Monday, April 29, 2013

Old Stanley Cup prefers warm sunny South

Who can blame it? Born in 1883 as a trinket of Queen Victoria's Canadian plenipotentiary, it has the scars and hard living that 130 years have given it. The NHL playoffs begin this week and the purists will tell you that the Cup belongs in Canada or Chicago or Detroit. But after last year's upset by the LA Kings you have to believe it's happy elsewhere. There was a snarky diatribe in the NY Times this weekend that the NHL Southeast division had the worst winning percentage in the four major North American pro sports leagues. But in this 6 column diatribe there is a single sentence that says, 'the Southeast did win two Stanley Cups—Tampa Bay in 2004 and Carolina in 2006. And how many do the Canucks have, Buffalo, Winnipeg, St. Louis, Minnesota, anyone? Anyone? I think I've made my point. As for the NY Rangers what do they have...one Cup in 74 years...the Islanders won 4 in a row but that was decades ago. Meanwhile you have Anaheim, Dallas, LA, Tampa and Carolina hoisting the Cup. By the way my wife's name is engraved on it from 2006 (you can look it up) P.LaViolette (Peggy LaViolette using her maiden name). The Cup is a hefty 35 lbs. It stays in shape by removing the oldest band of the barrel and attaching the latest. You won't see the Seattle Metropolitans, the first US team to win it or the Victoria Cougars or the Vancouver Millionaires (although the Canucks did wear the Millionaires uniform this year to see if some luck would rub off.) Sipping champagne from the Cup is an annual tradition for the winners. But of late there have been Margaritas to imbibe and heaven forbid, even Mint Juleps!

Saturday, April 20, 2013

You can't repeat the past

“Of course you can Old Sport.” Yes, that's Jay Gatsby, the elegant roughneck, inveterate dreamer and immensely wealthy young man answering his neighbor (and our narrator) Nick Carraway. A new film version opens next month (May) directed by Baz Luhrman with his usual panache. It will be a big improvement on the stilted black and white film starring Alan Ladd and most certainly bigger and gaudier than the one with Robert Redford. The casting will be a concern since a mere movie star can only hope to encompass the yearning and mystery of Gatsby, content simply to portray the glamour. The lovely and feckless Daisy seems to come off better in the movies. She is just an illusion after all even though Gatsby loves her and will eventually die for her. The new film will have a lavish sound track but the music I find most evocative of the era is in the four impressionistic piano solos written and played by Bix Beiderbecke, especially “In a mist”. How does it end—like so many American stories, he is shot and killed by a minor character, the same type of nonentity that kills Presidents, mayors, litte school children and thousands of others every year in our gun-loving republic. As for Daisy and her husband Tom, they will just disappear back into their money and continue to bicker like a loveless couple in a Strindberg play. Fitzgerald said that the greatest thing life can give you is youth. That is, if you can dodge the assault rifles and bombs long enough to enjoy it.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Mad Men and me

The sixth and final season of “Mad Men” starts tomorrow (April 7) on AMC. It's my favorite show for many reasons because it depicts the golden age of advertising when legends like David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach and Mary Welles were turning out iconic campaigns; when Bert Stern and Irving Penn were shooting memorable pictures including my favorite model, the beautiful Suzy Parker. And yes, I was part of it as an agency creative director like Don Draper. The only difference was that I was in London and he was in New York. Yes. I drank and smoked the way he did, I had my suits made on Savile Row, but I didn't have a couch in my office so I didn't have all of his adventures. I still get the Eric Idle “nudge-nudge wink-wink” but I was happily married to Peggy (Don & Peggy!!!) and living quietly in St. John's Wood with our two children. The show has elements of a soap opera that's definitely one for grownups but the advertising plots are 100% accurate. In fact I find myself yelling at the screen when I see the thing that got me fired and the double cross that led me to quit. Rolling Stone calls it, “The greatest TV drama of all time”. And I call it “my greatest job of all time”.