All posts by Steve Stern

Bloodsport

Cars

Wilson (1 of 1)Last year at the Japanese Grand Prix, Jules Bianchi, crashed into a recovery vehicle while racing in a torrential rain storm. Last month, after being in a coma for nine months, he died.

Last weekend, Justin Wilson drove into the exploding debris field from another car in an IndyCar race at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania. He was hit in the head, by part of the nose of another car, while going over 200 hundred miles per hour. He died on Sunday. Over the last ten years, while watching racing, I have seen probably an hundred cars go off the track. Maybe twenty of those resulted in accidents and probably about ten we serious accidents. In every case except Bianchi and Wilson, the driver walked away.

It made racing seem safe, but it isn’t, auto racing is a bloodsport. The Marquis of Portago, who was killed in a race in 1957, said that there are only three real sports, mountain climbing, bull fighting, and auto racing, all the others are just games. I’m not sure about that, but the possibility of injury or death is part of the sport and is part of what makes it exciting…until somebody actually dies. Then the sport seems stupid and, even, ghoulish; then it is tragedy and we want to look away.

Both Bianchi and Wilson were well liked guys and they will be missed.  But the drivers will still drive and the spectators will still watch. I guess that is good, but it doesn’t seem as good as it did two months ago.

 

Looking for the elusive Pagani in a world of excess

Americana, California, Cars, Local events

Monterey 15 (1 of 1)-6Last Wednesday and Thursday, Michele and I were stuck in – what seemed like – an endless traffic jam. It was great.

To back up, a couple of weeks ago, Michele suggested we go down to the Monterey Peninsula to see a small car show – small as in only 45 cars, not small as in tiny cars; that would be The Little Car Show +, an entirely different show  – The Mission Classic, in the middle of the week. Not just any week, The Monterey Car Extravaganza Week, the annual get together of cars and car people which has become the biggest car week in the automotive universe. The Week is intense and getting more so every year. There are art shows, tours, nine different car shows, nineteen different car auctions, four days of vintage car racing, and an entire week of lustful car watching much of it while sitting in a traffic jam with other car nuts. It is the only time I don’t mind being stuck in traffic because there is sure to be a couple of interesting cars stuck nearby.

Michele’s suggestion was prompted by her reading that a Pagani Huayra would be at the Mission Classic and, knowing that the Pagani Huayra has become my Holy Grail, she proposed we spend a couple of days on the Monterey Peninsula, looking for it. I have not spent a night during The Week, in years. I used to during the seventies and eighties, but now I will run down for one day, usually with Malcolm and usually at the races . Michele has gone down a couple of times for the races but she has never spent the night, so it was a shock to both of us just how immersed one gets just driving around.

The bigger shock, although not entirely unexpected, was just how much money is involved. When I asked Michele what her first impression was, she said How many rich people there are in one place. Sure, car people come in all wealth brackets – a kid driving a $8,000 1964 Corvair lives in a different world than the old man driving a $1, 500,000 Ferrari LaFerrari, but the Ferrari people – and even more so, the Lamborghini people – take up more psychic space.Monterey 15 (1 of 1)-3 We drive around, seeing cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, just casually parked, with the people walking by on car overload, not even noticing. Monterey 15 (1 of 1) Monterey 15 (1 of 1)-2To increase their exposure Ferrari has even taken over a historic gas station/gift shop at Carmel Highlands, to make it a Ferrari dealership/gift shop/owner oasis. retreat. Inside Ferrari Owners could relax with great wines and food – including the best prosciutto I have ever had and an excellent cappuccino – safely gated off from the hoi polli.Monterey 15 (1 of 1)-5Monterey 15 (1 of 1)-4Outside the Owner Oasis, people – prequalified and almost all men type people – were lined up to take a test drive in one of several Ferrari models. It was hard not to think of the one percent and not in an entirely positive way. Them that’s got shall get, the great Billie Holiday sang, So the Bible said and it still is news. I get the feeling that it was not news here. Here, at the ad hoc Ferrari place, everybody gets the free lunch.

To be contin

 

 

 

 

 

Goodby Jon Stewart, sob sob

Americana, Television

Jon Stewart B (1 of 1)Yesterday, I almost went the whole day without thinking about Jon Stewart’s last couple of weeks. I will miss our – almost – daily ritual of watching The Daily Show (usually, except for last week, one day later). More than just funny and topical, Jon Stewart – the Jon Stewart in my imagination, at least – is easy to like, and even easier to admire.

What I most admire about him, even more than his humor and attention to his craft, is Stewart’s generosity. His generosity with the limelight, his generosity in helping people grow-up and move on, his generosity in having obscure – or almost obscure – guests that don’t thrill the crowd but need the exposure.

The person that first came to mind was Doris Kearns Goodwin who, I read, has been on the Daily Show show eight times – no wonder they hugged when she showed up – and who was saluted with an appearance on one of Stewart’s last shows.  But he also had people like Cass Sunstein – billed as an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law – and Elizabeth Kolbert who I never would have heard of if he hadn’t been on Stewart’s show. He had Malala Yousafzai on, twice!

A person who I have heard of and have been reading for a long time is Ta-Nehisi Coates and I was thrilled when I realized he would be honored by being one of Jon Stewart’s final guests. As an aside, a couple of months ago, a friend asked on facebook, This is powerful! My question for Blacks is, How do I show support/compassion/connectedness for/with you without you thinking I am being condescending, ignorant, or offensive? (I’ve edited that sentence twice. Did I do ok? Did I use the “right” words?) and that question has troubled me, off and on, ever since. For anybody asking that same question – or one of its cousins – one place to start, I would suggest, is to watch Jon Stewart’s interview with Coates and another is read Coates’ columns in the Atlantic and best of all, read his latest book, Between the World and Me. End aside.

On sort of the same subject, another one of the things that I admire about Jon Stewart is, a couple days after somebody at SNL said We don’t have any black women on because there are no funny black women – I’m paraphrasing here – Stewart had Jessica Williams on for the first time. I read somewhere that Williams had been working the comedy club circuit in Los Angeles doing OK but not great when Stewart asked her to come to New York where she became the youngest Daily Show correspondent and the Alpha correspondent shortly thereafter.
The last three guests on the Daily Show were all comedians, Amy Schumer, Denis Leary, and Louis CK. I was left with the impression that Denis Leary is a friend of Jon’s and that Amy and Louis were comics that he wanted to honor. i

Now all that is gone and I will miss it.

F1 and the European vacation

Cars

Maserati F1 (1 of 1)The last Formula One race was in Hungary over a week ago and there will not be another race, the Belgium Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, for another twenty days. This is because there is a mandatory vacation, in the middle of the best part of the season, for everybody in F1.

A couple of weeks ago, I read an article – in the New York Times, I think – written by a woman whose company had transferred her to Switzerland for several years. Her biggest surprise was the amount of vacation time she now had and that she was expected, even encouraged, to take it. The Europeans – and, as it turns out all industrialized nations, what ever that means – love their vacations. Germany and Spain have a mandated 34 vacation days a year.

In my old age, I am beginning to think that they might be on to something.

The year of women living dangerously (in movies)

Americana, Film, Psychological Musings

Trainwreck

The game is a men’s game, all the rules are made by men, the feminine is not honored. A remembered, probably badly, quote from Coco Gonzo after seeing Mad Max: Fury Road (in 3D).

Michele and I saw Pixar’s Inside Out  last weekend. It was one of those children’s movies that are as much fun for an adult as for the intended audience. I thought it was excellent and, unusual for Pixar, the protagonist was female (for only the second time, the first being Princess Merida of Scotland in Brave, a movie I didn’t see). I say that the protagonist was female, but she – her name was Riley – could have just as easily been a boy. Her favorite sport was ice hockey and I’m not sure if there was anything particularly feminine about her.

A day before Inside Out, we saw  Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck. If you don’t know Amy Schumer, she is that girl from the television that talks about her pussy all the time – to quote from the opening sequence of the first video below – and she is pushing the limits of comedy and what is sayable in public (BTW, isn’t all  good humor pushing what is acceptable?) The two clips below are pretty typical of what she does and, if you haven’t seen her, these are a good place to start.

 

Trainwreck , is both a parody of a rom-com and an homage. It is also a string of joke set-ups that don’t always go together, but it is very funny. Amy plays the role of a womanizing heavy drinker, commitment-phobic and profane; it is the kind of role that would have been the man’s part five years ago (the body language in the picture on top of the post is a good demonstration). Bill Hader plays what would have been the woman’s part with LeBron James playing her best friend.

A couple of months ago, we saw Melissa McCarthy transmogrify from the Penny Moneyworth part to the James Bond part in Spy and before that it was Charlize Theron being the toughest sonofabitch around in Mad Max Fury Road.

Months ago, over dinner after Mad Max Fury Road, several of us got into a discussion over what makes a feminist movie and if Mad Max Fury Road was one (Mad Max and the other three movies pass the Bechdel test, BTW, if that was a question).  I think Mad Max is a feminist movie, but there was alot of disagreement and I am not as sure as I once was. Charlize Theron is the hero as well as the instigating agent in the movie but much of what she does is a woman acting as a man rather than through the feminine.

The operative words above is much, as opposed to all. Throughout the movie Theron is acting out of empathy for the Brides and she brings a humility and vulnerability that we don’t usually see from a man. When she talks about redemption, we sense it is because she almost lost her soul to become Imperator Furiosa. And Melissa McCarthy isn’t all testosteron either, she is reticent to step forward, a woman who has accepted her station. When she becomes the macha spy, she is still a team player, and – in the end – she shares the glory. In Trainwreck, Amy Schumer is only playing the man’s part in public, at home she is a softer, more feminine, Amy.

These four movies have got me thinking about women in a man’s world. When I say man’s world, I really mean the western, public, world in which the rules are men’s rules and the women have to conform. Both politics and business are basically run by men’s rules. They are combative, hierarchical, the rules are stable, and the main concern is for short-term gain. Women like Diane Feinstein do well because they, essentially, act like men.

What we need, it seems to me, are more feminine institutions (if that isn’t an oxymoron). Modern corporations measure success in how much they contribute to the top officers and big shareholders –  not in how much they contribute to the collective – and that takes perpetual and unsustainable  growth. What we really need today is a model for sustainability and that will require women engendering their feminine characteristics like coöperation and inclusiveness and long-term thinking.