Thank You, Billy Crystal

The Red Knight from The Fisher King
from g8ors.blogspot.com

   The Emmy Awards Show last night was very interesting. I haven't watched it in years, but I'd heard that Billy Crystal would be paying tribute to Robin Williams during the show. Plus Downton Abbey was much nominated. And little did I know that Idris Elba was also nominated for Luther.
   My husband was surprised when I sat down to watch. I told him it was just until Billy Crystal did his tribute to Robin Williams. It didn't interfere with his reading so, for the most part, it was okay with him. Although the camera kept panning across the audience and showing Julia Roberts. Then very quickly moving on to other people in the audience. I could not remember her name and he didn't appreciate my asking him who she was because by the time he looked up she wasn't on camera anymore. I finally remembered the name of the one movie I could think of that she starred in -- Pretty Woman with Richard Gere. Then he told me her name and strongly suggested that I shouldn't involve him in my TV program any more.
   And who knew how much Seth Meyers looks like Ellen DeGeneres?
   The clothes were beautiful and neither the male nor the female of the species limited themselves to black.
   The attention Matthew McConaughey got seemed odd. I guess being on TV shows no longer carries the stigma for movie stars that it once did. Somebody said he was the Sexiest Man of the Year. Maybe it was that guy from Cheers. I agree that McConaughey is cute, but speaking of Richard Gere, now that was a sexy man. And probably still is.
    Then my husband and I got to talking about the movie Mud that McConaughey was in. We lived in far Southeast Arkansas for a time and we enjoyed McConaughey's accent. My husband remembered that he played a bad guy in that movie. To which I responded, "well yes and no." He said he was pretty sure that a convicted murderer qualified as a bad guy. So, okay, I'll give him that.
    Then the Emmy for the Best Supporting Actor went, not to our beloved Carson from Downton Abbey, but to some guy from a series called Breaking Bad, with which I am not familiar. And the clip of the winner ranting and raving while standing threateningly over some poor guy with a much bloodied face effectively guarantees that I will not become familiar with Breaking Bad.
    Not that I'm against violence in entertainment across the board. I do watch Luther which is pretty violent. Perhaps I just find violence with a British accent less realistic and thereby less scary.
    Like all good planners the Emmy Award Show saved the good for late in the production ensuring that people like me would watch all those other bits, including the commercials.
    The ads with Ricky Gervais did nothing to entice me into spending my time with anything else he's in, but Louis C.K. and his Louie does sound interesting and it's available on Netflix so no problem with commercials there.
    Then came the part I'd been waiting for. Billy Crystal spoke of the comedic genius and the high energy antics of the performer Robin Williams. But more importantly, he spoke of his friend Robin Williams.
    In Williams' unscripted appearances and comedic routines, his quick wit and wide-ranging references attracted me like a fly to honey. His frenetic delivery made it more like a moth to flame. Then there were his more serious movies -- Dead Poet's Society, Good Will Hunting, Awakenings, etc. -- the movies that allowed him to do a dramatic turn. They showed his humanity. For me The Fisher King is the best.
    The picture that opens this blog is of the Red Knight, Parry's demon. It is at once wonderful and terrifying as is Jack's alcohol, and for many of us, the tenuous link we have with life and sanity.
     Like us, Jeff Bridges' Jack and Williams' Parry are damaged. But they connect and it's that connection more than their wounds that makes them human. Beautifully human. The picture of Parry explaining the legend of The Fisher King to Jack as they lie on the grass, looking into the night together is, for me, the image of that human connection. Yep. That's the way I want to remember Robin Williams -- lying naked on the grass telling us telling us the legend of a grievously wounded hero who must have help to recover the Holy Grail.

from it.wikipedia.org

If I Had a Chance

image from the Guardian.com

A friend recently posted this question on Facebook, “If you had a chance to go to the concert of someone deceased, who would you choose?”

Aside from realizing that she should have used the word ‘whom’ (perhaps I’ve been spending too much time in edit mode) it occurred to me that I’d rather sit in on a lecture being given by Stephen Jay Gould. An evolutionary biologist, he wrote essays for Natural History magazine. Many of which were published as collections. These were my only opportunities to experience his knowledge and humor. Hens' Teeth and Horses' Toes, and The Flamingo's Smile are two that come to mind.

But the original question was about a concert performer. Okay. Freddie Mercury and Queen. It would have been loud and rowdy with lots of flash. “We Are the Champions” of the world!

And my mind was off and running. Of course there was Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers and activists. His novels presented the world from a little left of reality, a point of view that suited me perfectly. So maybe lunch with him. He was a WWII American prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, during the firebombing by Allies. He was named Humanist of the Year in 1992 by the American Humanist Association.

Which brings to mind Isaac Asimov, a past president of the AHA and prolific author of science, both fiction and nonfiction. His science fiction is generally considered ‘hard’ science fiction meaning that his vision is consistent with what is a believable extrapolation from what science knows today. And his nonfiction is brilliant and clearly stated. From Atom I finally got the answer to my question about electricity. When you flip the switch in your living room, is it a particular electron generated in a particular power plant that has traveled down those miles of line that lights your world? Or is it an electron that was already in that bulb and is excited by an electron beside it in the wire that was excited by an electron beside it, and so on along those miles of line back to the generating plant?

Or instead of a concert or lunch with someone, I think I would like to march with Gandhi or Dr. King.

No. I think lunch with Margaret Burke-White. She photographed Gandhi and Stalin and so many interesting famous and nonfamous people in between.

Or Abigail Adams who was in on the ground floor at the founding of our nation. A competent and independent woman who would have many other interesting people at her dining table. Including Benjamin Franklin, of whom she probably disapproved in many ways, I’m sure I would think him a better story teller than her dear husband John.

I’ve got it!

Lunch with the artist Georgia O’Keefe who left New York City when it was the center of the world and embraced the wide open lands of New Mexico.

Dinner with Carl Sagan to plan our out-migration from Earth.

But, best of all, to wake up and have breakfast with Robin Williams during one of his quiet times between mania and depression.