Jeff Brawer's Open Salon Blog

Remembering Da on His 100th Birthday

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 12:03:37 -0400

Felix and Shirley Brawer circa 1942

There is an old saying that no child understands his parents until he has children of his own. This is complete bunk - no child ever understands his parents. You may have a brood that puts Old Mother Hubbard to shame and possess the combined wisdom of Freud, Dr. Spock and Oprah; your parents will still remain a mystery. It's best to forget comprehension and settle for appreciation mixed with gratitude for those who brought you into the world, no matter how screwy you turned out. It's in this spirit that I salute my father on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Felix Edward Brawer was born in Paterson, New Jersey on St. Patrick's Day of 1912. Every March 17, waggish cronies would refer to him as "Felix O'Brawer," yet another irony for this man of Latvian-Jewish descent whose mother named him "Felix" in honor of Mendelssohn. Da was profoundly tone-deaf.

My brother and I started calling him Da after hearing the expression in a South African Western. The title of the film is long forgotten, but the name stuck to my father for the rest of his life. My children would refer to him as Papa Da to differentiate him from their other grandfather.

He was the second of five children born to Abe and Lily Oberman Brawer and grew up surrounded by a huge extended family on both sides. Da claimed he had thirty first cousins, but even he had trouble remembering them all. This was an age when parents didn't hover over their children like social directors, but more or less shoved them out the door to fend for themselves. My father and his cousins learned to take care of themselves amid the harsh ethnic rivalries of Paterson, and they developed into a tough, if not criminal bunch. My father-in-law, who knew Da as a kid, claimed his own father wouldn't let him hang out with "those wild Brawer boys."

Idiot that I am, I never documented the stories he told about his early years. I'm sure some were apocryphal and most were enhanced in the telling, but all were the stuff of legend. Mark Twain himself might have written these tales if he'd been Jewish and had grown up in urban New Jersey instead of rural Missouri.

My father, like most Jewish boys then and since, attended Hebrew School for a couple of afternoons each week. Once, one of his gang was caught misbehaving, and the teacher made the mistake of striking the culprit in front of the class. The mistake wasn't the corporal punishment - that was an accepted practice of the day - but doing it with the victim's pals in attendance. Posterity doesn't reveal whether Da was the first to charge the teacher, but a full-scale brawl broke out, the only recorded riot of pre-Bar Mitzvah boys in the school's history.

Da had an ambivalent attitude towards the faith of his fathers. He was not a particularly religious man but always maintained a fierce pride in being a Jew. Years later when local kids scrawled Jewish stars and graffiti on our front walk, he refused my mother's pleas to erase them and defiantly left them there for days until embarrassed and chastened neighbors washed them off.

He was a gifted athlete, excelling at sand lot baseball and swimming in his youth and later, skiing, bowling, and golf. He maintained a life-long passion for the links that try as he might, he could not pass on to his sons. He played his last round three weeks before he died.

But it was fishing that gave him the most pleasure. As a young man, he and his friends would fly fish for salmon in Canada or go after tarpon in the Everglades. When my brother and I were old enough, he would take us striper fishing on a charter boat out of Provincetown on Cape Cod. My most vivid memories have him standing triumphantly in the stern of the Flora K while Captain Gray unloaded our catch at the end of the day. Unfortunately, his victory was our hardship as it fell to my brother and me to gut the dozen or so fish we caught and could never give away. Since my mother hated the taste, they remained in our freezer for six months and were then thrown out.

Unlike his children who were beset with enough fears and neuroses to make Hamlet seem sunny and bold in comparison, Da was an outgoing and charismatic man who was always up for an adventure. At one time, he had a private pilot's license and would fly himself to business appointments up and down the East Coast. He claimed that he gave it up at my mother's request, but eventually confessed that surviving a flight through a thunderstorm in a Piper Cub convinced him to stop. He always respected the odds.

It was in his later years that I came to appreciate the true caliber of the man. During most of his life, my father 's domestic needs were taken care of by others. When he was in his early seventies, my mother, nine years younger, started to show signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Beset with heart and lung problems of his own, Da did everything within his power to grant her the care she needed and the dignity she deserved at home. On their fiftieth anniversary, he made a large party for her and their friends, celebrating their life together even as she was failing. It was only when his own health was in jeopardy that he agreed to move my mother into a facility nearby where he visited her every day until her death.

Da was diagnosed with lung cancer in the fall of 1997, which came as a shock but no surprise. He started smoking cigarettes in his teens and didn't stop until his sixties. It also didn't help that he was a textile manufacturer who worked in an environment filled with all kinds of floating fibers. Gambler that he was, he thought he had a shot to survive with surgery, but the disease had spread too extensively by then. When I gave him the bad news, he swore once, let out a deep breath, and accepted his fate with equanimity. On the morning of July 1, 1998, he called all his grandchildren to say goodbye and left this world in the late afternoon. He was eighty-six.

I often say that the world is a poorer place without men like Da, and I mean it in a sense beyond my own personal loss. Men of his time who went through the Depression and World War II had a much different outlook on life than the self-absorbed generation that followed. Beyond the self-sacrifice that was demanded of these men, they possessed an exuberant vitality and the willingness to live life on its own terms; to overcome obstacles where they could, to laugh when they couldn't, and to accept the inevitable with grace.

Towards the end of his life, I would speak to Da every day, and each conversation would end with one of us saying, "my dime tomorrow." I would give every cent I own for one more call.

New Classes at Your Old Gym

Tue, 31 May 2011 14:05:20 -0400

Are you bored by your current gym routines? Do your old Nautilus or Cybex circuits leave you yawning as well as sweating? Has your motivation for spinning and Pilates diminished along with your waistline? Fear not, intrepid workout warrior, for there's a new fitness program out that will not only tone your body but also prepare you for a role if they ever remake Yojimbo or Seven Samurai. Welcome to Forza.

Forza, the Italian word for strength, uses the principles of classic Japanese sword fighting and blendes it into "a full-body workout that burns calories, builds upper-body and core strength, and tones leg muscles," according to the Forza website. "Students use wooden swords to perform basic strike movements, which are combined into easy and then gradually challenging routines."

According to Forza's creator, Ilaria Montagnani, in a recent New York Times article “The most important part of the workout is the mind workout. It is a focusing workout.” This makes sense to those of us who watch samurai movies, since it might be a harder sell if you concentrate on the decapitation elements, or the thrust-through-the heart-causing-a-geyser-of-blood exercises. Forza also beats the tedium and endless repetition of actual Kendo practice where hours, days, and even months are spent just learning how to draw your sword properly. Like Tae Bo and other such routines, Forza will give you the body and aura of a warrior without having to actually fight or even muss your hair, the best of all worlds for the fashionable gym goer.

Of course, like all fitness fads, Forza will only have a limited run before another craze hits. Like Step Aerobics and Jazzercise, it will eventually be consigned to the used towel hamper of history, only to be seen on late night infomercials and at shopping center demos. And what new programs will be giving you shin splints in the future? Your dogged reporter has spent the last fifteen minutes uncovering the latest martial arts and military-based exercise systems that will have you at the Chiropractor in no time.

THE GREEK PHALANX WORKOUT

The Greek city-states of the ancient world stayed in shape using this proven battle formation, and so can you. Participants wear the full sixty-pound complement of Hoplite armor and form in ranks with their shields interlocked and lances pointing forward. The class will then quickstep march in a straight line until class ends or they encounter a Persian army. Excellent for conditioning and upper body strength.

Rhythmic JOUSTING

Also known as "Spearing to the Oldies," Rhythmic Jousting combines the best of medieval horseback combat and '50s doo-wop music. Participants alternately ride or help push two rolling hobby horses towards one another and attempt to dislodge their opponents with giant Q-tips, all the while keeping time to various Platters and Coasters hits. The round robin contest continues until a champion is crowned "Duke of Earl."

MERCENARY AEROBICS

During the Renaissance, the great Italian cities defended themselves by hiring armies from the north countries to do their fighting for them. In this updated version, you pay a fee to have a specially trained fitness professional do the workout on your behalf while you claim the health benefits. Do not shortchange your surrogate, however, as he is then within his rights to sack your home and carry off your children.

CHORUS LINE KICK BOXING

This is the perfect exercise for those of you who like their Broadway show tunes mixed with Tae Kwon Do. Two chorus lines advance on each other with Rockette-like precision and attempt to take down their opponents with high kicks until "one singular sensation" remains standing.

MOB RULES!

Are you fed up with loud tyrannical class instructors and their impossible standards? Then you'll love this free-form approach to fitness where you and your oppressed brethren overthrow the existing order, stringing up the old regime on chin-up bars, and running wildly and destructively through the gym until the place is wrecked. The session ends when the crowd drops from exhaustion or the National Guard is called in to break it up.

Some Musings Prior to Game 7 of the Bruins-Lightning Series

Thu, 26 May 2011 16:05:47 -0400

It's Thursday, May 26, 2011, and the Boston Bruins are on their way to a game seven showdown with the Tampa Bay Lightning. It would have been nice if they had won last night's game and prevented the city of Boston from cornering the Rolaids market, but that, of course, would not properly test the mettle of their devoted fans. No, it is only right and proper that a frenzied Bear Nation rip out the last shreds of stuffing from their armchairs and blow a few cerebral blood vessels before they're given a pass to the ultimate series of angst-ridden evenings, the finals. Or alternately, their prize may be another twelve months of soul-crushing frustration and humiliation. Playing sports may be a way to build a strong body and a noble character, but watching leads to sleeplessness, agita, obesity (I mean, ya gotta drink beer), and more often than not, depression. There is a chance that the spoked B's will dance around the ice with Lord Stanley's Cup this year, but not before we've all eaten our own livers with a good Chianti.

It's a sacrifice I'll gladly make.

Hockey fans, although fewer in number than for other pro sports, are the most loyal and devoted in the world, or at least in North America. The rest of the world is consumed by what they call football and we call soccer, but is actually xenophobic gang violence. And that's just in the stands. In hockey, there's enough hooliganism on the ice to satisfy the more bloodthirsty from committing it in the balcony, and with the exception of the Olympics, there isn't the level of nationalistic fervor to incite knife fights and stampedes. Bostonians loathe the Montreal Canadiens but have yet to declare war on the city. Likewise, it's just plain hard to be mad at Ottawa.

And since we don't waste time bashing each other’s brains out in the loges, our nervous systems become hard-wired to the game itself. Unlike baseball and American football where actual play occurs in small packets surrounded by endless posturing and strategy meetings, or basketball where the final two minutes can outlast the Pleistocene era, hockey is a game of continuous action. You can be yanked from joy to despair in a heartbeat, and this can happen several times within a minute of play. Speed is the defining characteristic of the sport, and unless you're playing the New Jersey Devils whose idea of a great game is sixty minutes spent dawdling between the blue lines, the energy and intensity are tremendous. You've got guys on skates carrying sticks and firing a small hard rubber object at speeds over a hundred miles per hour. And they do this without stopping every fifteen seconds to spit or adjust their cups. Changes of personnel most often occur on the fly instead of during stoppages, allowing the game to proceed unbroken for several minutes at a time. Soccer is somewhat similar except that players don't fly so much as amble to cover the six miles between the goal areas.

And where else can you find a position on a team as unique as the hockey goalie? Normally, when someone is firing dangerous objects at you, the inclination is to cover up or run away. It is the goalie's job to do the opposite and put his Michelin man-like presence in front of said objects whenever possible. This may be why goalies are notoriously quirky. The great goaltender Glenn Hall used to puke before every game, Gary Smith used to shower between every period, and Gilles Gratton wouldn't play during certain phases of the moon. Talking to the goalposts is not uncommon. The pressure on a goalie is like that on a baseball pitcher; they both play unique roles in their sport and carry more responsibility for a game's outcome. Montreal legend Jacques Plante once described his position thusly: "How would you like it if you were sitting in your office and you made one little mistake. Suddenly, a big red light went on and 18,000 people jumped up and started screaming at you, calling you a bum and an imbecile and throwing garbage at you. That's what it's like when you play goal in the NHL."

Do not be taken in by those naysayers who claim the sport is all about fighting. Yes, there are fights and we fans do seem to appreciate them, but try scuffling with someone the next time you're on a rink. It's pretty hard to do any real damage while your skates are skittering under you. To paraphrase Macbeth, a longtime Red Wings fan, hockey fights produce a lot of sound and fury, but not much significance. Conversely, there are moments of grace and beauty that rival the ballet. Anyone who had the pleasure of watching Bobby Orr in his prime witnessed some of the most artistic moves the human body is capable of performing. And lest you forget, Baryshnikov didn't have to dance Swan Lake with two-hundred-and-fifty pound goons trying to knock him on his ass.

Yes, my friends, this is the greatest sport on earth, chock-a-block with speed, violence, lunacy, and elegance. How, you may ask, did a sensitive and artistic soul like me end up embracing this sort of mayhem?

Having spent my youth avoiding physical activity other than eating, talking, and changing the channel, I had little interest in watching games for which I had no proclivity or aptitude. I did like Formula One racing and ski jumping, but there was little chance I would have to prove myself at Monte Carlo or Holmenkollen. When I went off to college in '67, I did get caught up in the Red Sox World Series frenzy, but it was a short-lived fascination unlike other collegiate pursuits such as alcohol and girls. And pot.

During the early 1970's, my good friend, Lou, lived in a house a few blocks off campus which was also the center of a small-time distribution business. Given the high quality of the product (literally and figuratively), I paid regular visits - more frequently, in fact, than I did to classes. And more often than not, the Bruins would be on their TV. They were then at their peak, with Phil Esposito and the afore-mentioned Orr breaking scoring records and a talented and colorful supporting cast including Johnny "Pie" McKenzie and Derek "The Turk" Sanderson adding entertainment value. I can't swear whether it was the game itself or the haze through which I watched it, but by playoff time, I was hooked. And then, as has happened many times since, I got my heart crushed in the first round as the Bruins were stunned by Montreal and their "thieving giraffe" of a goaltender, a rookie out of Cornell named Ken Dryden.

In spite of my painful initiation into Stanley Cup despair, I did watch them raise the cup in '72 and have remained a loyal fan ever since. This year is the first time in nineteen years that the team has reached the semi-finals (now called the Eastern Conference Finals) and should they win on Friday, it will be their first appearance in the finals since 1990. We have family coming up over the Memorial Day weekend and I think it's only fair to warn them not to expect me to come out for dinner that night. I will be surrounded by some pretzels, a six-pack, and my fondest hopes and dreams. And a pack of Rolaids just in case.

8 Complaints about Men by Women and Why They Are Unfair

Fri, 13 May 2011 23:05:33 -0400

1. men Won't STOP for directions

While no longer as common a grievance since the advent of GPS, this still remains the second most divisive issue between the sexes, right behind allegiance to The Three Stooges. We don't need directions because we're only temporarily lost, and if we keep driving, we'll end up somewhere we know. Furthermore, stopping to ask directions from some Freddy Krueger look-alike could well lead to a secluded cul-de-sac where we'll be decapitated and our brains scooped out with a grapefruit spoon. When that happens, "I told you so" is of little consolation.

2. Men don't show their emotions.

Utter nonsense. Listen to your average man assembling a barbecue grill; what comes out of his mouth would make the Marquis de Sade blush. And it's not just rage - I've yet to meet the man who didn't bawl unashamedly at the end of Old Yeller or Brian's Song.

3. All men want is sex...

There's no question that men have a powerful libido, but once it's satisfied, the urge for sleep is even stronger. Men also sublimate their desires when appropriate, such as funerals and the playoffs. A man watching the Super Bowl is as celibate as a harem eunuch and will not compromise his virtue even when tempted with naked mud wrestling. He is, however, open to sex at halftime.

4. ...AND YET men are clueless in bed

We're not uncaring or uninterested, but simply befuddled. The only requirement for male sexual arousal is consciousness whereas a woman needs a precise combination of wine, flowers, music, theatrical lighting, proper ambient temperature, and declarations of undying fealty followed by a lengthy, arcane, and often capricious system of physical stimulation. I think the frequency of solar flares is also involved. Yet we try our best and get no credit for our efforts. Men have spent more years looking for the clitoris than the British spent searching for the source of the Nile. Just where the hell is that thing anyway?

5. Men hog the TV Remote

Giving a woman the remote is like letting a five-year old drive your Camry; you're just not going to end up where you want. A man scans the channels with an open mind, democratically stopping at every sporting event and martial arts film for his partner's approval before moving on. A woman, heedless of her man's opinion, will tenaciously latch onto some Home & Garden Channel snooze-fest while ignoring more intellectually challenging shows about catching giant catfish or cutting diesel locomotives into scrap.

6. Men don't do their share of house work

Men are more than willing to do housework but see no point of doing it until necessary. You don't really need to do laundry more than once every few months when you're reduced to wearing lederhosen and mukluks to work. Likewise, dishes need only be washed when the sink is overflowing and the CDC has sent in a HAZMAT team to investigate.

7. Men don't put down the toilet seat

The usual rationale is that the down position serves two purposes for women, the raised position only one for men, and majority rules. This principle may be fine for parliamentary debate but is hardly pertinent to bodily functions. By their own reckoning, women are more observant than men and thus more likely to spot a misaligned commode. Men, particularly when hungover, are woefully inattentive and not apt to notice a restricted target area. This, combined with a limited sense of direction and faulty aim, can result in extensive collateral damage. So the real question is, why do women refuse to put the seat back up?

8. Men are terrified of commitment

The exact opposite is true. Men will commit to just about anything with a zeal that borders on lunacy and is undiminished by reason or evidence of malfeasance. Sports teams, cars, beer, razors - once a man has pledged his devotion, he will not change his mind at gunpoint. Women, however, are notoriously fickle and will change their loyalty on the mere basis of logic, economics, or aesthetics. Why would a man commit to such an unstable creature?

3D or not 3D, That is the Question

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:03:46 -0400

The recent announcement that Baz Luhrmann plans to direct a remake of "The Great Gatsby" in 3D has caused a great stir in both literary and cinema circles. The film, due to be shot in Luhrmann's native Australia this August, will star Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, and Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway.

I don't have a problem with the shooting location unless Luhrmann changes the story's venue from Long Island to a sheep station in the outback. Nor am I a cultural snob who feels that the book is too precious an artwork to be translated to the screen (despite the mediocre version made in 1974 with Robert Redford.) I am, however, totally befuddled by the decision to make the film in 3D. The story is not a rollicking adventure saga with epic battles or chase scenes, and while there is gunplay, it's limited to Gatsby's murder and Wilson's suicide, hardly the stuff of an action thriller.

It may be that this is an attempt to move the entire industry towards the 3D standard. Until now, the movies shot in this format have been cartoons, either literally animated or with comic book plots, which is consistent with the Gee Whiz factor of the effect. It remains to be seen whether making smaller, less visually exciting films in 3D will increase their viewership and profitability. But for me, the real question is whether a movie that depends on character development or subtle plotting can in any way be enhanced by the process. At the risk of showing my age, I believe the answer is no. And to explain why, I must digress a bit...well, actually a lot and long-windedly at that.

The art of film is simply illusion at twenty-four frames a second. Mechanically, it's just a series of still images projected on a screen and sequenced quickly enough that the human eye believes it to be continuous motion, but thanks to this visual legerdemain, we can be entertained, uplifted, terrorized, both saddened and amused to the point of tears, and given profound insight into human nature....maybe not from Jackass 3, but certainly from others.

The style of the medium has been constrained by the existing technology of the time. The conventions of silent movies with their grandiose gesturing and title cards were quickly jettisoned with the advent of sound. The dramatic high-contrast lighting of film noir was lost with the near-universal adoption of color film. For the most part, these changes were instituted to better approximate the physical reality beyond the theater - we hear sound, we see in color, our visual field is wide. Even the rapid development and refinement of CGI and special effects was intended to make the fantastic and surreal fit more seamlessly with the mundane.

But there is a difference between a technical advancement, which enhances rather than interferes with the overall experience, and a gimmick designed primarily for thrills and box office bucks. There's nothing wrong with a gimmick - a roller coaster can give you a mind-blowing ride, but it's awfully limited as a general mode of transportation.

Which brings us back to 3D, the cinematic (and soon video) craze du jour. An early attempt to bring artificial depth to the two-dimensional screen was created in the 1950's as a ploy to win the hearts and moolah of TV-besotted viewers. This phenomenon came and went quickly along with other gimmicks such as Smell-O-Vision and the "Tingler." There were some later attempts at multi-focal films such as Jaws 3-D (1983), but because of limited technology, box-office economics, and forgettable content, they failed to catch on. Now, thanks primarily to James Cameron's film, Avatar, 3D has returned with a vengeance to dazzle your eyes and vacuum your wallet.

I saw Avatar and found the 3D experience unpleasant. Firstly, the glasses dimmed the screen as if I were watching through a neutral density filter. Secondly, the effect didn't give the action a continuous sense of depth, but rather seemed to constrain it to a series of 2D planes stacked in front of each other. This made the film seem more cartoonish than live-action, but not satisfyingly either. I also experienced eyestrain and a low-grade headache, but since I have some mitigating vision problems, I'll give that one a pass.

Even if the technology were not plagued by these issues, the real problem with 3D and the reason that I don't think it will ever work in movies of any substance is that the effect doesn't so much support the film as distract from it. Unlike other cinematic innovations, 3D never lets you forget it's there. Ooh, look! That spaceship is heading right for me! It'll be hard to concentrate on Jay Gatsby's melancholy if his body keeps wandering in and out of my personal space. I am happy to let my imagination lose itself in the screen; I don't need or want the characters sitting next to me in the theater.

During my years as an editor, friends would sometimes compliment my work and be surprised by my negative reaction. I had to explain that if they were aware of my efforts, they must have been distracted from the story I was trying to tell, and therefore I had failed. My best work was seamless and invisible - the story always came first. If viewers were moved but unaware of my work, I had succeeded.

It's possible that a new generation of moviegoers will come to regard 3D as the norm, but for now, please leave Gatsby in West Egg and out of the aisles of the Kendall Square Cinema.