Author: mark

Billy Crystal is one of those guests talk show producers adore, and if you were watching Letterman last night you know why. For a full segment—about seven minutes—he delivered a routine on rodent infestation at his Malibu home that required essentially no participation from the host. Just give him a quick set up, and get out of the way. It’s easy for the show, and a treat for the audience; the comic monologue is where Crystal is at his best. (I’m not a great fan of his nostalgia-driven films.) A Crystal routine is a catalog of New York Jewish comedy in action, full of the asides, the internal references, and the self-mortification that trace back to Vaudeville days, if not before. Watching him last night brought to mind an absolute master of this idiom: Woody Allen. It’s easy to forget what a brilliant comedian Woody was back when he was still doing standup, even though his films, including the dramas, are laced with gags and one-liners. He was not a “joke” comedian, however; he was a storyteller, a far more challenging—and to my mind, satisfying—kind of performance. Woody seemed a “natural” raconteur, but the apparent effortlessness of his act belied the great deal of work spent refining his material. Take, for example, his classic “Hunting Moose” routine. The early version above is relatively awkward: he minces around almost nervously, doesn’t nail his applause lines, and the kicker is kind of flat—there’s an almost palpable relief that he gets through it. Compare that to this later, far more assured delivery. The audience is clearly more engaged in the second version, their excitement building throughout. He has made a variety of subtle improvements, and the biggest comes at the end. The closing reference has been changed from the “New York City Golf Club”—which does not even exist—to the notoriously exclusive and easier to parse “New York Athletic Club.” Finally, there is the kicker: “And the joke is on them because they don’t allow Jews” (wordy, a little disturbing) becomes “And the joke is on them because it’s restricted” (short, funny, perfect). Practice and refine. That’s how a good bit—or a good anything—becomes something special.

The complaint has always been my great metier, the form in which I am a non-pareil master. Last night I became an honest-to-goodness world record holder in my favored idiom. At the behest of Dan Rollman, the great mind behind the Universal Record Database, I set the new standard for Most Complaints In 60 Seconds, a feat documented by numerous officials, and witnessed by New York’s daily digest of record. A video of the proceedings will soon be available, but a transcript follows, for your reading pleasure:

Continue reading Complaint Dept.

“Just how much personal history do we require to truly understand an artist’s body of work?” That’s the question that launched my review of Nicholas Fox Weber’s biography of the architect Le Corbusier, which appears in the latest issue of Print. The more we get to know an artist, the better we appreciate their work. That Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Pollock were famously tortured souls only makes their work more powerful, or at least emotionally engaging, for modern audiences. Architecture, a craft as much as an art, is a bit different—it is at once more abstract and less transparent. To paraphrase my review, you don’t need to know the details of Le Corbusier’s relationship with his mother to appreciate the radical nature of the Villa Savoye, nor can you easily detect the contours of that relationship in the villa’s white-washed planes.

Le Corbusier went to great lengths to shield the public from his private self, and it was a good thing too, for he was no angel. I can’t help but compare him to Peter Paul Rubens, the enigmatic subject of my own biography. Their personalities could hardly have been more different—Rubens was beloved by just about everyone who knew him, and dedicated much of his life to public service. Although knowledge of his personal biography is not essential to those who would understand his work, it is virtually impossible to fully grasp it without a grounding in the political and historical moment in which it was created. I think this is why we find the brooding Rembrandt to be so much more popular today than Rubens. In their own time, it was a different story.

Just how much of an outlier is Alex Rodriguez? I pose the question over at YFSF.

I recently contributed an essay to a series celebrating the final year of Yankee Stadium on the website Bronx Banter. I’m in distinguished company: Jane Leavy, Pat Jordan, Bob Costas, Joe Posnanski, Rob Neyer—more than sixty of us altogether. It makes for great reading. One thing that has struck me in following the series is how formative the bleachers, the subject of my piece, have been for so many of the contributors. The opportunity to sit in cheap seats close to the field, and to become a part of a community is very special. One of the things I find most troubling about the new ballpark is that this opportunity will be dramatically compromised. The new bleachers will be more expensive, separated from the field of play, and some seats will come with obstructed views. This is all part of the evolution of professional baseball from sport to entertainment event. I don’t know what this will mean for the next generation of baseball writers—we might already be seeing it in the detached, pitilessness “snark” that marks the worst of web writing and yellow journalism. Reap what you sow.

The J-E-T-S spent $75 million this year on a state-of-the-art new training facility designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, but they may still miss the playoffs, after a string of losses to close out the season. Brett Favre, the consummate football throwback, seemed an odd fit for this team devoted to technology from the moment his signature was announced. My review of the Atlantic Health Jets Training Facility appears in the latest (Jan./Feb.) issue of ID Magazine. I wasn’t the only writer to note the disjunction between Favre and the Jets’ organizational obsession with technology. Jeff MacGregor addressed this in a superb profile for the now defunct NYT sports magazine, Play.

Update: The Jets did miss the playoffs, in typical Jets fashion. Favre may or may not be back.