Oh, you want part of the ticket sales?"

"I’m just the writer, a delivery boy."

I can see it now:“Two tickets to see Yummy’s.  Yes, in 3-D.”

The lights in the theatre dim so you can’t see what’s in the food.

We see a beige phone on an oily, white and tan, vertical stripe, wallpapered wall.  The phone rings two or three times, maybe ten or eleven.  Finally, someone picks up the phone...Hello Yummy's.

Here's doing a commercial with you, kid

True story

I wrote a television commercial that was dying a death by a thousand cuts - a thousand meetings, a thousand opinions, a thousand egos and one focus group.

Too bad.  The original spot was good.  The big idea, as they say in the advertising business.  Or was that on Mad Men?

Death by a thousand cuts is pretty common.  It’s one of the reasons so many commercials you see are total crab.  That’s right, crab.  Crap is a no-no.  

Death by a thousand cuts is a problem whenever people don't want to look for the good in something.  When it's safer and easier to say I like it but... Or, I applaud your effort but...

I needed to try and resuscitate the spot.  Bring it back to life and make it fit for the living room. 

It needed help. Is there a doctor in the house?

Better music?  The music was pretty good.  Quick cuts? Even in the age of lightning fast cuts, these scenes couldn't go by fast enough. Celebrity announcer?  Now you’re talking. 

Too many times, creating advertising isn’t about creating but about solving a man-made problem.  Putting out a political fire. And, unfortunately, using the brand to do it.

Enter: Lauren Bacall 

She was nice enough to come in and do a reading.  She didn’t need to do that.  Thanks again, Ms. Bacall.

A couple of people told me she was tough.  But you hear that a lot.  Someone has a point of view... they're tough.  someone is better than everyone else... tough.

I stupidly asked Ms. Bacall if she could warm up her reading a bit. 

“Warm it up?  Why?  Oh, you just want some stupid commercial?

  

I was telling Ms. Bacall – with that one in a million, sultry voice that launched a thousand ships – not to do what she does better than anyone...launch a thousand ships  I was asking Lauren Bacall not to be Lauren Becall.

She's right I'm an idiot.

She knows what’s good.  She knows what works.  Her taste is as exquisite as everything else about her.

The problem was that now she's mad...at me.

There was a line about a statue. It began, 'The lady in the water'.

She started to read the line.  I don't remember if she stopped after the 'the', or, in the middle of  la-dy.

“You”

“Me?” 

“Yes. You. Why lady?  Why don’t you just say statue?” 

“Because lady is warmer.”  True - but there was that word again, warm.  And I used it on purpose.  Who's the prima donna?


She knew lady was the way to go.  She knew it all along.  She smiled at me.  Lauren Bacall smiled at me.  Went on to read the rest of the spot and did a great job.  

Saved by the Bacall.

An 8½” by 11” envelope arrives at the office.  I open it.  It’s a black and white photo of Lauren Bacall.  It was that signature look of hers.  And it was signed.  Her signature, signature in Bacall point pen across the bottom.

To John, “Mr. Warmth” – Lauren Bacall

Pretty doggone warm.  ‘Put your lips together and blow’ warm.

The tennis player who just happened to be Arthur Ashe

Arthur Ashe memorial sculpture

The buzz was abuzz.

The talk of the tennis established was about a quiet, unassuming young man with tremendous talent and even more potential.  That’s what those in the know were saying.  It was also what Jackie Simms said. 

The young tennis player was coming up from Richmond to play in the Nationals.  For  purposes of this piece, the Nationals was forerunner to the U.S. Open, the grand slam tournament that was eventually moved from Forest Hills, to the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and the Arthur Ashe Stadium.

The young man with so much talent and potential was Arthur Ashe.

I only heard later on, that Arthur Ashe was black.  Jackie told me.  Jackie Simms happened to be black.  He just might the first black ballboy in U.S. tennis.

Jackie was from Atlanta.  We became friends right away.  He filled me in all about Arthur Ashe.  He told me Ashe was the reason he came north that September, and was now staying with his aunt.  That's why he applied for the ballboy position. To see Arthur Ashe.

Jackie already had a job. He worked for the Coca Cola Bottling Company in Atlanta and was proud of the uniform he wore to work there.  

“Up here, the Coca Cola uniforms are just plain khaki. No pinstripes. Ours have pinstripes.”  Clean, pressed, maybe even starched - Jackie wore that uniform to the stadium once or twice to show it to me.  You could see the folds...like in a flag.  To him, it was Marine dress blues.

Our ballboy uniform was a lot more skimpy.  Dull, green tee shirts that seemed like they might have been around since the beginning of the tournament, 1881.  The short blue shorts looked old, too, but were probably too short to have been around seventy-five years before.  By the middle of the tournament the ballboys (there were no ballgirls) also wore a tan.  
Sometimes, a match was called because of darkness, and continued the next morning.  Those were the day before lights.  And before sudden death.  A set could go 22- 24, or 32- 34. You had to win by two. 

I wasn’t much interested in tennis.  I didn’t even know when players changed sides so I was rarely ready with the white tennis balls when the server needed them.   
I once hit Dennis Ralston (think John McEnroe's temperament) in the head with a ball on a change-over.  The stadium roared, so did Dennis.

Young, talented and black in such a white sport, Arthur Ashe finally arrived at The West Side Tennis Club, The Stadium. I saw him pass by a few times - with a following.  Tennis officials, press, autograph seekers and a bunch of wooden rackets in his hands.  I noticed his glasses and that they helped make him seem like a really nice guy.

Mr. Ashe

He was a really nice guy.  He was the man he was to become.

Jackie and I figured out how to run into him by accident one day as he was coming or going from practice – I forget which – on one of the side clay courts.

I don’t know where we got the nerve or the rackets (he had the balls), “Mr. Ashe, Mr. Ashe”.  "Mr."-  even though he was our age.  He wasn’t annoyed.  It was like he knew us. Like we were going to ask him if wanted to go to the movies on Continental Avenue.  And he was going to say yes.

“Mr. Ashe, would you give us a tennis lesson?”

Pretty weird just to lay out a request like, just like that.  A lesson on what?  Serving? Returning serves? Passing shots? Lobs?  But he didn’t make us feel stupid. He just said, “Sure.”  And we went and hit the ball, the three of us, until we, not wanting to be a bother as if we weren’t already said,  "Thank you, Mr. Ashe".

And he said, “Sure” and “See you”.

Neither Jackie nor myself pulled Arthur Ashe in the draw.  So we didn’t get to ballboy any of his matches.  Which was fine.  Jackie and I already won the tournament.

As I said, Arthur Ashe went on to become the man he already was.  I’m sure Jackie did, too.

Thanks for the memory, Mr. Ashe.  Thanks, Mr. Simms.

It's a great time to be alive

I once tried to sell an advertiser the idea, "It's a great time to be alive."

They didn't buy it.  They said, “It’s not really a great time to be alive.”

Is that glass half empty or what?  

The iPad, the iPhone, movie theatres with high back seats and cups holders, Whole Foods when we want to be the 1%, and Trader Joe’s for the rest of the time. Funky sunglasses.

HBO, ESPN, and, damn, I love those TV chefs who use their cleavage more than their cleavers.

And that’s just in the ‘what’s in it for me’ category.  To say nothing of heart transplants, online college courses and electric cars that drive themselves and can see out the back.  I remember when only teachers had eyes in the back of their heads.

I've always believed you have to think half full for things to become half full. So let me try and sell it to you, dear reader.

Dear more and more comfortable, better-for-your feet walking shoes reader.

Dear flying around the world, enjoying other worlds reader.

Dear 'been there, done that' reader.

Dear lower cholesterol reader.

Dear 325 channels cable watcher reader. 

Dear "Bill Gates really doesn’t have it much better than you do" reader. 

Dear "I figure to live longer than my parents and their parents" reader. 

Dear he and she who shops online and emails anyone, at anytime, from anywhere reader.

Dear if the air conditioning breaks I’ll go over to Starbucks until it’s fixed reader. 

Dear I wonder what Sally from fourth grade is up to?  I think I’ll go on Facebook and find out reader.

Dear tweeter reader who simply has to tell the world what you're making for dinner. 

Dear I’ll shoot 3,540 of my closest, personal friends a picture from my vacation villa. I'm sure they're interested reader.

Yes, dear friends and readers, this is the golden age of living well and the golden age of narcissism.  I guess that’s the price you pay. 

All-in-all, it's a great time to be alive. 

And if a safe doesn’t fall on my head, statistics show, I’ll be able to stick around for a lot more.  

Isn't it a pity all things must pass but here comes the sun

Joseph Fattorini and his girlfriend.  Nicky Spavento and his girlfriend.  And me – the fifth Beatle.

We were lucky enough to have seen the Beatles during their first tour in the U.S.

People were just beginning to say groovy and far out.  So Joe and Nicky didn’t know who the Beatles were. The girls knew. And I knew.  

I actually had a pretty good idea of all that was about to happen to the world from my thirteen year old perch in Queens.

I told Joe and Nicky who the Beatles were and where they were playing the following weekend.  They said something about how the fab four couldn't be as good as The Four Seasons and I went and bought the tickets.

I didn’t have a girlfriend but I had a job after school.  At $1.25 an hour, and even though I was younger than my buddies, I was living in the material world. Nicky paid me back the money I laid out with interest: a slice of pizza.

There we were and there they were: the lads from Liverpool.  I could tell Joe and Nicky were instant heros even though we couldn't hear a thing with all the screaming and yelling.   

We couldn't hear John. 

We couldn't hear Paul. 

We couldn't hear Ringo. (Today, Ringo would be Blingo and is probably old enough to be playing bingo)

We couldn't hear George. But he was the quiet Beatle anyway.

George was standing in the middle between Lennon and McCartney but not really in the middle of the action.  

With apologies to George Harrison fans the world over, I’m late to the party - but, in fairness, I wasn't alone.  A lot of people never gave George the credit he deserved.

When Frank Sinatra called Something "the best love song ever" he credited Lennon and McCartney as its creators.

I never heard that George said a word about the misnomer.  All things must pass.

Too often, I have repeated Leonard Bernstein’s comment that Sgt. Pepper’s was the best album ever or something to that effect. 

Sgt. Pepper’s, album is historic.  Breakthrough.  No one can ever take that away.  As for the individual songs, I’m starting to believe more of George Harrison's will stand the test of musical time.

Martin Scorsese’s recent documentary is shining a light on L’Angelo Misterioso. 

Scorsese tells of George Harrison chanting while a violent, crazy man is in their home confronting George and his wife. 

George was chanting for help, peace either in this world or the next.

 That’s not someone who found unique marketing niche in eastern religion, or religion in general. That's a true believer.  A seeker.  Someone who really did think there was more to life.

Real things get better with time.  Everything else falls away.

George didn't believe in violence but he telegraphed his punches.  Isn't he the one who wrote “By chanting the names of the Lord and you’ll be free”.

 Until recently, I couldn’t hear him with all that screaming.  I’m catching up though.  Just the way my pals, Joe and Nicky, had to catch up all those years ago.

Here comes the sun.

-The fifth Beatle

August 29^th, 1964

That's what I like about: The south

 

 1. Hush puppies.

Those fried, doughy thingamajigs that magically appear in a basket on the table along with sweet tea just as soon you sit down at any self-respecting, Nuevo-my butt, separate checks, ten finger-licking good, down-home, eating establishments across the south. 

Still around, because they went to the dogs, hush puppies got their name because they were extra dough trimmings that were thrown to the dogs to hush them up while the cook was cooking the collard greens.

2. Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte.

3. Collard greens, the word is nutritious, good for you, makes you smack your lips. Collards as a word has it all over spinach

4. Garden and Gun Magazine.  Reads like talking about the weather with Harper Lee on a front porch on a Sunday afternoon.

5. The front porch.  Not because they look good but because it was too hot to be inside.

6. The Crooked Road. A 250-mile path of musical venues along the Blue Ridge in Virginia. 

7. Floyd’s Country Store along the Crooked Road where, since the nineteen thirties, people still gather every Friday night. Sit on folding chairs, drink soda pop and listen to bluegrass.  

8. Bluegrass.

8. Tall, thin, beautiful people who don’t model and are referred to as “A long tall drink of water”.

9. Storytellers.  I guess that was the entertainment on the front porch.  It’s in the DNA.

10. Tin roofs.  As in...

11. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 

12. Tennessee Williams, author, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

13.  The Gallagher family. Three generations of guitar-makers. Best of all their poster: Made by southern hands since 1963.

14. Wide plank floors in the old tobacco warehouses you can live in right now.  With history still scribbled in purchase orders, X’s, and dates, on the same brick wall where, now, my HD TV hangs.

15.  The idea that people still believe someone other than Washington is all-powerful and watching over them.

16.  Red eye gravy and Eye contact.  A word about eye contact:

I walk along the Dan River in southern Virginia most mornings.  That means grass, trees, ducks, geese and eye contact. Hell. Quaintness interruptus.

 

Hi.                       

Hello.             

‘Morning. 

Sure is.

Hello. 

Hello.

What’s with these people?  They act like a car horn is only for honking hello.  What are they, hillbillies?  I should move here. 

But, I’ve been told,  “Where you going to get Cantonese at 11pm?”

True, true. 

But I can get an intelligent conversation about Bruce Catton’s Pulitzer Prize winning Stillness at Appomattox delivered any time day or night.

That’s what I like about the south.

Please don’t change -though I know you must. 

Baby boomers, like myself, will sell their houses when the housing market gets better and resume the migration Southbound as Doc and Merle Watson used to say.  They'll pump money into the tributaries of the Dan River and, hopefully, not ruin everything.  

It's too precious.  And that’s what I like about the south.

That’s what I like about: will be an ongoing feature at bistrochairs. There are a lot of things to like.

The unknown author

Stendhal's depiction of "crystallization", the process of falling in love. Salzburg,1822. About the same time this memory of love and art was discovered near Frascati.

I was excited. 
Thrilled to death to be alive.

I did what needed to be done. 

With great joy I did what had to be done.

What my spirit demanded of me and I asked no questions in return.

I was as good as the person closest to me, the person inside me, told me to be.

I took a journey which started in Bologna and ended in Rome.

I was successful beyond my wildest dreams.

Unknown Author. Found in an urn near Frascati, just outside Rome.  Guessed to have been written in the early part of the tenth century.  It was in perfect condition.  It has been translated from the original Italian.

 

God bless the child that got his own Father's Day card

 To dads gone forever and dads who go on business trips that seem like they’re forever.

Dads who grounded us - in the best sense of the word. Showed us how to plant our feet in the batter’s box. And in life.

Dad's who helped put us through school, taught us lessons you don't learn in school, and sometimes did our homework for us.

To stay-at-home dads and dads who stay in touch even if they live in the same house.

Happy Father’s Day

If the words hit home, they’re yours. Or give them to your kid.

One more thing: It occurs to me that most commencement addresses are bookended by Mother’s Day on one side and Father’s Day on the other. Makes a lot of sense.

Tweet Week

  There is an afterlife after all. 

Small, cute, efficient and fun to drive, Tweeter must be where all those people who drove all the original Volkswagen Beetles go. (We know Beetles don't die.)

Here’s what went down the last week or so @TheDailyNovel, a tall tale in 140 characters or less a day. 

Monday

Old Joe Young was born during the war.  Which one he wasn’t sure. He had the sensibilities of the greatest generation.  But had done well, maybe too easily.

Tuesday

Growing up between TV commercial breaks contributed to his ADD . He thought maybe the ADD had made him a more interesting person.

Wednesday

The ADD made him a Jack of-all-trades master of none, perfect for parties and at the office.  Joe liked reading the obituaries.

Thursday

Those obituaries in the paper were always a killer.  Who won and who lost.  Sports but with a real life and death struggle.

Monday

That’s what Old Joe Young did for a living.  Wrote obituaries.  Sometimes he changed the dead.  The way a plastic surgeon changes the living.

Tuesday

And like a plastic surgeon, sometimes the change was for the better.  Most times it wasn't though.  It was bad. Can’t move a facial muscle, rigamortous bad.

@TheDailyNovel is closed Fridays during the summer and on weekends all year round.  We work Christmas. 
 (Remember: When you tweet people right, word gets around)

Mantle won't be starting today

This was going to be about The Commerce Comet, #7, Muscles. The Mick. 
But I traded him. 

I traded my Mickey Mantle idea, the Lauren Bacall story and a Broderick Crawford for a story about a good friend, Herb Stupp. 

He may never speak to me again.  Herb’s a big fan of The Mick. Monuments in center field, 520 feet in dead center, old Yankee Stadium big.  

A Herb Stupp baseball card it would go something like this:

The Herb

Rego Park, Queens, NY

1950 to present

6’4’’

Bats right throws right

Back to 180 lbs after beating 
Multiple Myeloma.

Solid glove, never could run.  

Still hits for power.

   
If you mentioned your Dad’s brother, Benny, has a birthday July 9^th.  From then on, every July 9^th, "Isn’t today your uncle Benny’s birthday?” Herb’s memory is that good.

Herb remembers our Sunday softball stats like a computer.  A computer that was hacked into - our batting averages are always a little different than what you think maybe they should be.  It’s just like whenever there’s a mistake on your credit card statement  - it’s never in your favor.  He’s such a nice guy he can get away with it.

Nice to the bone.

He drove his car full of pot-smoking buddies (Herb doesn’t smoke anything) to Woodstock because they needed a ride.  They needed a lift and Herb ended up getting high.

Afterwards, he had the following remarkable line, “Bill Clinton smoked but didn’t inhale.  I inhaled but I didn’t smoke.”

The original creature of habit.  He only drinks – and only serves - white wine. 

He only vacations in New York State. 

When he eats Chinese, he only eats at Szechuan Taste in Chinatown.  Szechuan Taste closed a few years back.  “Too bad we can’t go to Chinatown anymore", Herb sadly said.

Before I forget let me get back to Herb’s memory:

I can’t remember how The Godfather ended (the best one - Godfather I) and I’ve seen it forty times.  Herb remembers everything.  Every year on my birthday I get a kiddie birthday card.  I save them.  My collection goes back forty-five years. Priceless – if you’re into great friend memorabilia.

On the front of each of these forty five cards, birthday boy's age has been scribbled over.  For example: Happy Birthday 8 year old has been changed to Happy Birthday 18 year old. 28 year old. 38 year old. 48 year old.

I have forty five of those cards.  I bet there are a lot of these card collectors. Herb has a lot of friends.

This buddy of mine may be more like Gehrig than Mantle.  More like The Iron Horse - the way he pitched a shutout against the Multiple Myeloma, the way he remembers birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations.  The way he remembers his friends.

Happy Birthday, Herb.  Sorry, Mick.

I've been grounded

My father was an absentee father.  He held down two, sometimes three jobs at a time.  So we could have what we wanted.  Not what he wanted.  
(I should mention he was on Iwo Jima.  He would have wanted me to).

John Kolaczkowski’s dad got out of Poland just before World War Two, made it to the UK and flew back to Poland several times.  In a Spitfire. 

They used to be an expression.  If a kid did something your parents’ didn’t like - you were grounded.

“I can’t go.  I’m grounded”.  “My Dad grounded me”.  “My mom says I’m grounded”.

Three jobs.  Iwo Jima.  Spitfires.

Boy, were we grounded.

The boy in the blue suit

Top row, fourth boy from the right. Or, I should say the boy in the blue suit. Original member of the Blue Man Group?  No, me.
Well, that explains everything.  

That's the story, Jerry

                              
I was watching The Purple Rose of Cairo the other night and remembered the theatre manager was played by an actor in the very first TV commercial I did for you.  Or for anybody, for that matter. 

Irving Metzman was the radio disc jockey’s assistant.  The spot was for Emery Air Freight.

It started me thinking about a real Mad Man.  And all the great ideas that were allowed to come to life at his upstart ad agency. 

All the freedom.  The sound of ice in the glasses up the hall telling the kids down the hall that it was five’ o’clock…the day was half over, if not just beginning.

The banging of typewriters.  Copy that was only finished when my wastepaper basket was filled with crumpled paper.

The wall of ads when you got off the elevator.  The benchmark. 

I’d have given anything to write an ad that got up on that wall – and one day I did.

“Last year, more money was donated to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals than to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”

Copy supervisors that taught you how to pay off a headline, and construct your closing arguments…that delicious last line of copy. 

All I can say is “Wow”!

A word - and punctuation mark - no self-respecting copy supervisor would have given his or her (Kay Kavanagh) approval of back then.

For being able to let us express ourselves.  Fit in somewhere.  And play for the NY Yankees of advertising all at the same time…

Thanks, Jerry.