The road warrior

February 14, 2015

What a terrible week for journalists. The Brian Williams debacle. Jon Stewart’s departure from “The Daily Show. “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon’s death in a car crash. Media columnist David Carr’s fatal collapse in The New York Times newsroom.

What I want to touch on here is Simon’s death, for at a moment when Williams is being castigated for exaggerating his war correspondent cred, Simon was the real deal. Vietnam. The Yom Kippur War. Tiananmen Square. The Persian Gulf War, in which he and four members of his TV crew were held in Iraq, an experience Simon wrote about in his book “Forty Days.” How ironic that a man who survived a dangerous professional life abroad should die on the streets of New York, the city in which he was born and raised, although maybe it’s not so ironic when you consider the livery driver’s rap sheet.

But this is a sports/culture blog, and so what I’d like to leave you with is another side of Simon, who profiled Novak Djokovic for “60 Minutes” on March 27, 2012. ...

Michael Sam’s out (of the NFL) – for now

September 1, 2014

So in the end after all the hoopla, Michael Sam – the first openly gay player in the NFL (almost) – didn’t make the cut with the St. Louis Rams.

There are just so many ways to look at this. How convenient for the those who can sigh with relief and say, “Hey, we tried but he just wasn’t good enough.” How vindicating for the skeptics, who will say, “He was such a lightweight to begin with. The only reason he got a shot was because he’s gay.”

But how sad for those of us who’d like to see the Sams and the Tim Tebows of the world find their places in the NFL sun regardless of the imperfections of their (still considerable) skills and their sexual or religious persuasions.

Some day, we won’t have to judge people by anything but those skills and what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the content of their character” – which in Sam’s case seems to be class all the way, and which is more than you can say for the Ray Rices of the game. ...

Lassie came home

August 18, 2014

Like a star who’s found new life in the age of the Internet, Lassie’s on the comeback trail as pitchdog and charity ambassador. And I’m among the millions who are thrilled.

As with many a boomer, I grew up with the TV series (1954-73), still in syndication, and the various movies that found their way to the tube. And, not surprisingly, I had a Lassie and later on Lassie 2.0, whom we called Sassy. (Yes, I know, lame, but I loved that dog, who was a rescue, and all the animals we had and ah!, don’t get me started.)

I also had the pleasure of interviewing Bob Weatherwax – son of dog trainer Rudd Weatherwax – whose pooch, Pal, played “Lassie” in the 1943 film “Lassie Come Home.” Bob told me fascinating stuff about how trainers use physical commands to elicit seemingly emotional responses from canine actors. He also confirmed what is one of the most intriguing aspects of Lassie...

Robin Williams, dead in apparent suicide

August 12, 2014

Today brought the shocking news of Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams’ death at 63 from asphyxia in an apparent suicide.

Suicide always begs the question, Why? Why would someone who had so much end it all? It’s the theme of a very good, underrated early Keanu Reeves movie, “Permanent Record,” about a golden student who takes his own life and the friends who are left to wonder, Well if that can happen to someone so together, what about the rest of us?

Except that suicides don’t think of themselves as being very together people. As I said in my novel “Water Music,” many suicides don’t want to die. They want not to live, which is a very different thing...

The Rock rolls in “Hercules”

August 10, 2014

"I like the gods,” my friend novelist and movie blogger Barbara Nachman says as we exit the new “Hercules,” starring Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, in the title role.

I do, too. The Greek gods were among my childhood companions, offering thrilling stories and transcendence without the guilt trip of modern religion. (A well-known classicist, who shall remain nameless here, once told me she would take the Greek gods over the Abrahamic one any day of the week and twice on Sundays, so to speak.)

This being the age of post-modernism, the gods are nowhere to be found in the new “Hercules,” and that’s too bad, because they’re such an entertaining lot and because the ancient Greeks believed in them – or at least the stories they could spin off of them – so passionately. (Certainly, the Greco-Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great did. He saw Hercules – Heracles in Greek, Hercules in Latin – as one of his paternal ancestors.)

Making a movie about an ancient Greek legend when you imply that the legend is really part PR campaign, part empowerment exercise, well, it doesn’t quite cut it, does it?

Otherwise, the new “Herc” is a not-bad movie that fits...

Jared Leto, the inside man

March 3, 2014

How great was it to see Jared Leto – who left Hollywood to front a band – win the Best Supporting Oscar for his role as a transgender prostitute in “Dallas Buyers Club”? (Actually, the win was sort of a no-brainer. Hollywood loves to reward actors who transform themselves and stories that have their hearts in the right place.)

Leto seems to have his in the right place, too. Of course, there was plenty of Internet snark about his acceptance speech, in which he told the “dreamers” in Ukraine and Venezuela that we were thinking of them. (Apparently, actors aren’t allowed to be human.) I came late to his speech, but I’m glad I caught the end: "This is for the 36 million people out there who have lost the battle to AIDS.” He concluded, “To those of you who have felt injustice because of who you love and who you are, I stand here with you and for you.”’

As he left the stage, host Ellen DeGeneres shook her head and said, “Beautiful.”’

Dances with Tara and Johnny

February 23, 2014

The penultimate night of the Sochi Games brought us the Figure Skating Gala, in which the top finishers in the various skating disciplines put on an exhibition that was more relaxed and playful than the competition. In that spirit, NBC invited free-wheeling NBCSN commentators Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir to sit at the big people’s table, as it were, and offer commentary on NBC in prime time. Both Tara and Johnny, who’ve earned raves for their repartee, sported gold sprigs in their hair that Tara said were Sochi flowers. Sidekick Terry Gannon – whom some in the press have dubbed the pair’s chaperone – wore his in his lapel. The hairpieces brought to mind Pauline Kael’s famously acidic review of “Dances With Wolves,” in which she said “Kevin Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head.”

NBC actually showed little of the event in prime time. Among the highlights were Gracie Gold’s sassy salute to Fosse, her hometown of Chicago and “Chicago” with “All That Jazz”; gold medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White’s balletic skate to the Adagio from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2; and Yuna Kim’s simply stunning interpretation of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”