FunctionalAmbivalent

My Alex Rocco Story

NewMexiKen notes that today is actor Alex Rocco's 72nd birthday. A long time ago I interviewed Rocco for a magazine piece, and he told me one of the best Hollywood-is-cruel stories I ever heard. I'm going to get details wrong, but the gist of the story is right.

In 1975, Rocco starred in a TV series called Three For the Road. It was a heartwarming series about a widower and his two sons, traveling around America in a motorhome and having wholesome adventures. The ratings were marginal, but there was a lot of controversy then about "family programming," and Three For the Road was an uplifting family show. The network liked having it on the schedule as an example of something that wasn't sex and violence.

On hiatus, the cast and crew were nervously awaiting word whether the show would be renewed for a second season or not. Sometime mid-week, Rocco's agent called and delivered the good news: the network had decided to give the show another chance, and had picked it up for another season.

Rocco was thrilled. Actors lead a difficult life, and the regular income of a TV series is life-changing. To celebrate he and his wife decided to get away for a few days, up the California coast. Those were the days before cell phones and even phone answering machines, so when people got away, they really got away. As I recall, Rocco and his wife hid-out at a luxurious bungalow hotel in Santa Barbara, toasting their good fortune and doing the things grown-ups do when they're secreted away in a luxurious bungalow hotel. It was a great few days.

Rocco and his wife returned to L.A. Sunday night, and Rocco drove early Monday morning to the studio to start work on the new season of shows. When he walked onto the stage, it was empty. The sets were gone. The lights were gone. The mobile dressing rooms and offices were gone. If you've never been on an empty stage, it's hard to describe just how empty one can be. They're cold and dark and cavernous. Rocco stood just inside a football-field-size room, and the only thing breaking the absolute flatness o the floor was a pile of his own clothing and personal items that he'd left in his dressing room trailer.

The network, it turned out, had changed its mind. The show had been canceled while Rocco was celebrating. No one had been able to get him on the phone. No one had left a note at his house. They'd just cleared-out the stage and left his stuff behind, assuming he'd show up for work on Monday and figure it out by himself.

He stood alone on the dark stage as his life crumbled around him.

He recovered, of course. He carved out a nice career and reached spiritual peace as a Baha'i, abandoning Hollywood day-to-day in favor of a more peaceful life in, as I recall, the hills around Ojai. When he told me the story he told it laughing, but he had to have been crushed.

Show business is cruel.

And, Just For the Record, I Think It Would Be Helpful When Pizza Delivery Guys Ring the Wrong Doorbell As Well

Firearms enthusiasts claim that an armed citizenry would prevent all kinds of horrible crimes. A heavily armed public would also prevent events like this:

An armed man who burst into a classroom at Elizabeth City State University was role-playing in an emergency response drill, but neither the students nor assistant professor Jingbin Wang knew that...The Friday drill, in which a mock gunman threatened panicked students the American foreign policy class with death, prompted university officials to apologize this week to Wang and offer counseling to faculty and students.

No apology would have been necessary -- except, possibly, to people caught in the crossfire -- had armed students reacted with gunfire rather than fear.

For the record, I'm in favor of things that prevent this kind of street theater, though shooting the perpetrators may be going too far.

What I'm Here For, Funniest Thing Ever Edition

The use of Micrsoft XL's charting function to express music. One link, many laughs. For example:

I've been giggling at this one for more than an hour.

UPDATE: I tried one of my own. Click on the thumbnail to see it full size.

Has Anyone Seriously Considered the Possibility That the Entire Nation of Saudi Arabia Might Be Gay?

The Saudi Commission for Vice and Virtue has started arresting young men for flirting in shopping malls. That's par for the course, In Saudi Arabia, where morals police walk the streets whacking people with sticks when those people do things not approved. And while I have moments in shopping malls here in Kentucky when I feel like whacking people with sticks -- mostly for the crime of wearing sweat pants that are too small -- I think having it as an organized government activity is a bit much.

Anyway, the point of this is that the article describes the manner of flirting that caused the Vice and Virtue cops to swing into action. Consider:

The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.

Seriously: putting on indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing to attract the opposite sex is what women do, not men. Men toss around footballs and puff out their chests and flourish their platinum cards.

Today's Conservatives

Last night I caught a little bit of conservative radio talk show host Bill Cunningham on Hannity & Colmes. Cunningham is having a little moment in the mainstream sun because, while working audience warm-up at a John McCain rally, he said things about Barack Obama that were offensive enough McCain felt the need to apologize for them.

If you want to know why conservatism as currently practiced is doing a Hindenberg, watch this:

This is the guy down the block you warn your kids to stay away from, a screaming lunatic whose freezer is no doubt stuffed with all the cats that have disappeared from the neighborhood.

No wonder people are running as fast as they can. Who'd want to be associated with people like this?

This Is What I've Always Imagined Heaven To Be Like

Arlington, Oregon, recalled its mayor yesterday for posing for racy MySpace pictures in her underwear. Not every mayor could pull that off, but Mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist did, convincingly.

While the underwear controversy sparked the recall effort, the voters were disgruntled for other reasons as well. For example: there is the matter of the management of the Arlington Municipal Golf Course. To save money, the mayor had cut two people from the course's maintenance staff.

So, to recap: a town where the mayor looks great posing in frilly underthings has a political uprising because the sand traps at the municipal golf course aren't getting raked frequently enough. I'm moving there next week.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I've got this friend, Debbie, who does a lot of volunteer work with a local charity. Debbie's most recent project was a fund-raising auction. A few days before the auction catalog closed, she and the committee got together to discuss obvious items that weren't yet included. One of the items that came up was a wine tasting.

In previous years, a local, wine-intensive restaurant has donated a tasting in its private dining room. Last fall, the restaurant went out of business. So this year Debbie came to me and asked if I'd stage a tasting. Debbie doesn't know a thing about wines. She's the kind of giddy choco-tini drinker that people like me spend happy hours throwing peanuts at. But Debbie knew that I had recently taken a wine class, and she thought maybe I'd do a favor for a good cause.

The idea of staging a tasting intrigued me. It was for charity, after all, and it's hard to see how expectations could be lower. Debbie assured me that the previous tastings had sold for a couple of hundred dollars to cheerful dilettantes, the kind of people who are just getting into wine and like the bottles with the cute animals on them.

The combination of low expectations and being able to show off is irresistible to me. I said I'd do it.

My first idea was to do a tasting of Rhone wines. "Up the Rhone" I thought I'd call it, starting with a deep pink Tavel as a palette freshener and paddling upstream through Chateauneuf du Pape all the way to imposing Cote Rotie. Try this, you shiraz-swigging lightweights, I imagined myself saying while hefting a Brune et Blonde onto the table.

It would have been a hell of a tasting, but when I put together a decent list I saw that the wine was going to cost me $500. Because I believe that rich people should buy good wine for me, rather than me buying good wine for rich people, I came up with a new idea: Great Wines You've Never Heard Of.

The concept was, if I say so myself, brilliant. It made a nice write-up in the auction catalog and the list was a set of interesting wines that could be had at bargain prices. (Since no one has heard of them, the markets haven't overheated the way they have for more fashionable wines.) I put together three whites and three reds with a total cost of maybe $125. For the sake of show business -- and, honestly, because I felt a little guilty about such a low-budget tasting -- I tacked-on a French pseudo-Port and chocolate grand finale that will leave everyone feeling sweetly dopey. Of the seven wines involved, I've got five already in my basement, paid for and ready to go.

So yesterday Debbie calls me and tells me that the wine tasting was a big hit. Not the biggest hit; VIP tickets and tent space for the upcoming Ryder Cup went for $10,000. But a hit nonetheless, coming in at $2,000. "That's more than 10 times as much as last year!" she enthused. The buyer is a partner in a local accounting firm who casually mentioned that he has a significant cellar of his own. My wine tasting is, in fact, going to take place in that cellar at the monthly meeting of his tasting club. Last month the club kicked-off it's 2008 season with "Terrible Twos: Second-Growth Bordeaux, 22 Years Later," a tasting from the noteworthy 1986 Vintage.

In front of this group, it was my intent to start off with a disposable, slightly fizzy Basque white that sells for $9 a bottle.

I'm so screwed I can hardly believe it. This tasting could be the most uncomfortable 90 minutes of my life.

Sever Neverland

Michael Jackson's private playground has apparently been foreclosed and will be auctioned off next month.

The auction sale would include the house as well as all personal property inside, including fixtures and appliances, furniture and "all merry go round type devices", rides and games, the report said.

Click here to see all the photos on Flickr tagged with "Neverland Ranch." I'm putting a consortium together to bid on the Mr. T statue. Anyone want in?

What I'm Here For, Pro Spurts Edition

One link, 10 sleazy moments in sports history.

In Which We Initiate the Era of the International Practical Joke

Apparently, there is no ceremonial significance to the turban and toga outfit Barack Obama donned on a trip to Somalia. It's roughly the equivalent of putting on a cowboy hat when you visit Texas. I'm guessing that Obama -- naive of Somali tradition as he doubtless was, and wanting to be polite to his hosts -- donned the regalia without a lot of thought. If they'd handed him top hat and tails, he'd have put those on.

Which gives me an idea:

What if, next time some never-been-to-America neophyte shows up for a ceremonial occasion of state, we told him that traditional American garb for high ceremonies is this . Or maybe this. Or even this .