HughesRudd

In September, Amy and I spent a week in southern Oregon, hitting Crater Lake and Sequoia national parks. The road to Crescent City was under construction and not that great, so when it came time to drive back, we decided to cut across from Gold Beach to Grants Pass. Driving up 101 to Bandon, then heading east on the main road looked like 150 miles or so; the back road was less than half as much.

We took the same route as James Kim, who died trying to seek help for his family. A windy, harrowing USFS logging road that I figured would be at most 2 lanes. But the road is washed out in places and is really one-lane-plus for much of the middle interval over the Coastal Range. We drove the other direction in late summer and as it became apparent the 40-60 miles was going to take 4 hours, the realization we might not finish the trip in daylight was disconcerting. After dark, there was no way I would drive at all; I figured I'd just turn off the car and wait out the night, not wanting to slip over the side into the ravines alongside the washed-out shoulder, hoping no one would slam into us in the pitch-black quiet. The area adjoins national wilderness area and locals later told us "you might want to be armed up there."

The map was a bit misleading. The signs weren't warning enough, and I've driven a lot of mountain and forest service back roads.

I wrote a letter to the Medford Mail-Bulletin and a reporter called last week and interviewed me for 20 minutes. He used only three of my criticisms; it was liking talking to a younger "me" when I was a young reporter in Grand Junction. He did include my main point that, in an area that pushes tourism, community leaders should discuss the addition of new signs that discourage tourists from using the backcountry shortcuts, period.

On that trip we also took a class V rapids raft trip that was exhilarating and did get to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Grandma,
Had you been born in the mid- to late-20th century, you undoubtedly would have blown away your classmates at Bryn Mawr or Smith, challenged your professors at Yale or Stanford law or business (or both) and achieved success and notoriety along the way. You were among the most intelligent people I have ever met (in a particularly precocious, high-achieving family) and I especially value the days I got to spend with you, talking about politics and watching CNN.

There was the night you called to ask if I was watching Nightline.

"You're watching Letterman? Turn that (expletive deleted) off. Turn on Koppel. He's talking about GATT."

Or the morning you banged on the door, a bit too early after a long drive and a very late night arrival, because you wanted me to watch "Sam and Cokie" in your bedroom.

I got up in time for the roundtable with George Will; you were not thrilled. You were tough to please.

You, at 96, argued with me about the authorship of a poem...we were like fighting fish, me the snotty English major, you being you... so I walked over to Barnes and Noble, browsed the anthologies and found the exact verse. I called on the cell to say you were right on...you asked me to read the first few lines, you then recited the entire work from memory...from about 1916, when you said the Roth sisters would memorize poetry and stage impromptu recitals.

Clearly, it's a different world.

Finally, I recall the day at Shadyside -- during your first hospital stay -- when the blushing, very young neurology NP ran through a set of flashcards, ostensibly to test your memory. The cards were age-based and presumed a modest upbringing...so when she flashed a horse and buggy and said "Mrs. Roth, do you know what this is? You probably remember it from when you were a child," you snapped "We always had a car." When she showed you an outhouse and said, in a patronizing tone, "I bet you know what this is," you snarled, scowled, looked at me and asked "Do I have to do this? This is insulting." I said "Just humor her. She has no idea what she's got into here. Otherwise you'll never get out of here. Think about the prize."

To your credit, you put up with it, went through about 40 cards, sporting a shit-eating grin after each one.

I'll miss the matriarchal stuff...the human WIKIpedia of family events and history.

I hope you find some peace now, back in the old neighborhood.

Love, Dan

back from last night's concert by the Atlanta Symphony...a few observations...

1. why does the ASO play the same program three nights in a row? Typically orchestras will play the same program maybe twice, not on consecutive nights...this was the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birthday and they could have played the Haffner on say, Thursday night this week and Saturday night next week. The piano soloist could have performed Friday and Saturday night this week and they could have picked a different symphony.

2. why do all the middle-aged men of means in this town look like Dan Reeves? Silver-gray hair with the same wire-rimmed glasses? Top drawer concert, honey, I must say. The wives were dressed sensibly, a few over the top, clearly having made a wrong turn at the cotillion. The place looked like what I figure the Davidson or Furman board of trustees meeting look like. Top drawer, honey.

3. noone carries scores to the concert anymore. I remember concerts in Philly and Pittsburgh way back when (but not that far back) when you could rent libretti and scores.

4. the crowd was looser than those in the Northeast, largely because a) people are looser here; b) the easy access of the wine/beer stand; c) they have little or no appreciation of the music and came largely because their corporations have sponsored the series. When 5 large men came onto stage to move the piano stage right after Piano Concerto No. 25, the crowd cheered...much like they would when the grounds crew would run onto Turner Field and drag the tarp. Top drawer, honey.

5. my old boss, Jim Kennedy, who was publisher of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel in the early 80s (known as "New Kid"), is listed among the top sponsors in the program and his mother or aunt (I cant remember which) Anne Cox Chambers has given 250K. They own Cox Enterprises, WSB, etc. and are richer than just about anyone. I remember Jim as someone without pretense, who worked the back shop, had an active role in editorials and daily reporting...the real deal...before he moved from Colorado to Atlanta.

Coincidental meetings are my specialty. Today the father of a patient tells me that he grew up in Florida. I asked where and he said West Palm Beach. I said, well, I used to write news and sports in West Palm Beach for the Palm Beach Post in the mid-80s. Well, he said, I went to Twin Lakes High School, right around the corner from the newspaper building. Were you a tight end on the football team, I asked? The answer, of course, was yes, or I wouldn't be writing this. You were pretty good, if I remember. The dad told me he played 2 years at Morehouse.

Do you remember a really good BBQ joint on Palm Beach Lakes called the Blue Front, I asked. The owner died and his daughter had to close it down. My father and I used to be the only whites in there, whenever we visited, which was frequently. The Blue Front was the place to go for ribs, period. All the time, he said, and BTW, that daughter is now a client of my insurance business and lives nearby (south of Atlanta).

Coincidence #2 coming soon. Anyone out there with similar stories?

I turn on ESPN to watch some hoops and I get something stirring, something special. Dick Vitale gives one of the most heartfelt, inspiring speeches I've heard in a long time, imploring the audience at Madison Square Garden to give to the Jimmy V Foundation to fund cancer research. Vitale knows how to work a crowd - he is a pro speaker - but this is highly personal for him and it shows. Before the game, ESPN replayed Valvano's unforgettable acceptance of the Arthur Ashe award in 1993 (Vitale helped him off the stage)...and now Vitale reminds us that Valvano wanted the advances in research to help "my children" and their children someday.

He knew his time was short and he said that cancer could take his body but not his heart, his soul, his mind.

Ironically Valvano's daughter has just undergone a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with a genetically linked form of breast cancer. Vitale faced the camera point blank and pleaded with Jamie, echoing her father's motto.

"Jamie, never give up, don't ever give up" said Vitale. "We all love you."

Those of conscience headed to the concession stand stood frozen in his tracks.

In any event, this has been a tough couple of years for this correspondent, but I think I can spare a bit of change. Jimmy V was the real deal, at least according to my old friend from Bryn Mawr and Brown pediatrics, Kevin McGibney, who was a physics instructor and track coach at Iona and shared an office with Valvano. McGibney, a chief pediatric resident at Hasbro Children's in Providence, loved to tell amusing stories about life with primordial Valvano. And Kevin himself passed away from brain cancer 5-6 years ago.

So, anyone who reads this, spare what you can at www.jimmyv.org. And here's to Jimmy V and my buddy Kevin.

On to my favorite topic (I have a 10-year-old patient who can't wait to visit and try to stump me with a question about the series)...from the LA Times today


By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer
Tom Wolfe is screaming. He screams softly, this Southern gentleman, his trademark white suit unwrinkled, his spats unwavering even as a giant granite boulder hurtles down upon him. It looks to be the end of the pioneering New Journalism author of "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.""Aaaaaaaahh! Wait, no, that wasn't good, let me start over."

"How did you scream last time a boulder was hurtling toward you?" asks Carolyn Omine, executive producer of "The Simpsons.""Why don't you try, 'Aaaaahhhh, my suit!' " suggests a rail-thin, nerdy-looking writer, from the front of the Fox recording studio."Ahhhhh, my suit! It's gabardine!" wails Wolfe, toward the microphone. "Well, but cops wear gabardine."Slowly, Wolfe transforms. Even now, this episode's director, Mark Kirkland, is circling Wolfe, snapping pictures. Soon, a team of animators will render Wolfe bug-eyed and yellow-skinned. A year from now he'll appear on television alongside Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and the bartender Moe in an episode of "The Simpsons" parodying highfalutin literary culture."We started with the idea of Moe as Charles Bukowski," explains Matt Warburton, who wrote the episode. "We brought Lisa in as the person who discovers in scuzzy, barfly Moe something that we've never seen before: a poet." Antics ensue, with Wolfe and fellow guest stars Gore Vidal, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen voicing themselves. All were thrilled to participate."This is the only show of any sort that I watch on television," Wolfe says, sitting in the greenroom after recording. The immaculately dressed author is surrounded by a group of scruffy Harvard-educated "Simpsons" writers, hanging on his every word. "My son, Tommy, who's now 20, one of his first words was [Homer's trademark exclamation] 'D'oh!' And now any conversation he has with anybody, he'll reference 'The Simpsons.' "The writers laugh knowingly. This isn't uncommon. The show is in the "Guinness Book of World Records" for the most guest voices of any animated series, and invitees are often begged to participate by their children or younger friends who see it as akin to nabbing the Nobel Prize. Past guests include actors (Kirk Douglas, Drew Barrymore), musicians (U2, the Who) athletes (Andre Agassi, Magic Johnson), politicians (Tony Blair) and even the most reclusive of writers (Thomas Pynchon lent his voice twice, and faxed in a list of jokes beforehand).

"The fastest 'yes' I ever received was Elizabeth Taylor," says Bonnie Pietila, the producer in charge of casting. "I hung up the phone after leaving a message and she called back five minutes later." Some celebrities are so eager to appear on the show "that they have a representative call us on a monthly basis," Pietila says. "But we only have 22 episodes each season." Al Gore is one of the few to have turned "The Simpsons" down.

On a stiflingly hot Monday afternoon, Franzen and Chabon drive onto the Fox lot together. They convene with producers in the greenroom and sit on couches surrounding a wide swath of sandwich makings, jumbo cookies and fruit that nobody ever seems to touch."My kids and my father are very excited," Chabon says. He's not kidding. Reached later by phone, his father, Robert Chabon, said that he always expected Michael to win a Pulitzer (which he did in 2001 for "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"). "And I still think he's going to win the National Book Award," said the Kansas City, Kan., pediatrician. "But him being on 'The Simpsons' is beyond my wildest dreams. You envision certain successes for your children, but this kind of success — I never envisioned."Sometimes the show seems to be instigated by a vast conspiracy of children. "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening strolls into the greenroom and once again tells Chabon that his kids are big Chabon fans. "That's great," Chabon says, grinning. "My kids were very excited when I told them that Matt Groening's kids know who their father is."

The script calls for Chabon and Franzen to brawl during a dispute about their literary influences, and standing next to each other in the recording room, the friends ready themselves for a fight. Franzen complains loudly that he has fewer lines than Chabon — "Only 38 words!" — to which Chabon responds, "I see there's a little counting going on in the Franzenian corner."

Dan Castellaneta, the voice of many "Simpsons" characters, including Homer, Barney, Krusty the Clown and Groundskeeper Willie, sits on a swivel chair nearby, wearing sunglasses and smiling at the amateurs. Then Groening arrives, a red light glows and recording begins.Franzen need not have worried about counting words. The session's Emmy-worthy performances are wordless strings of yelps and grunts. After reading and rereading their lines, the writers take turns making fight noises like "urrrrrg!" and "ugh!" and "ouch!" Chabon throws his whole body into it, lunging at the microphone, while Franzen keeps a dry, acerbic cool. Omine, the producer, reads them their cues, and writers sitting around the room toss out ideas as they occur.

Franzen: "Gaa! Dajjjmit! Ach! Rrrr!"

Writer: "How about, 'Nooo! My prescription-less glasses, the ones I wear to look smart!' "

Franzen: "My trademark glasses!"

Omine: "Let's continue with Jonathan, because you have to whack Michael with a chair. Some more pain sounds, please."

Writer: "How about saying, 'You fight like Anne Rice!' "Eventually, it's time to encounter that same runaway granite chunk that flattened Tom Wolfe. Franzen's scream has a hint of falsetto; Chabon writhes as he lets out an anguished moan.It's over in less than an hour; but echoes of those recordings will stick with you, says Amy Tan, author of the 1990 book "The Joy Luck Club," who voiced herself on the show five years ago. "Among a certain group of mostly younger people, I'm like a movie star of cartoons," she says. "People who are not impressed with anything else are very impressed that I was in 'The Simpsons.' I don't know what the equivalent would be. Like I was playing with the Rolling Stones or something. It's as though I actually know Homer and Marge and the kids."

Being on the show doesn't improve a writer's salability, says Sandra Dijkstra, Tan's literary agent. "I don't think it does anything for their careers. My impression is that it's simply fun. 'The Simpsons' is countercultural and subversive and it makes important statements about America today. Good writers want to be subversive, and they want to be on 'The Simpsons.' "

If there were a trophy for hipsterism, it might well be in the shape of Homer's head. The series that Time magazine dubbed "the best show in the history of television" has for 17 years spawned conversations on playgrounds and at cocktail parties. It's the focus of university classes and doctoral theses. And it long ago infiltrated the lingo of today's high school kids, who don't know a Simpson-less world. ("D'oh!" was included in the 2001 Oxford Dictionary.)But despite its cultural saturation, Gore Vidal hasn't watched the show. "I live in Italy," he says, walking with a cane toward a lone chair in the recording studio. "I don't see much American TV."

Vidal puffs out his chest and begins, imbuing his lines with the solemn dignity of a Shakespearean actor. Each syllable receives its share of attention. Groening watches intently from a couch, smiling. Vidal doesn't sound like a Simpson. He sounds like Gore Vidal.

It's a wrap. Vidal says that he "can't wait" to see the episode and that transforming into a yellow-skinned character is a return of sorts: "After all, I had jaundice as a kid." On the way out, he segues into a favorite topic and tells the producers, "There's a White House plan to destabilize California like they've destabilized Iraq or Iran." Then he leaves the studio. Alive. Vidal is the only one of these authors to escape a cartoon death.

If you enjoy the music of Johnny Cash and the Carter family, you might want to rent "I Walk the Line" when it comes out on DVD. Then you can hum over the all-too-conventional dialog and just TIVO from song to song, bypassing holes in a script that you can drive that vintage Sun Records tour bus through.

But don't waste your money on the movie in theatres now.

Sure, the music is well done (to a point) and Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (started from scratch, musically illiterates, as has been reported ad nauseum) sound like the real deal. Still, they don't seem to have the electrical, charismatic on-stage presence of Johnny and June and I found it hard to believe the actors even like one another, on or off screen.

We start with young Johnny or J.R., who is glued to his family's period piece radio in the living room, trying to listen to the Carter Family (with young June) on a faraway broadcast. But his early musical interest is repeatedly quashed by his father and nourished by his mother, who sings hymns while the family picks cotton in rural Arkansas.

The family is poor and the kids had to perform the type of labor only illegals might consider now. Fine. But when Johnny's brother is shown working in a mill with a saw, I turned to my brother and said "37 seconds to saw accident and deathbed scene,"

I was wrong. Actually it was more like 15-20 seconds, but this scene, and about 10 others, were telegraphed...poorly conceived and weakly written.

You could see this train a comin', comin round the bend... from miles away.

Johnny's father is portrayed about as flatly as a character can, as a cad, who rues his son's death and tells the family the wrong son has just died.

Paging Drs. Freud and Phil here...this conflict is played as the modus operandi for Johnny's screwups and angry lyrics, but we never really get past the superficial theme. I'm thinking there has to be some subtlety here, some gray area they are glossing over in the interest of time and laziness, but... wait, rolling down the tracks is wooden character #2, Johnny's first wife, who comes off as a one-dimensional '50s mom with absolutely zilch interest in his career. According to the Cash children from this marriage, some of whom have complained or walked out of the screening, their mother did support his career and was nothing like the mean-spirited ogre in the film.

How does this happen? Who greenlighted this crap?

We run through Cash's problems with drugs (which ones specifically we're not told) and his eventual arrest (a bunch of agents somehow track him and are waiting at the bottom of the proverbial escalator to "give him a warrant.") All the while we are fast forwarding and flashing back and although it's not hard to figure out what's happening, it's disconcerting. You don't have to use the time travel technique in a movie to tell the story and I think linear time would have been just fine here.

(At this point, I could run on about the ridiculously drawn-out sequence of Cash trying to "sweat out" the drugs but I won't. It was like a bad Mannix episode, circa 1974. Or the predictable scene where Cash rolls over in bed, looking for more pills, only to hear June say "Oh, I flushed 'em, honey."

Didn't see that comin' round, either.

Did I say the music isn't that bad, the production pedigree in the credits top flight? It bears repeating.

And why do they only mention Carlene Carter and Roseanne Cash when they had more kids in previous marriages? Because those are the only kids the public might identify or recognize?

Now we get to the plot holes.

The biggie occurs when Cash, obviously drunk, is living with Waylon Jennings. We know he's outta cash because when he walks into a bank and asks the cashier to cash a check, he is denied. With no car and no phone service, he walks umpteen miles from seedy Nashville to the country house inhabited by the Carters and June blows him off. So he retreats down the country lane, only to collapse on a hill in a thunderstorm. Next thing ya know, Cash wakes up to the sound of some house builders nearby and presto, he's bought himself a house in Hendersonville by a lake. With what money, we have no idea.

Much of the movie is spent on Johnny's failed first marriage (again with the predictable phone calls home from the road and the typical "We miss you daddy" plaints from the kiddies.) We get the wife angrily confronting June and telling her to "stay away from my family." We get the wife surprising Johnny at a rehearsal. This is the stuff of bad made-for-TV movies in the '70s, not what passes for quality these days. Again, weak and lazy writing is to blame. Do they get divorced? We never know, because we zip forward to John's fumbling pursuit of June again.

Can't forget the glaring production holes either.

In an early scene, Johnny and bro are walking and skipping down this dirt road, en route to a fishing hole. In a later scene, a much older Johnny is walking down the same dirt road, en route to the big city. Same road and same dried up mud puddle (back left) in both scenes...filmed probably hours apart.

Did I mention the music isn't half-bad?

I don't see how major reviewers have granted 3 or 4 stars to this piece of work. Roger Ebert, whose work I greatly admire, and someone I had the chance to meet while a grad student at Medill, liked the film immensely. But Ebert has become an easy mark in recent years and his critiques are not as sharply penned anymore. My sense is that the late Gene Siskel would have called him on this. But Ebert is not alone, by any means; most of the major reviewers have given it high marks.

Johnny did not propose to June on stage either but when she said yes, after much prodding (didn't see that comin' either), most women in the audience probably turned to hug their dates. Nothing wrong with that. I'll give 'em a pass on that stroke of creative genius.

Finally, a personal aside. I've been a fan of Cash and the Carters for years, a little unusual for an urban kid from Philly. My father took our family to Kennywood Park near Pittsburgh in the early '70s, where the Carter Family was scheduled to play an afternoon concert at the hatshell. Despite a thunderstorm delay of more than an hour, and the fact the remaining audience consisted of our family (6) and a few others, the Carters graciously played 7 or 8 songs, took requests and talked with us from the stage. I think Mother Maybelle and Anita were there; I'm almost certain June wasn't, although there were a few kids singing harmony.

Bottom line - if you don't mind movie writing that jumps around, glosses over some big conflicts and incompletely handles others, if you are happy with superficial detail and are satisfied with the bad-seed-boy meets sort-of-hard-to-get-but-not-that-hard-to-get girl, then this is your kinda movie. If you're looking for a factual portrayal of Cash's existence (his early years at Sun are done well) and probing investigation of his psychological demons, you're out of luck.