 Frank Sinatra Has a Cold Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.
Sinatra had been working in a film that he now disliked, could not wait to finish; he was tired of all the publicity attached to his dating the twenty-year-old Mia Farrow, who was not in sight tonight; he was angry that a CBS television documentary of his life, to be shown in two weeks, was reportedly prying into his privacy, even speculating on his possible friendship with Mafia leaders; he was worried about his starring role in an hour-long NBC show entitled Sinatra—A Man and His Music, which would require that he sing eighteen songs with a voice that at this particular moment, just a few nights before the taping was to begin, was weak and sore and uncertain. Sinatra was ill. He was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to Sinatra it can plunge him into a state of anguish, deep depression, panic, even rage. Frank Sinatra had a cold.
Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel—only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence, and it affects not only his own psyche but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people who work for him, drink with him, love him, depend on him for their own welfare and stability. A Sinatra with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations through the entertainment industry and beyond as surely as a President of the United States, suddenly sick, can shake the national economy.   Bullying the President Works We got an exhibition of the virtue of bullying the president over the last month. The need for widely available and easily accessible rapid testing was clear way farther back than that, but the issue only really came to a head in the estimation of the mainstream press amid the rise of the Omicron variant in December. (While the variant's rapid spread has rendered test-and-trace programs less effective, it's useful to know if you have COVID before sitting down with your grandma for Christmas dinner.) Where, reporters at the White House and beyond began to ask, were all the tests? In one such incident, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded in part by almost mockingly asking a member of the press corps whether the United States federal government should send rapid tests to every household. The reasoning seemed to be that it would be prohibitively expensive, even if the United Kingdom was already doing it at the time. (The Brits have since run into their own problems, and not just their weirdo garden-party scandals.) The response across pretty much the entire organized press was that yes, that is what should be happening.
 The Best Family Movies of All Time That Adults Will Actually Enjoy Family movie night can be a blessing or a curse. If you're like a lot of homes at the moment, you're on your 74th viewing of Encanto—no one is supposed to talk about Bruno, which is fine with you because you're at the point where you'd rather not hear the name again for the rest of your life. (Sorry, Lin-Manuel.) But we're here to tell you a secret: It doesn't have to be this way. There are too many other perfect family movies out there to live oppressed by la familia Madrigal. That brings us to this list—a collection of new and old (and sometimes very old) titles that makes family movie night palatable.  The Vindication of Tom DeLonge We met Tom DeLonge in the '90s as a member of Blink-182, the multi-platinum pop-punk trio that bridged the gap between the glossy boy bands and the aggro rock groups that defined the TRL era. But since their peak, he has released six albums between two other acts: Box Car Racer and Angels & Airwaves. He has broken up with Blink, reformed Blink, re-quit Blink, and possibly re-rejoined Blink; he's gotten married, had a couple of kids, divorced, and remarried. He's devoted a great deal of time and money toward the study of UFOs, releasing videos of unidentified aerial phenomena that have been confirmed as legitimate by the Pentagon. Sixteen years ago, it was easy to scoff at the guy who left his band behind for aliens, who traded the radio-friendly sound of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket for the baroque uplift of Angels & Airwaves. But now it's 2021, and until we can determine whether we are alone in the universe, we have this phenomenon to contemplate: the culture may have finally caught up with Tom DeLonge.
 Ozark Season 4, Part 1 is a Haunting Portrait of What the Byrdes Have Become You ever wonder what a dark-sided version of The Incredibles, following a family of four remarkable individuals who turn horribly, horribly wrong, would look like? Well, scout no further than Season Four of Ozark, which dropped the first half of its two-part final season on Netflix on Friday. After three seasons of questionable decision-making, the latest installment of the long-underrated crime drama sees its leading family, the Byrdes, achieve their final form. Of course, there's plenty of backstabbing and gunfighting, the stuff we love from this crew, in the beginning of the end for Ozark. But that's not why this new batch of episodes excels. This season becomes truly great when it forces you to judge a family who has, at long last, become irredeemable.  The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word Most of September 17, 2012, has evaporated from my mind. I still have a few memories. I have the way the surgeon's voice shook. I remember my wife calling my name while she was still under sedation. And I have an image of the hospital floor, up close. I remember white tile and a hope: Maybe I will never have to get up. Maybe they will just let me die here.
Nicole was thirty-four, and the doctor had been direct: "It's everywhere," he said. "Like somebody dipped a paintbrush in cancer and flicked it around her abdomen." I staggered down a hallway and then collapsed. I remember the tile, close to my face, and then watching it retreat as my best friend picked me up from the floor. His name is Dane Faucheux, and I remember noting, even in the midst of a mental fugue: Dane's a lot stronger than I realized.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sunday, January 23, 2022
The Greatest Story We’ve Ever Told
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment