Category Archives: Concepts

Weddings Today: Short on Ceremony, Long on Food Stations

07 Monday Apr 2014

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Frank wedding cake

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I had an interesting cultural experience recently when I attended a wedding of two friends of my daughter. Since these were not relatives, and in fact were people I hardly knew, I was able to sit back and take a dispassionate look at the state of wedding culture today. Being over 60 gives me the perspective of a parent, and the fact that I still have an unmarried daughter adds some relevance to the matter.

You should know up front that this was an Italian wedding, though not the Italian Football Wedding Pat Cooper spoofed 50 years ago. This was a classy affair in a high-rent-district wedding facility. But years ago, this would have been the site of just the reception after a church wedding. Now, it housed both the wedding and the reception. That’s because many young people no longer want to jump through the hoops required by the Catholic Church to receive the sacrament of matrimony. So they forego the sacramental church wedding and are married by a deacon or justice of the peace. That’s a fundamental change over the past 40 years.

So everyone gathers for the ceremony in a chapel provided by the facility. The ceremony is short and sweet:
Do you take him?
Do you take her?
You’re married!

And of course, the last thing the presider at a wedding always says no matter whether it’s in church or on a beach is, “You may kiss the bride.”
Frank wedding article
So we always have the money shot of the two people kissing just before they head down the aisle.

This time, as I watched the bride and groom kiss, suddenly the words of the Paul Williams song made famous by the Carpenters started playing in my mind, “A kiss for luck and we’re on our way.” The bride and groom bound down the aisle, but no one throws anything anymore. Years ago, people threw rice, and later, the more ecologically-minded moved to birdseed and bubbles. Now we seem to have given up on it altogether. That’s fine with me. Let the cocktail hour begin!

So we all walked over to a nearby hall where the latest wedding innovation was in evidence – stations. Where we once had cocktails at a bar while waiters roamed with hors d’oeuvres, now we have a shellfish station, a meat station, a salad station, a pasta station. At this wedding, there was even a sliders station. I think stations are a big improvement over the old days. In fact, I ate so much at this cocktail hour I would have been happy to proceed directly to the dessert table.

But after an hour of drinks and great food, we headed to yet another room where tables were set up for dinner. We were seated close to the music. The music these days is mostly deejays. All the music is in their computer and so they can please just about every musical taste. I do miss live bands though. They were often mediocre and wedding singers were hit and miss. But every once in a while you got a great band, and that’s when you really appreciated live music. No matter how loud the deejay makes his music, it doesn’t compare with a live guitar, drums or trumpet. I think the convenience of a deejay, and the vast variety of music they can play is helping them drive wedding bands out of business. Anyway, these days I’m stoked when I see that a wedding features a live band.

Despite all the changes in wedding culture over the years, most weddings I have been to recently still feature the obligatory dances with the bride’s father and the groom’s mother. And most also still have a ceremonial cutting of the wedding cake. Although the nonsense with the garter seems to have thankfully faded away.

The finale to a modern wedding is the Venetian Table, which usually features just about every dessert known to man. Here, again, we have stations like the chocolate station, the pastry station, the cake station and the ice cream station. As someone with a gigantic sweet tooth, I give the modern wedding dessert festival two sticky thumbs up. The dessert table brings the wedding festivities to a close for people my age, though younger guests dance until the deejay closes up shop.

We as a society devote a lot of time and money to weddings. In fact, it’s an industry unto itself. But at the end of it, what matters is whether the bride and groom are willing to work at being a team, respect each other and live together in harmony. Everyone who has been married knows how tough it can be at times, but if you work hard, with a little luck, you end up with a life partner. That reminds me of another song. If memory serves me it was written by Carole King. It says, “I know that each of us is all alone in the end, but the trip still seems less dangerous when you’ve got a friend.” And that’s why we get married.

Let’s Do as the Danish Do: Raise Taxes for Free Health Care

31 Monday Mar 2014

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BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I filed my income taxes this week. I have always thought that the two most patriotic things that most Americans can do are vote and pay your taxes. These days, most Americans don’t vote, and the common wisdom for the past 40 years is that income taxes are too high. This, despite the fact that the richest Americans today pay less than half of what they paid in the 1950s. The ridiculously low income tax rates we have today account for the reason why our health care system is in a shambles.

As I edge my way ever closer to Medicare eligibility, I have to marvel at how dysfunctional America is when it comes to health care. The news from Washington is that 6 million people have signed up for Obamacare, while a new poll shows that 41% of Americans would like it to be repealed. After spending some time recently discussing health care with people in Denmark, I am convinced we are on the wrong track. And the tragedy is we could have avoided all this by simply phasing in Medicare for everyone over a 10-year period. But that might have required raising taxes.

Denmark, like most other developed nations, provides basic health care for free to everyone. It is paid for out of taxes. And if you want to see a Dane get agitated, mention income taxes. They pay roughly double what we pay. But ask them if it’s worth it and they will tell you that, by and large, it is. Oh sure, there are waiting lists for some elective surgery. But when a medical emergency hits, Danes know they don’t have to worry. It’s going to be paid for. They will not be bankrupted by a long hospital stay.

In fact, the only bad thing Danes seem to say about their health care system is that it’s too good. By that they mean it’s so good that people from poorer countries like Romania are flocking to Denmark to take advantage of Danish generosity. As I listened to some Danish women explain this to me, I immediately thought about the way some Americans talk about immigrants, particularly from Latin America, who come to the United States to collect welfare. The difference is that in the United States we have just about dismantled the welfare system, and people are falling through economic catastrophe without a safety net. And we have an army at our Southern border with orders to stop anyone who tries to cross without a visa.

Meanwhile, in Denmark, no matter how much they resent poor people coming to their country for the social benefits, they have not dismantled their social safety net. And because they are part of the European Community, they can’t legally stop the immigration. And some Danes actually see value for their country in allowing immigration. It provides talent and ambition that have always been the lifeblood of any progressive society. They see what America has done as akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Obamacare will not solve America’s health care crisis because it starts from the wrong premise. It doubles down on the system we already have where insurance companies are given the role of health care gatekeeper. Capitalism is so out of control in this country that many Americans actually believe that it’s a good idea to have profit-making companies in a position to decide what medical test you can get. They complain bitterly about a government takeover of health care and actually prefer to have insurance companies in charge. Danes look at this and shake their heads. Why would anyone want a company that has an interest in allowing you as little health care as possible be in charge of health care, they asked me. These companies have a conflict of interest. Isn’t it better to have a neutral government official in that role?

I could not defend our system, except to say that it works very well for rich people. Those who can afford the best insurance here will get excellent health care – better than they would get in Denmark. But for the rest of us, the present system sucks, and Obamacare is not likely to make it much better.

After my conversations in Denmark, I am convinced that the only solution is higher taxes. That’s right, higher taxes. Americans have to get over the hysteria about taxes and see the long-term benefits of not having to worry about a tsunami of a co-pay that we all are one illness away from. And while we’re raising those taxes, let’s make state universities free for eligible students and liberate young people from a lifetime of debt. That’s another good idea we could borrow from Denmark.

The Draw of Art

24 Monday Mar 2014

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BY JULIE SEYLER

The best thing about art is discovery. Seeing an artist that I have never heard of interpreting their world is never uninteresting. I learn something new, experience something different, and connect a few more dots in the art-history timeline. This year I have seen three retrospectives devoted to singular artists that have been around for over forty years that I was clueless about.

In January, I caught the Isa Genzken show at MOMA. 2 figures ISAShe is from Germany, now about 65 years old. In her youth, she was married to the polymathic artist Gerhard Richter. Over the course of a 40-year career, she has explored photography, sculpture, painting and assemblage. From the sleek, refined and earthy totemic spears that open the show, to the untamed sculptures of passionate aliveness in concrete, steel and epoxy, to the final full-room installation that grapples with the madness and rage of 9/11, she is out there – fierce and fearless.

The show was rough and visceral and rageful and antic and visually mesmerizing.bonnet. Epoxy resin

In Naples, the repository of art dates back to the fourth century B.C. When I was there last month, I was consistentIy fascinated by the fine art in each museum and church we visited. But I also put the MADRE, the city’s modern art museum, on my must-do list.
madre
A show was up on an Italian artist named Vettor Pisani. He was born in Bari in 1934, and died in Rome in 2011. He assembled photographs and figures and furniture and channeled his observations, and emotions, through mannequins and silk screen prints and films. His art covered politics and gender and war and peace. Vettor Pisani

And two weeks ago, I caught a show at PS1 in Queens on an Austrian artist called Maria Lassnig. It focused on her self-portraits. She’s about 90 years old, and reminds me vaguely of Alice Neel. Not just because of her longevity on the scene, and her refusal to shrink from who she is at any stage of life and in any mood, but because every mark is purposefully made with an invitation to keep looking at the color and depth and length and strength of it. She paints only with naked spirit.

Small science fiction self portrait 1995

Each exhibition was unpredictable and challenging and mysterious and fun and both familiar and unfamiliar. They hit all the tangents, like the Mike Kelly exhibit at PS1.

As it is said, “the more you see, the more you see.”

I’m a Stage 4. I’m Santa Claus

18 Tuesday Mar 2014

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BY FRANK TERRANELLA

If you’re like me, you receive a ton of junk email every day. A lot of it still comes via U.S. mail. Most of it now comes via e-mail. While it’s rare to receive a harmful junk mail from your mail carrier, our email is full of potential viruses and dangerous offers.

Many of us have friends who forward stuff they find interesting. One of those emails recently included the following:

THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:
1) You believe in Santa Claus.
2) You don’t believe in Santa Claus.
3) You are Santa Claus.
4) You look like Santa Claus.

I was struck with the profound truth of this. The very young are in Stage 1, and cross over to Stage 2 when they go to school and talk to the big kids (or their older brothers). You stay in Stage 2 until you have children, and then, suddenly, you cross over to Stage 3. And when you get to the right side of 50, the odds are you cross over to Stage 4. OK, only some of us make it to Stage 4, but put a white wig and beard on me, and I’m Santa.

All this is just another reminder of the journey we all make as we age. Looking back, it’s been an interesting trip, and I have enjoyed each of the four stages, but particularly the first and third. However, I wonder whether somewhere on the road ahead is a Stage 5, where due to senility, I return to Stage 1. That would really be the circle of life.

Hats are Off, and ‘Out’

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

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men in hats

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

There’s a line in the Stephen Sondheim song “The Ladies Who Lunch,” from “Company,” in which the character played in the original production by Elaine Stritch asks, “Does anyone still wear a hat?” That was in 1970. Now, more than 40 years later, those of us who remember them can still ask, “Does anyone still wear a hat?”

The answer is almost no one, male or female, wears a hat for fashion. The only time I see hats on women is when I pass near an African American church on Sundays. There are no hats on fashion runways; no hats on the red carpet at the Oscars. There are no hats in most churches.

Those of us over 50 know full well that it wasn’t always like this. Men and women used to wear hats. Just watch any movie made before 1960. Men wore hats to work. Men wore hats to the ballgame. And I’m not talking about baseball caps. They wore real hats, like fedoras and derbys and homburgs. In summer, they wore straw hats. My grandfathers wouldn’t think of going “out” without their hats.

pat in hatWomen’s hats were an entire industry. Women wore a different one with every outfit. If you wore a coat, you wore a hat. And it wasn’t just for well-off women. Even working women in the movies and television wore hats. Even hard-boiled dames in Raymond Chandler stories wore hats. Lois Lane picked up her hat every time she was leaving the Daily Planet building.

Head coverings were actually required in many Christian churches until the 1960s. I remember there was a nun at the front door of my church who used to pass out handkerchiefs and tissues to girls who forgot their hats. And of course, Easter bonnets were a real thing back then. Women wore elaborate hats to Easter services. And the hat was the chief attraction at the Easter Parade.

The women’s hat industry was so big that they had a special name for a person who designed, made, trimmed, or sold women’s hats. He or she was called a milliner. It’s a word that has disappeared from our world like cobbler and blacksmith.

If I had to speculate at the one event that helped to killed men’s hats, I’d say it was the appearance of President Kennedy at his inaugural in 1961 standing in sub-freezing cold without a hat. Apparently, he wanted to have photographs showing him hatless next to President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon, both of whom were wearing hats. That was supposed to show that he was a young man of great vigor. It sounds to me like something Vladimir Putin might do today.

Anyway, apparently hat sales plummeted after that as America bought the idea that hats were old-fashioned. And when soon afterward the Catholic Church dropped the requirement that women wear hats to church, the writing was on the wall for milliners.

Of course, hats have never gone away completely. Every so often some celebrity appears wearing a porkpie, a pillbox or a Panama hat. But the days of regular men and women wearing hats for fashion are probably over.

Today, hats are worn for utilitarian purposes — to keep our heads warm in winter and protect them from the sun in the summer. But although I hated as a boy when I had to wear a hat when I got dressed up for a special occasion, I did like looking at other people wearing them and I still do.

Does anyone still wear a hat? Well, now that I’m a grandfather, maybe I’ll start wearing a hat to look the part. I’ll bet I could rock a fedora.

The Smoke and Mirrors of ‘Beauty’

07 Friday Mar 2014

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Beauty in the mirror

Let’s put beauty in the eyes of the older.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Recently, while sitting at a bar with a 62-year-old male friend, he looked at the ebullient, smooth-skinned, 20-something bartender, then looked at me, and said: “Ah, to be young and beautiful again, right?”

“Been there, done that,” I said. “If she’s lucky, she’ll be 59 some day.”

While I don’t see myself as falling victim to the coveting of youth, and I’ve held on to my wrinkles (for now), I was never a Hollywood sexpot. And I’m not 81. Like Kim Novak.

That collective consciousness that judges women by how they look, was shoved, at Ms. Novak’s expense, in the faces of anyone who watched the Academy Awards last week, and was privy to the subsequent chatter, tweets, blogs, and mean-girl bashing about the pillowed lips, the skin-tight cheeks, and the raised eyebrows of Ms. Novak.

While I admit to having been taken aback at first by her looks, the irony and the hypocrisy of my reaction quickly took center stage. What happened to what we all know, and learned in kindergarten – don’t judge a book by its cover?

And don’t assume Ms. Novak sees herself as so many others did – the aging screen siren, who can’t face the truth, or much less a mirror, so she, out of desperation to stay young and beautiful, altered her face ineffably.

I applaud her, and I choose to believe she feels good about how she looks. She felt confident enough to face a Hollywood audience mostly half her age, and less.

Let’s add women who choose to take advantage of the latest dermatological advances to the list of the non-judged – to the list of those who know that aging gracefully is not about how others perceive you, or how much you choose to nip, tuck, pull, plump, lift, or allow to sag, but how you feel about yourself, and how you are allowed to take steps to maintain that credo in whatever way you choose.

A little pearl of prudence did roll out from under all this fray in the form of 31-year-old Lupita Nyong’o, and her speech at a Black Women in Hollywood luncheon days before the awards. It centered around her wish, when she was a young girl to “wake up lighter skinned,” and how it took “validation” from “a celebrated model …” to pull herself up and out of that … seduction of inadequacy.”

“…she was dark as night,” Ms. Nyong’o said. “I couldn’t believe that people were embracing a woman that looked so much like me as beautiful. Now I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the far-away gatekeepers of beauty.”

While Ms. Nyong’o’s words are a wretched, and disgraceful, reminder that even a by-any-standards-breathtakingly-beautiful (inside and out, it appears) young woman can fall victim to the societal “rules” of beauty, it also highlights her emergence away from that, and a grasping of the wisdom that, simply, beauty really does come from within.

This conversation is nothing new. But I’m hoping that the timing of Ms. Novak’s public thrashing, which came on the heels of Ms. Nyong’o’s personal confession, will at least nudge this next generation of women to kick that societal pendulum, which has been frozen closer to “you’re inadequate,” towards “everyone is beautiful.”

And I hope I’m lucky enough to be 80 someday.

The Way it Was: ‘Done and Gone’

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

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BY JULIE SEYLER

There are many signs that scream that I have left the left side of 50, or as Rod Serling, would say, I have “entered the Twilight Zone,” the brave new world of “I am no longer young.” I know, because my list of “the way things were” gets longer, and more dated with each passing year.

I was born in a world of rotary phones. By adolescence, the push-button had made its entrance. There was a lot of commotion over its ease and convenience. Done and gone. Quaint artifacts of the olden days.

Telephone directories, those bi-colored books, with white pages for a people search, and yellow pages for a business search, would appear on the doorstep once a year, free of charge. Done and gone. Never to be contemplated again.

While color TVs became ubiquitous in the ’70s, I grew up with a black and white TV. The screen was maybe 24 inches, and there were only about seven stations to choose from. At some point, we got a remote control, but I don’t recall it having a presumed presence in the house.

The NBC peacock used to spread its feathers to announce that the upcoming show would be a color presentation.

Dimes were critical because they were needed to make telephone calls, which meant telephone phone booths appeared on almost every other corner.

The only thing we could imagine piercing were ears- not bellybuttons, noses, cheeks or lips.

It seemed as if only sailors got tattoos.

Dress codes were fought over. We staged protests to be allowed to wear jeans to school.

Age 50 was ancient. It was never going to happen! And now, even 50 is becoming a number in the distant past. How weird and rapid the march of time is, and we know it by how we remember the way it used to be.

Snow Shore

22 Wednesday Jan 2014

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Bob snow 6

BY BOB SMITH

I took a bunch of photos after the last storm, secretly hoping that would be the only big nasty snowfall of this winter. No such luck. Here we are again, with everything – porch furniture, garbage pails, hedges, cars – transformed into weird white domes. The icy street is an invitation to a fenderbender, and the boardwalk is a desolate, wind-whipped wasteland.

It feels wrong to see the beach covered in snow and seabirds perched like furry gumballs on the lake ice between Bradley Beach and Ocean Grove. But then up and down Ocean Avenue you see surfers in wetsuits trudging across the frozen sand to ride the waves, happy to have the water toBob snow 2 themselves. So what if the water’s 39 degrees – the air temp is in the 20s, so by comparison it’s warm. The boardwalk in Asbury Park is all footprints and tire tracks, and the Stone Pony has mounds of snow outside. But summer lingers in our hearts.Stone Pony

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They Come with a Walk in the Park: A Piano Man; The Pigeon Man

13 Monday Jan 2014

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Washington Square Park.

Washington Square Park.

BY JULIE SEYLER

On New Year’s Eve day, I walked through Washington Square Park. Perhaps you are familiar with it – either because you have been there, or have watched the movie “Barefoot in the Park,” and especially that final scene where Robert Redford, adorable and all of 31 years of age, runs barefoot through Washington Square Park to prove to his wife that he likes to have fun.

That image of him jumping drunkenly over the benches that surround the fountain, and giving away his shoes in sub-freezing temperatures never fails to enter my mind as I cross under the the Arc de Triomphe-like arch that graces the north entrance to the park. Years ago, I planned to walk though the park barefoot. It never happened, and now it won’t. It is definitely not on my post-55 to do list, unless Lois, who loves to walk barefoot, wants to go for a barefoot stroll one day after martinis.

And then I heard music: a piano trickle. I turned around, and there was this guy playing away on a portable grand piano. i came across a guy playing the pianoIt is not unusual to hear live music in non-traditional venues in the city, like subway stations and street corners. But this scene, on a somewhat chilly day in the middle of the park, struck me as particularly enjoyable. It was such a nice way to mark the last day of 2013. I put some money in his bucket, took in the concert for awhile, and went on my way.

Two minutes later, I stopped again because I had never seen anyone take on pigeons quite this way. This man was standing in the middle of a pigeon pool wearing pigeons from head to toe, completely undaunted by the thoughts of Alfred Hitchcock’s film, “The Birds.”  pigeon man 3

I assumed he was not my discovery, and that his reputation was legendary. Well, perhaps not quite legendary, but his name is Larry, and he is known as the Pigeon Man of Washington Square Park. Photos of him and the birds are well represented all over the Internet. pigeon man 2

He made me wonder: how does one even begin to connect with a pigeon, assuming one wants to connect with a pigeon? I guess it starts with a piece of bread, and then day after day the trust grows? Who knows? But from that point on, it was an uneventful walk to Market Table for lunch, which by the way, is a delicious restaurant for farm to table dishes.

One for the Ages: The ‘Columbia Lady’

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

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COLUMBIA 2

BY JULIE SEYLER

According to records at the Trademark Office, on March 15, 1926, Columbia Pictures Corporation, a New York corporation with an address at 1600 Broadway (home these days to a luxury condo on Times Square and the M&M store), filed an application to register a trademark. The trademark consisted of the words COLUMBIA PICTURES laid within a circle, inside of which held a helmeted woman looking as if she hailed from the wars of ancient Greece. She is wearing a breastplate, and holding a torch, as if she is running in the Olympics. We see her from the waist up – a reflection of herself because her gaze falls to the left. Columbia Pictures claimed it had been using the trademark on moving pictures since January, 1924.

By 1936, she had grown up. Her helmet has disappeared, and the “Columbia Lady” is  proudly ensconced on a pedestal. She has grown taller and curvier – no longer a Tomboy playing war games. In her draped toga a la Madame Gres, she is our hostess beckoning us in to the world of motion picture films. She is still holding a torch, but it is lit ala the Statue of Liberty. She and the COLUMBIA trademark stand in front of a blazing, rising sun. Her gaze has turned right as she heralds the start of a movie by Columbia Pictures.

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And she’s still here, looking as spring-like as she did 78 years ago. Unlike us right-sided 50 year olds, the “Columbia Lady” never gets old, and never frets about the unexpected changes that descend as one marches forward to meet the next surprise about what “aging” really entails. So here’s to the movies, and the lady who truly is immortal – or for at least as long as Columbia Pictures renews her trademark.
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