700 Sundays

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Henceforth, these book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.

Today I skimmed "700 Sundays" by Billy Crystal, published in 2005.

It is a memoir of his childhood. He was born in 1948. He grew up in Long Beach, Long Island. He had two older brothers, Rip and Joel. It was a typical 1950's suburban Jewish family.

When Billy was nine, the family got a new car, a 1957 gray Plymouth Belvedere. Unfortunately it was accidentally wrecked in a parking lot by a clumsy driver. Fortunately, that driver was a member of the Mafia, and, not wanting to deal with insurance companies, he had the car fixed at no charge to Billy's family.

Billy loved singing and telling jokes at family gatherings. He copied a dirty-joke routine from a show the family had seen in the Catskills. That was a little embarrassing for his parents.

Billy's father played the mandolin. His grandfather owned a music store in Manhattan. His Uncle Milt had the brilliant idea of having jazz musicians record their songs, and selling records through the store, on the label, "Commodore". Through the years, Billy got to meet many famous musicians such as Roy Eldridge, and singers such as Billie Holliday. However, larger music stores put the small, independent ones out of business in the early 1970's.

Billy also describes being entertained by his crazy Jewish relatives: Uncle Milt, Aunt Helen, Uncle Berns, Aunt Marcia and Aunt Sheila.

Billy's father taught the kids to play baseball, and took them to Yankees games. He took Billy to visit his workplace, and introduced him to celebrities. Sunday was Billy's favorite day of the week, because it was usually spent with his father. When Billy was 15, his father had a heart attack and died. It was then Billy realized his own mortality, and he calculated that if his lifespan were to be as short as his father's, he would have only 700 Sundays to be with his family.

This book is based on the Tony-Award winning play, "700 Sundays".

Karloff The Life of Boris Karloff

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Henceforth, these book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.

Today I skimmed, "Karloff The Life of Boris Karloff" by Peter Underwood, published in 1972.

Boris Karloff was born in 1887 in South London. His birth name was William Henry Pratt. He was the youngest of nine children. His father died when he was a baby. Karloff's older brothers all entered government service in China or India. A the black sheep of the family, he was a poor student who did not work, but was passionate about the theatre. The Pratts were a typical Victorian family, especially in their disapproval of the stage as a career.

In 1909, Karloff left home for Montreal. He applied for the job of experienced character actor, (although he was pitifully inexperienced) under the name he invented, Boris Karloff. He got the job. Karloff toured with a couple of different theatre companies and took odd jobs for the next decade. He acquired solid experience but little money. His friend Alfred Aldrich convinced Karloff to go to Los Angeles, in 1918 or 1919. The film studios were hiring. However, live-theatre actors considered it a step down to act in film. The stock theatre companies were put out of business by the film studios by the early 1920's.

Lon Chaney, a friend, gave Karloff career advice. In 1930, Chaney died bizarrely of a throat infection from choking on corn flakes used to represent snow on the movie set.

Each time Universal Studios was financially strapped, it resorted to horror films. After Lon Chaney died, it chose Boris Karloff as its horror star, typecasting him as Frankenstein's monster. Universal copyrighted Karloff's makeup design, which took more than three hours to apply. "Frankenstein" opened on 6 December 1931.
When Karloff did "The Mummy" in 1932, he was painted in blue-green beauty clay, which, when dry, cracked and allowed the application of pained cotton veins.

Karloff's three brothers (one had died) visited him in 1938. The brothers all had successful diplomatic careers. They were happy that Karloff was successful in films, not disapproving as Karloff thought they would be.

Karloff's first marriage to Helene Vivian Soule aka Polly in 1923, ended in divorce in 1929. Karloff married again, to Dorothy Stine, and they bought a house in Beverly Hills. When Karloff was 51 years old, they had a daughter, Sara Jane, in 1938. They divorced in 1945. Karloff wed for the third and last time in 1946 to Evelyn Helmore. They moved to England in 1959.

In 1941, Karloff was in "Arsenic and Old Lace" at the Fulton Theatre in New York. He loved the role of Jonathan Brewster, murderer, because he needed almost no makeup. He did dozens of films through the years. He had a radio and TV show "Starring Boris Karloff". He even did a children's radio show in the early 1950's. In 1966, a record album was released, "An Evening With Boris Karloff and His Friends", with scenes of "Bride of Frankenstein" and "Son of Frankenstein". He died in February 1969.

Three Books on NYC History

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Henceforth, these book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.

Today I skimmed, (1) "McNamara's Old Bronx" by John McNamara, published in 1989; (2) "Fifty Years on Fifth 1907-1957" by The Fifth Avenue Association, published in 1957; and (3) "From Alley Pond to Rockefeller Center" by Henry Collins Brown, published in 1936.

(1) This is a book of essays on Bronx history, dating from the 1950's through the 1980's. Some trivia I found interesting are the following:

BATHHOUSES

Around 1900, there was no gas heat and no sanitary plumbing in residences. But there were stray goats around. At the bottom of 138th Street in Mott Haven, there were floating bathhouses. It was Ladies' Night on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

One of the most majestic Public Baths opened in 1909 at Elton Avenue and E. 156th St. It boasted Roman architecture, with carved ornamentation and a copper roof. However, bathtubs in residences became widespread, and the baths have gone the way of many other businesses.

TRAGEDIES

There occurred many tragedies that are now just a blip in the annals of Bronx history.

In the mid-1850's, it was trendy for rival steamboat lines to "drag race". On July 28, 1852, two ships, the "Armenia" and the "Henry Clay" were having a drag race. The boilers of the Henry Clay exploded, causing a big fire, and passengers to be thrown off the boat. Many were trapped in the stern by smoke, so they jumped off the side and drowned. To add insult to injury, looters boated out to the scene and took whatever they could get from the flotsam, jetsam, victims, and finally the steamship itself. The criminal case involving the ship's owners and officers was tried in Riverdale, then a part of the Bronx. They were acquitted. A few months later, the passing of the Steamboat Inspection Act outlawed racing.

In January 1882, the Tarrytown Express and the Atlantic Express trains crashed during a snowstorm. The reason is that someone pulled the emergency brake on the Atlantic, and it had to stop. There was no problem found. However, since it was exactly 13 minutes ahead of the Tarrytown, and going in the same direction, a brakeman was supposed to go out with signal lanterns to warn the Tarrytown. He was too late. Between 8 and 13 people died. People like to tell the story using 13, as other "13's" pop up in the story, including the aforementioned 13 minutes, the fact that there were 13 cars on the Atlantic, and it was Friday the 13th. The brakeman and the conductor were indicted for, then vindicated of manslaughter.

On June 15, 1904, there was the General Slocum disaster, in which an excursion boat caught fire while in Bronx waters, and hundreds of women and children on a church outing drowned.

In 1914, just two years after the Titanic sank, Murray Haas made a movie in Hunts Point simulating the calamity. The film's replica of the iceberg was made of wood and canvas. Night shooting was done with flares and arc-lights.

RECREATION AND ENTERTAINMENT

In the late 1800's, German bands used to play music on the streets of the Bronx. It was a way for Germans to remember their culture. Listeners would put a coin in the musicians' basket. When the bands were in front of pork stores and bakeries, they created a bit of nostalgia for German housewives. The bands played German drinking songs to remind them of their school days when in front of athletic facilities. In those days, one could get free lunch with the purchase of a beer, but bands that played at saloons at lunchtime got free beer anyway.

In the 1920's and 1930's, there were weekly foot races in the West Bronx, near Yankee Stadium. Europeans, including Finnish athletes, members of two local athletic clubs, ran along a track that has since been turned into a baseball field. The clubhouses were turned into the Bronx County Building.

TRANSPORTATION

All the different vehicles taken for granted today were horse-drawn in the Bronx of the early 1900's. Ambulances, firetrucks, police vans, etc. Italians operated ice wagons and vegetable carts, but also horsecars and garbage wagons. It was a southern Italian and Sicilian tradition to place an amulet on the horses' foreheads and between the ears to ward off the evil eye. The amulets were images of dogs' heads, crescents, horns and bulls' heads in brass or silver.

BUSINESS

In the 1890's single Chinese men started restaurants and laundromats in the Bronx. Some were from Cuba. The laundrymen sometimes gave sugar cane to delivery boys to suck on. Girls did not work for them, because they had heard (false) horror stories of white slavery. The Chinese actually had a very low crime rate.

The first color animated films were made at the old Edison Studios at Decatur Avenue and Oliver Place.

In 1787, the Lorillard Brothers, who owned a snuff mill on the Bronx River, created the first ad campaign for their chewing tobacco, snuff and "segars". They mailed cards of an Indian smoking a long clay pipe of "Best Virginia" to every postmaster in America, since at that time, post offices served as general stores and centers of social activity.

In the 1890's, some pickles were dyed a bright green and exported to Cuba. These pickles were the excess not sent to local grocery stores, made at the N. Johnston & Son factory in what is now Co-op City in the Bronx.

In the spring of 1960, Freedomland opened. It was on the site of what was once marshland near the Hutchinson River in the Northeast Bronx. However, the amusement park went out of

business after five years.

MISCELLANEOUS

In 1907, Van Cortlandt Park was used as a holding pen for buffalo for a number of months, before the buffalo were sent to the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma. Buffalo were an endangered species at the time, and the Congress was trying to beef up their numbers.

NAMING OF THE BRONX

There are a few theories as to how the Bronx was named. An unlikely story is that visitors to Jonas Bronck's farm said they were "going to the Broncks". 1

Another is that the first English settlers assumed the phrase "Bronck's Land" to mean land of a certain nature, such as marsh or hills, and called it The Bronx, such as the way "Flatlands" or "New Lots" are sections of Brooklyn.

Still another is that people referred to specific regions, such as The Bronx River, or The Bronx Kills, by the short name "The Bronx" in the late 1700's; this, according to Bronx Historian Dr. T. Kazimiroff.

(2) This book tells the history of the buildings and culture of Fifth Avenue, through the eyes of an association that has tried to maintain its high-class reputation through the years.

MILESTONES

In 1831, Gramercy Park opened.

In 1833, Union Square opened.

In 1890, the original Plaza Hotel was built. As of this writing, it is being converted to condos.

In 1892, the Savoy Hotel was built.

In 1893, the Netherland Hotel was built.

FIRES

In the 1800's, construction materials were very flammable, electrical wiring was faulty, firefighting technology and infrastructure were poor, and hundreds of buildings were burned to the ground in hours.

A few instances:

In 1835, seven hundred buildings, including the Merchants Exchange were destroyed; 1858, it was the Crystal Palace; 1872, the Fifth Avenue Hotel; 1905, St. Thomas Church.

MISCELLANEOUS

In addition to fires, labor discontent and financial panic and plagued the 1830's. Nevertheless, in 1838, "Sirius", the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, accelerated overseas trade for New York merchants.

CENTRAL PARK

The area above 59th street was seedy until it was cleared for the creation of Central Park; in fact, it was named "Squatter's Sovereignty". The place was a shantytown of the homeless, an overgrown swamp.

Tracts of land sold to build the Park commanded tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 1850's. The Park was finally finished in 1876.

TRANSPORTATION

On December 18, 1922, the master tower that would regulate the flow of traffic, was unveiled at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

Joseph H. Freedlander won the architectural contest to design it. Traffic policemen personally operated the red, amber and green lights in it. Through the 1920's, traffic got worse and worse. Briefly, overhead lights were tried. In 1931, traffic lightpoles were installed on the sidewalks. As of the publishing of this book (1957), those lightpoles were still the standard traffic signals.

In 1907, New York copied Paris, and introduced taxis. The taxis at that time were all different colors.

B. ALTMAN BUILDING

B. Altman had a department store built at Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. It was completed in 1913, the year of his death. Eventually, the store went out of business. In the mid-1990's, the build was converted to the New York Public Library's Science and Business branch.

PAY TELEPHONES

There were telephone attendants in public phone booths from 1876 through the mid 1890's. Coin-operated phones were introduced in 1896. They accepted all coins, from nickels to silver dollars. In 1910, nickels, dimes and quarters became the standard, but the caller still had to ring the operator to make a call. The rotary dial appeared on all phones in 1925.

An organ maker and his lawyer started the Telephone Company of New York. Bell Telephone Company took them over in 1878.

(3) This book is an overview of the culture and landscape of various regions, including Queens (especially Flushing), Brooklyn, Bronx, Richmond (Staten Island) and a few bordering areas.

QUEENS

In 1683, Queens, named after Queen Catherine, was formed. The author complains that many of the borough's old-world villages lost their rural quaintness and became citified. Such is the price of progress.

In the late 1800's, there were a handful of police officers covering Flushing, New York.

TRANSPORTATION

The ways to get around used to include the straw-filled, horse-drawn car, then the cable and the trolley. The elevated trains replaced those. Surface cars, omnibuses and the subway have endured to this day.

BUSINESS

Industries such as steel, oil, tobacco, five-and-tens and railroads made many men rich from the late 1800's to early 1900's. Oil is still lucrative, but the other sectors have not fared as well, relatively speaking.

FORMATION OF "NEW YORK CITY"

At midnight on December 31, 1897, the five boroughs became united. Brooklyn was no longer a city. Staten Island is usually forgotten about when people discuss "New York City". Nevertheless, people used to play cricket there. And Cornelius Vanderbilt the First lived and died there. So did many sailors, who retired to the now landmark and arts center, Sailor's Snug Harbor. Three famous architects, James W. Renwick, Frederick Law Olmstead and Arthur Gilman, lived there, too.

Riverdale, The Bronx, was a bird sanctuary for decades before it got other inhabitants.

Catfish and Mandala

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Henceforth, these book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.

Today I read, "Catfish and Mandala", by Andrew X. Pham, published in 1999.

This book is the memoir of An, a Vietnamese native whose family escaped to California from Vietnam in the spring of 1975, just before Saigon fell. He alternates chapters describing his family's history, and his bike trip.

He was the firstborn son. He had one older sister and two younger brothers and a younger sister. The older sister never felt right about her gender-identity. She was rebellious, and ultimately killed herself at 32. An must deal with his racial identity.

An was born in Vietnam, but has mixed Asian blood, so he looks different from everyone. When he returns to Vietnam in his twenties on his bike trip, having been Westernized, he is called the derogatory term, "Viet-kieu". He flies to, and then cycles through most of the country, to revisit his childhood memories and motherland. He is not used to the unsanitary conditions, and is ill most of the time.

An speaks Vietnamese and is used to the culture, but he still must endure many unnerving incidents. He is propositioned by prostitutes several times. In one incident, he nearly gets severely beaten by three drunken Vietnamese soldiers. They are jealous of him because he, as a rich Westerner, can afford to buy a 60-cent can of Coca-Cola, while they receive annual wages of $120. Just as the men start getting violent, a few soldiers leave the deli across the street and instigate a fight with themselves. An flees on his bike, not looking back.

An meets many generous people as well. He sees Vietnam vets, hippies, housewives and fading retirees. They took him into their homes, cooked for him, made him feel back at home. Just before he leaves Vietnam, An meets with his American friend, Calvin, who owns a brothel. They talk about racial issues. An writes,

"Could I tell Calvin I was initiated into the American heaven during my first week Stateside by eight black kids who pulverized me in the restroom, calling me Viet Cong? No. I grew up fighting blacks, whites, and Chicanos... And everybody beat up the Chinaman whether or not he was really an ethnic Chinese. These new Vietnamese kids were easy pickings, small, bookish, passive, and not fluent in English. So, we congregate in Little Saigons, we hide out in Chinatowns and Japantowns, blending in. We huddle together, surrounding ourselves with the material wealth of America, and wave our star-spangled banners, shouting: "We're Americans. We love America."

An is still grappling with his racial identity. However, writing this book has made it easier, by making others aware of his plight.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Henceforth, these book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.

Today I read, "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning" by Jonathan Mahler, published in 2005.

It is a volume of journalistic essays about the top New York City newsmakers and stories of 1977-- the politicians, baseball players and media. The year 1977 was a tumultuous year, with the city's fiscal crisis, the blackout, the "Son of Sam" murders, mayoral race, and the Yankees' personnel squabbles, among other emotional goings-on.

In 1975, after the tall, blond and eloquent Upper East Side Yalie Mayor John Lindsay left office, the city experienced a fiscal crisis. The new mayor, CUNY graduate Abe Beame was left to deal with it. He was forced to take many financially painful steps, such as laying off 38,000 civil servants at a time when a large percentage of urbanites worked for the city government. Violent protests and a garbage strike ensued during the summer. Governor Hugh Carey stepped in to create a corporation to float more debt and put money guru Felix Rohaytn in charge of it.

On July 13, 1977, there was a blackout in the early evening. It had been a sweltering day. Frustration boiled over into violence, looting and arson, especially in bad neighborhoods such as Bushwick, Brooklyn. The severely understaffed police force was overwhelmed. The damage was estimated at $150 million.

In August, 1977, deranged killer David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" was arrested, having killed eight people over the course of a year and change. Since Rupert Murdoch had recently bought the New York Post, the newspaper had become a tabloid. With these exciting tales of destruction and death abounding, the paper sunk to new lows with its reportage.

Four major candidates joined the mayoral race: incumbent Abe Beame, Bella Abzug, Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch. People initially thought Koch was a Greenwich Village liberal, but he championed capital punishment, pummeled the unions and decried government waste. The New York Post endorsed him anyway. Needless to say, he won.

So did the Yankees in the World Series. The narcissistic, flamboyant Reggie Jackson had been fighting all season with the entire team, and especially with the mercurial, hard-driving, hard-drinking team manager Billy Martin and team captain Thurman Munson; as had team owner George Steinbrenner with Martin. Jackson was the highest-paid player in baseball at the time, arousing much jealousy among better players. He was one of the league leaders in homeruns, but also, in strikeouts and fielding errors. For most of the Series, he suffered a batting slump, and was benched. In the last game, he hit three homeruns in a row, vindicating himself.

The author sums it up best:

"Koch-- along with the rest of New York's emerging titans: Reggie, Steinbrenner, and Murdoch-- would lead the city into a new era. They were flawed, farsighted, self-made men who intuitively understood the city's desire for drama and conflict because they shared it. They were not idealists but egomaniacs. To their hungry eyes, New York wasn't a "ruined and broken city" but the place where you go to make it."