Meals From The Marketplace

            In the early 1960s, a Broadway play entitled “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off” seemed to capture a feeling that many Americans were experiencing.  The musical itself (written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse) was a short-lived success, receiving several Tony Award nominations.  But its story wasn’t really what the title suggested.  (It concerned a married circus performer who had a succession of affairs in an effort to find true happiness or a more meaningful existence or some variant of that theme.)

            The play’s title, however, was quickly adopted by the generation that had only recently defeated fascism and that was now struggling to “keep up with the Joneses” in the midst of a Cold War that threatened to make everything meaningless in the time it takes an atom to explode.  For those caught in that rat-race existence, the idea of stopping the world, even if just for a few hours, if not permanently, appealed greatly.

            Looking back from the vantage of 2010, that world now seems far less frenetic than the one in which we currently reside.  And if that era was a rat race where keeping up with the Joneses was the biggest challenge facing bread-winners and their spouses, this one must be more of a rat’s maze, in which any path seems destined to lead not to an end point, but just to another path.

            My point is that the world, while perhaps not threatened with sudden complete destruction, is changing with increasing rapidity and thereby is becoming a place where certainty in anything is highly problematic.

            Case in point: Blockbuster has filed for bankruptcy protection, a step towards its ultimate demise.  Think about that fact for a moment (if you have the time).  As recently as ten years ago, a Blockbuster franchise was a veritable goldmine for its owners and a threat to the movie theater industry.  Movie theaters still survive, albeit they, too, have undergone drastic changes, but the marketing of the films shown in them has morphed several times over.

            First there was the advent of on-demand viewing, by which cable television providers were able to make recently released films available for home viewing.  Then came Netflix, which allowed consumers to rent and keep videos in DVD format (forget VCR tapes which have become the 8-track tapes of film).  Then Netflix improved on its mail-order system by providing streaming options to allow viewers to instantly download and watch feature films on their computers or TVs. 

            Thus the demise of Blockbuster. 

            I-Pods were big for a while, but they too have numbered days, as I-Phones and now I-Pads one-up their utility (as do software applications like Pandora, which allows the listener to choose instantly whatever he or she wants to hear, either by title, artist or genre).

            Of course, much of the rapidity of change in the lives we now live is due to the explosion of technology generally and to the continuing advances in computer technology specifically.  Computers are to this stage of human development what the printing press was to the stage that preceded it.  They shorten the time it takes to perform tasks, they increase the type of tasks that can be undertaken, and they reduce the number of tasks that need to be done at all.

            Of course, computers are mere tools; they don’t control our lives.  They don’t think, as any computer geek will tell you; they have to be programmed to accept instructions and then can only act precisely as those instructions dictate.  And so, we find new ways to instruct them, thereby increasing their utility and making our lives ever more simple and complicated at the same time.

            It’s a paradox to be sure, but the reality is that life in the computer world we have created is as uncertain and unsettling as life has ever been.  We have so much more available to us and so much less that we can expect will still be current ten years, five years, even one year from now.

            And then, of course, there are the nightmare scenarios where the computers of the world seek to destroy us.  HAL, the computer in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” is the classic example, but other fictional depictions are even scarier.  (After all, in the end HAL is defeated and David Bowman becomes the star child who saves the world, in Arthur Clarke’s novelization, at least.)  And in Kubrick’s earlier computer-centered story (“Dr. Strangelove”), the network of computers envisioned by the title character would actually save the human race, after another network had almost destroyed it, courtesy of the “doomsday bomb.”

            But another film from the same era as “2001” depicted a much less happy result, and it perhaps is more plausible, if not probable, since interplanetary travel doesn’t appear to be in humanity’s immediate future.

            “Colossus: the Forbin Project,” adapted from the book by Dennis Feltham Jones, tells the story of a massive military defense computer that somehow intuits through its connection with similar computers in the defense ministries of nations around the world that the future of humanity cannot be left to humans.  Thus, it assumes control of the world, dictating what can and cannot be done by government agencies, the people who work in them, and, ultimately, by all the people those agencies serve (which, of course, ends up being everyone).

            The Colossus in the film is fiction, of course.  Computers can’t become sentient, because they would then have to be, well, human, or at least alive.

            So don’t worry about it, right?

            And yet, getting back to my original theme, when was the last time you wrote or received a letter?  Remember those charming personal documents, handwritten with a real ink pen?  Remember how enjoyable an experience it was to receive a real letter from a friend or relative?  It had been written days earlier with loving care and sent by mail (snail-mail!) so that it arrived in your mail box.

            Remember that experience?  Long, for just a moment, to have that time back again?  Oh, but e-mails are so much faster.  And text messages are so much more convenient.

            Stop the world; I want to get off.

            Mark, a white man, was born in 1946 to a lower-middle class family in San Francisco.  His father was a line worker in a large manufacturing firm.  He supported his wife, Mark, and Mark’s younger brother, on an income that they squeaked by on, with enough left over to allow them a two-week vacation every summer (usually to a cabin they rented at Lake Tahoe).

            Mark, blessed with a 123 I.Q. and encouraged by his parents to value his education, was an above average student.  He graduated from high school in 1964 and enrolled at a local junior college.  Whether because he was insufficiently challenged or because he could not keep up with his studies while working part-time, Mark dropped out of school after one and a half semesters.  Then, in 1966, he was drafted into the Army.

            Lemarr, a black man, was also born in 1946 in San Francisco.  His father worked odd jobs when he wasn’t in jail, which was about half of the time when Lemarr was young.  His mother worked as a cleaning lady for wealthy families in the city.  Her meager income and the occasional income his father supplied kept Lemarr and his two brothers and sister from going hungry every night. 

            Lemarr, despite having an I.Q. of 119, was a mediocre student in school.  In that regard, he received no motivation from his parents.  But he stayed out of trouble, largely due to the influence of his maternal grandmother, who taught him to be respectful of the rules of society and to ignore racial injustice whenever he experienced it.  Lemarr never considered college as an option.  Instead, after graduating from high school, he got a job at the same manufacturing plant where Mark’s father worked. After only one year, however, at the age of 19, he, too, was drafted into the Army.

            Mark did well in boot camp and was assigned as an administrative clerk when he completed his basic training.  He spent his first year of service at a stateside post and then was sent to a base in Germany.  By then, he had already been promoted to Buck Sergeant.  Military life appeared to be agreeing with him.

            Lemarr also did well in boot camp, but he was assigned to the infantry when he completed his basic training.  After completing a one-year tour at a stateside base, he received orders for Viet Nam. 

            After completing his initial two-year commitment, Mark decided to continue his army duty and re-upped for a full four-year hitch.  He was allowed to remain in the position he had in Germany and continued to be promoted, achieving the rank of Tech Sergeant by the end of his first six years of duty.  By then, he had served two tours in Viet Nam, both in non-combat assignments.

            Lemarr saw lots of combat in his first Viet Nam tour.  He killed enemy forces and saw his colleagues killed by enemy forces.  By surviving and showing the grit necessary for battle, he was promoted to Corporal and then, on a second tour in the war, to Sergeant.  By the time he had finished his first six years, Lemarr was a first sergeant, in charge of a platoon of men.

            During his third enlistment, Mark was assigned to the judge advocate’s office on a stateside base.  There, he gained an appreciation for the military justice system and made friends with two of the young officers who were attorneys in the office.  Through these friends, he developed a desire to be an attorney himself.  At the end of his third enlistment, Mark separated from the Army with an honorable discharge.  He enrolled in college, got his degree, and entered law school in 1978.

            When the Viet Nam War ended, Lemarr was already a Master Sergeant.  He felt the Army had been a good life for him to that point, so he decided to stay in for the full twenty years that would qualify him for retirement benefits.  But once he was assigned to non-combat duty, Lemarr grew bored and frustrated.  Office work didn’t appeal to him.  In time, he began to have trouble with his assignments, and occasional disciplinary actions (none particularly serious) were noted in his personnel file.

            Mark graduated from law school with honors and was immediately hired by a large law firm, where he quickly excelled at litigation.  He was only 35.

            When military cutbacks were ordered (to reduce government spending) during the period of peace that followed the Viet Nam War, a sizeable number of senior non-commissioned officers without spotless records were released from active service.  Lemarr was told he was one of the NCOs who would be released.  At the time, he had sixteen years of service, not enough to qualify for his military pension. He was 35 years old.

            As the years passed, Mark became a major figure in his firm.  He made full partner shortly after he turned 40 and went on to become one of the most respected attorneys in his community.

            As the years passed, Lemarr found life more and more difficult.  At first he had thought to apply for a police officer position, but he was unable to land a job and ultimately ended up working menial labor for contractors in his town, when work was available.  He was arrested for petty theft in 1986, shortly after he had turned 40.  While in jail, he met hardened criminals with whom he then associated when he got out. 

            Mark, now 64, recently gave a commencement speech at his law school.  In his speech, he spoke of how, in America, anything is possible if you put your mind to it.  He described his own life as one that had featured a hard childhood.  He told of how he had been a college dropout who was drafted without any apparent purpose in life.  But, he said, he always knew that his life could be better, and that thought led him to get out of the Army, complete college, and apply to law school.

            Lemarr’s life essentially went downhill after his first incarceration for the petty theft charge.  He recently completed a ten-year prison sentence for armed robbery and is back “on the streets.”  He isn’t sure what he will do with his life now.  He is 64 years old.

            With the baseball season winding down, two books commend themselves as worthy companions for the hot-stove league that will begin as soon as the last pitch has been thrown.  One is a fascinating historical review; the other is a personal memoir.

            “Bottom of the Ninth,” is not, as the title might otherwise suggest, a novel along the lines of “Shoeless Joe,” W. P. Kinsella’s tale that became the revered (by baseball fans) film, “Field of Dreams.”  Instead, it is a non-fiction work by Michael Shapiro, who also wrote “The Last Good Season.”  That book chronicled the last pennant-winning season (1956) of the Brooklyn Dodgers, before the team left for Los Angeles in 1957.

            “Bottom” (subtitled “Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself”) covers much the same era, but from a decidedly different vantage point.  This time Shapiro reveals, in great detail, the efforts of a small group of men, led by the legendary Mr. Rickey, to form a new major league.  It would have been called the Continental League, and would have had eight teams, all but one in cities previously not occupied by American or National League teams.  The sole exception would have been New York City, which had just lost the Dodgers and the Giants.

            The book is must reading for anyone with a desire to learn what happened behind the scenes in the attempt to expand baseball dramatically at a time when football was just beginning to show its potential (since realized in spades) to overtake the sport as America’s national obsession.

            And Shapiro offers the history in a highly readable form, weaving secret meetings that took place off the field into recreations of exciting events that took place on it.  He devotes an entire chapter, for example, to the great (some say the greatest ever) World Series of 1960 between the Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates.  And he describes specific plays with the authenticity of a sportswriter who was at the games.

            He also makes the behind-the-scenes stuff something of a whodunit mystery.  We know going in that the league is not going to happen.  (It was scuttled when both the American and National Leagues announced they were going to expand by two teams each in 1961 and 1962 respectively.)  But we don’t know, until Shapiro discloses the details, whom the key players were in nipping the grand plan in the bud.

            Shapiro reveals it all in this fascinating, thoroughly engrossing book.

            For a completely different kind of baseball book, however, Josh Wilker’s “Cardboard Gods” might be as good as it gets.  “Cardboard” is a memoir built around the baseball card collection of the author.  Those cards, collected when he was a pre-teen, cover the years 1974-1980, during which Wilker grew from a seven-year old, struggling to keep up with his older (by three or four years) brother, to a fully pubescent thirteen-year old, struggling with things like girls and masturbation.

            Wilker is a terrific writer, which is reason enough to enjoy his book, but he is also a lover of the game, which makes it a perfect read for the fan who sees in the sport something more than balls and strikes, something perhaps approaching the metaphysical.

            Using the cards of specific players as his jumping off points, Wilker reveals how it felt to be a misfit in his peer group and how his oddly-structured family (his mother lived with her lover and her husband, who was a literal third-wheel who seemed pleased enough to be such) was a source of both comfort and confusion (how could it not be?) for him.

            It isn’t a typical American tale by any means, but it is, in its own way, uniquely American nonetheless, which is, in part, what gives the book its appeal. 

            But the baseball cards and the baseball players and their teams that Wilker writes about have an appeal of their own, and he doesn’t ignore that fact.  Rather, he chooses and uses the players to reflect on his own life, thereby creating a minor masterpiece, to wit: a memoir that is more heavily historical and far less egocentric than perhaps any other.

            And, if “Cardboard” (subtitled “An All-American Tale Told through Baseball Cards”) isn’t an entirely upbeat read, it is most certainly a beautifully rendered one.  Like the game itself, it is full of anxiety, passion, joy and heartache: the perfect companion for those long months when the ballparks are empty.

            (“Bottom of the Ninth,” published by Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, and “Cardboard Gods,” published by Seven Footer Press, are both available from Amazon.com and other on-line outlets as well as most book stores.)

            I am about to celebrate another birthday, and the prospect only brings me any true sense of joy when I think about the somewhat bittersweet joke about getting older.  It does beat the alternative, or so, at least, I assume.

            The passing of the years has been something of a puzzle to me for a long time, which in and of itself is bizarre, since surely nothing is as clearly obvious as the constancy of time itself.  (Apologies to Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking if I’m wrong.) 

            I was maybe 12 or 13 when my mother shared with me her feeling of how fast it all goes.  (She would have been not even 40 yet herself.)  The idea struck me as singularly odd at the time.  Eight or nine years later, when I saw Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” I did realize that in 2001 I would be 54, but it seemed (and I truly felt) that it would take about 80 years for that year to arrive.

            I came in touch with just how wrong that feeling was when I spent a year writing a combination diary/memoir.  I began it when I turned 49 and concluded it when I turned 50.  It’s a ponderous tome, running some 800 pages and full of narcissistic reminiscences.  I called it, appropriately, “My Fiftieth Year,” although it was as much about what had happened to get me to that point as it was about what was happening to me at the time.

            At some point during that year, it occurred to me that the days, weeks and months were just flying by.  I wanted each day to be somehow momentous or at least noteworthy, but as I tried to make them seem so, in writing about them night after night, I came to understand the truth of my mother’s observation.

            Life is a puzzle in so many ways, biology and the increased knowledge we have about its physical qualities notwithstanding.  I’ve always been struck by the mystery of it all.

            I was not yet 18, having just graduated from high school when I seriously contemplated suicide.  My girlfriend had dumped me very suddenly, as young teens are wont to do, but it was my first real love affair, and I was absolutely crushed.  The pain was almost too much to bear.

            I had two methods in mind, both of which, I felt confident, would cause me minimal physical pain.  I played out the two options as the intensity of the pain continued unabated.  And then, as I actually began to make preparations, a thought occurred to me that literally saved my life.

            What, I wondered, would I have become?  What would this 17-year old, about to start college and begin an adult existence, have turned into if he hadn’t killed himself over a broken heart?

            That thought, wholly egotistical though it was, made me persevere.  The mystery, if you will, kept me alive.  I lived with the pain for years, far longer than I should have as I look back on it, but I did survive. 

            But now, I am that person that the 17-year old wondered about.  The years have passed with remarkable speed, and here I am, the person who didn’t kill himself and instead grew up to see what he would become, to see how the mystery would play out.

            It hasn’t been a real nail-biter.  Oh, I’ve had my moments, to be sure, but no one is going to write a book about the momentous journey that my life was.

            I did go to college, thinking at first I would study to be a minister, then in less than a year committed to a pre-med major.  By the time I graduated, I’d lost my faith and discovered I had no real aptitude for scientific study.

            I then took an ROTC Air Force commission and spent four years evolving politically from a Barry Goldwater conservative to a George McGovern liberal.  You could say I embraced change in fairly cataclysmic fashion.

            While serving in uniform, I discovered the law and determined to become a lawyer.  And the law, in one form or another, has been my calling.  My love for it has led me to a variety of career stops, all of which, happily, have been satisfying and fulfilling.

            I have been a criminal and civil litigator and a business and personal counselor.  I’ve represented entertainers and entertainment promoters.  I’ve held a high-ranking position on a presidential campaign and served as a legislative staff consultant.  I’ve been a lobbyist and a corporate executive.  And, for the last ten years, I’ve been a teacher of the law.

            Somewhere along the way, I discovered my love of writing.  And, in addition to my regular columns, my reviews, my blog, and my 800-page memoir (that no one will ever read), I’ve written a novel (that has never been published but should be).  It’s called “Merging Souls,” and, published or not, it’s my crowning achievement as a writer.

            As a human being, my crowning achievement is my marriage and the two sons Jeri and I brought into the world and raised to become the fine young men they are. 

            Those are my thoughts as another birthday rudely arrives.  They aren’t all that special, but they are mine, and, in the end, I guess that’s the best we can get from the kind of contemplation I engage in every year.

            Back when he was entering his self-proclaimed semi-retirement, maybe 25 years ago, Marlon Brando gave a TV interview in which he got a little philosophical.  The interviewer picked up on his mood and the talk turned to growing old and, ultimately, to dying.

            Brando grew silent for a moment and then said, “You know, I think it’s kind of like this.  We carry on with all the activities of our life and we live every moment without thinking beyond those activities, and then, suddenly, one day we’re lying there dying, and we wonder to ourselves, ‘now what the hell was that all about.’”

            Birthdays are, for me at least, a time to think about what the hell “that” has been all about.  And as I’m about to mark my 64th, I’m still wondering.