April 4, 2012
By Jo-Ann Pilardi
It’s 1957. A guy holding a newspaper goes into his favorite bar. It’s my Uncle Lando, an ex-boxer in his mid-40s, but still full of vigor and still a performer. As reported to me later, he’s excited about what he found in the paper: a letter by one of his favorite nieces—me. “Hey, guys, my niece is in the paper!” He then proceeds to read my letter, a solid right jab in defense of Elvis against the sucker punch that was landed the week before by Spike Wallace, the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph’s music critic.
(Click images for larger views.)
Reading my letter across 50+ years, I concede that its logic is a little shaky, but its passion for Elvis is solid: “When did you make your first million, Spike? How many times have thousands of people screamed and yelled with joy over you? You are condemning a boy who is probably less than half your age, yet who has made in approximately one year more money than you could ever hope to see if you lived to be a hundred.”
So what began as an outbreak of teen-aged girls’ lust and hysterics, first infecting myself and my best friend Monica as we watched Elvis on TV that famous Sunday night in 1956, now had a public life. I was officially an Elvis Fan (though my Elvis Complimentary Fan Club Membership Card was in my wallet long before this). My printed defense of Elvis would become my first encounter with printer’s ink, something I love now as much as I loved Elvis then. Elvis + Publication: a match made in heaven.
But it was only Early Elvis I loved. Not Vegas Elvis. Vegas Elvis (1969 – 1976) was a pathetic nightclub singer, sweating in black leather or squeezed into bejeweled white jumpsuits. By the time Vegas Elvis emerged, this Elvis Fan had spent the latter half of the 1960s and all of the 1970s as, first, an anti-Vietnam-war protester, then a Women’s Liberation activist and Philosophy teacher—Area of Specialty: Existentialism. Among the literati, politicati, and philosophicati, Elvis was gauche. My lust for Elvis would have been embarrassing if it hadn’t already disappeared, thanks to Vegas Elvis. (I still love that tender, tremulous voice when I hear it, though; it embodied all that I hoped for in a man. That and his pout.)
Yet an astonishing truth has emerged. While my own Elvis lust vanished long ago, I’ve encountered another Elvis lust, an odd lusting for my Elvis lust: the passion of my family and friends for my legendary (if now non-existent) Elvis lust. And that has not only survived but thrived. Though I beg them to stop, they persist in depositing gaudy Elvis gifts on my English Tudor doorstep.
Herewith an incomplete catalogue of my Elvis gifts: a resin plastic Elvis brooch; a large Elvis neon-blue-light bar clock; Graceland: An Interactive Pop-up Tour (the most remarkable in my extensive collection of Elvis gift books); Elvis birthday cards and note cards; a cartoonist friend’s self-portrait as a guitar-playing Elvis; paper and painted tin posters of Elvis (always with plans of how-to-frame & where-to-hang); The Night of 100 Elvises Live! cd; a bottle of “The King” wine; an Elvis clutch bag and an Elvis umbrella; a framed collage of Elvis-related items ingeniously bordered in red glass lozenges to resemble a theater marquee; and of course, that famous “Elvis with Nixon” photo. Someone also gave me expensive tickets for the 100 Elvises concert in Baltimore’s Lithuanian Hall last year—unfortunately held on a night when I had “another engagement.” There’s more, but merciful age does bring a level of forgetfulness.
I deduce, then, that by some as yet unnamed law of the physical or psychological universe, my own Elvis lust has morphed into a troubling addiction to Elvis products by people whom I love and about whose mental health I care deeply (along with my own). So once more I’m sending out a “Stop!” plea—this time with some help from The King: “Don’t be cruel—Love me tender. If not, you ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog. And I swear on Old Shep’s grave, if it continues I’m gonna . . . Return to sender.”
Copyright © 2012 Jo-Ann Pilardi.
Jo-Ann Pilardi is retired from Towson University where she taught Philosophy and Women’s Studies for 38 years. A working class Italian from Pittsburgh, she moved to Baltimore in 1969 and was active in women’s movement groups through the 1970s. Currently, she teaches for TU’s Osher Institute, reads and writes, gardens, travels, and studies jazz piano (with a few segues into old Elvis tunes).
13 Comments | 
essays, family, history, media, music, non-fiction, relationships, theater, writing | Tagged: 1957, boxing, editoral comment, family, history, newspapers, passion, relationships, teens, television | 
Permalink
Posted by Jim
February 22, 2012
Adapted from Paris Review: The Art of Theater No. 2
Interviewed by Olga Carlisle and Rose Styron
(Senator Joseph) McCarthy (was) actually saying certain lines that I recall the witch-hunters saying in Salem . . . . For example, his holding up his hand with cards in it, saying, “I have in my hand the names of so-and-so.” Well, this was a standard tactic of seventeenth-century prosecutors confronting a witness who was reluctant or confused, or an audience in a church which was not quite convinced that this particular individual might be guilty . . . . It was a way of inflicting guilt on everybody, and many people responded genuinely out of guilt; some would come and tell him some fantasy, or something that they had done or thought that was evil in their minds. I had in my play, for example, the old man who comes and reports that when his wife reads certain books, he can’t pray. He figures that the prosecutors would know the reason, that they can see through what to him was an opaque glass. Of course he ends up in a disaster because they prosecuted his wife.
I had made a lot of statements and I had signed a great many petitions. I’d been involved in organizations, you know, putting my name down for fifteen years before that. But I don’t think they ever would have bothered me if I hadn’t married Marilyn (Monroe). Had they been interested, they would have called me earlier. And, in fact, I was told on good authority that the then chairman, Francis Walter, said that if Marilyn would take a photograph with him, shaking his hand, he would call off the whole thing. It’s as simple as that. Marilyn would get them on the front pages right away. They had been on the front page for years, but the issue was starting to lose its punch.
I was indicted for contempt for having refused to give or confirm the name of a writer, whether I had seen him in a meeting of communist writers I had attended some eight or ten years earlier. My legal defense was not on any of the Constitutional amendments but on the contention that Congress couldn’t drag people in and question them about anything on the Congressman’s mind; they had to show that the witness was likely to have information relevant to some legislation then at issue. The committee had put on a show of interest in passport legislation. I had been denied a passport a couple of years earlier. Ergo, I fitted into their vise. A year later I was convicted after a week’s trial. Then about a year after that the Court of Appeals threw out the whole thing . . . . It was all a dreadful waste of time and money and anger, but I suffered very little, really, compared to others who were driven out of their professions and never got back, or who did get back after eight and ten years of blacklisting.
I’m in deadly fear of people with too much power. I don’t trust people that much any more. I used to think that if people had the right idea they could make things move accordingly . . . . In the thirties it was, for me, inconceivable that a socialist government could be really anti-Semitic. It just could not happen, because their whole protest in the beginning was against anti-Semitism, against racism, against this kind of inhumanity; that’s why I was drawn to it . . . . I’m much more pragmatic about such things now, and I want to know those I’m against and who it is that I’m backing and what he is like.
I have . . . a psychic investment in the continuity of life. I couldn’t ever write a totally nihilistic work.
This is one in a series that will post on Wednesdays. If you’d like to read more of what people such as Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Joyce Carol Oates and other famous — and not so famous — playwrights have to say about the art and craft of writing for the stage, type “On Playwriting” into the small sidebar window and tap the “Search” button. (Arthur Miller On Playwriting part IX will post next Wednesday.)
Leave a Comment » | acting, actors, fiction, history, playwriting, quotes, relationships, religion, theater, writing | Tagged: anti-Semitism, audience, blacklisting, drama, government, history, Marilyn Monroe, petitions, playwright, playwriting, power, quotes, Senator Joseph McCarthy, theater, U. S. Congress, witchhunt, writing | Permalink
Posted by Jim
February 10, 2012
Chatting With John
By Jim Sizemore
(Click images for larger versions.)
The “Hip Shots” series of photographs will feature images that were grabbed “on the fly,” with little or no regard for framing and focus. The object of the exercise is to create dynamic pictures, not perfect ones. With this ” shoot-from-the-hip” method the more frames exposed, the better the chances are that you’ll come up with something interesting — a related series that may be arranged as a post. If you’d like additional tips for using the technique, or to submit your own images, drop a question or note in the “Leave a Comment” section, below. This feature will appear most Fridays.
Copyright © 2012 Jim Sizemore.
2 Comments | Fort McHenry, Hip Shots, history, images, photography | Tagged: Baltimore, focus, Fort McHenry, framing, hip shots, historic site, history, images, Maryland, national monument, National Park Service, photography, pictures, shoot-from-the-hip, U. S. Department of the Interior, War of 1812 | Permalink
Posted by Jim
January 27, 2012
Flag Change VI
By Jim Sizemore
(Click images for larger versions.)
The “Hip Shots” series of photographs will feature images that were grabbed “on the fly,” with little or no regard for framing and focus. The object of the exercise is to create dynamic pictures, not perfect ones. With this ” shoot-from-the-hip” method the more frames exposed, the better the chances are that you’ll come up with something interesting — a related series that may be arranged as a post. If you’d like additional tips for using the technique, or to submit your own images, drop a question or note in the “Leave a Comment” section, below. This feature will appear most Fridays.
Copyright © 2012 Jim Sizemore.
Leave a Comment » | Fort McHenry, Hip Shots, history, images, photography, travel, Wall Street | Tagged: Baltimore, flag, Fort McHenry, hip shots, historic site, history, images, Maryland, national monument, National Park Service, photography, pictures, shoot-from-the-hip, travel, U. S. Department of the Interior, vacation, War of 1812 | Permalink
Posted by Jim
January 25, 2012
Adapted from Paris Review: The Art of Theater No. 2
Interviewed by Olga Carlisle and Rose Styron
The director of a play is nailed to words. He can interpret them a little differently, but he has limits: you can only inflect a sentence in two or three different ways, but you can inflect an image on the screen in an infinite number of ways. You can make one character practically fall out of the frame; you can shoot it where you don’t even see his face. Two people can be talking, and the man talking cannot be seen, so the emphasis is on the reaction to the speech rather than on the speech itself.
I don’t think there is anything that approaches the theater. The sheer presence of a living person is always stronger than his image. But there’s no reason why TV shouldn’t be a terrific medium. The problem is that the audience watching TV shows is always separated. My feeling is that people in a group, en masse, watching something, react differently, and perhaps more profoundly, than they do when they’re alone in their living rooms. Yet it’s not a hurdle that couldn’t be jumped by the right kind of material. Simply, it’s hard to get good movies, it’s hard to get good novels, it’s hard to get good poetry—it’s impossible to get good television because in addition to the indigenous difficulties there’s the whole question of it being a medium that’s controlled by big business. It took TV seventeen years to do Death of a Salesman here. It’s been done on TV in every country in the world at least once, but it’s critical of the business world and the content is downbeat.
We had twenty-eight and a half minutes to tell a whole story in a radio play, and you had to concentrate on the words because you couldn’t see anything. You were playing in a dark closet, in fact. So the economy of words in a good radio play was everything. It drove you more and more to realize what the power of a good sentence was, and the right phrase could save you a page you would otherwise be wasting. I was always sorry radio didn’t last long enough for contemporary poetic movements to take advantage of it, because it’s a natural medium for poets. It’s pure voice, pure words. Words and silence; a marvelous medium.
I often write speeches in verse, and then break them down. Much of Death of a Salesman was originally written in verse, and The Crucible was all written in verse, but I broke it up. I was frightened that the actors would take an attitude toward the material that would destroy its vitality. I didn’t want anyone standing up there making speeches. You see, we have no tradition of verse, and as soon as an American actor sees something printed like verse, he immediately puts one foot in front of the other—or else he mutters.
You see, in The Crucible I was completely freed by the period I was writing about—over three centuries ago. It was a different diction, a different age. I had great joy writing that, more than with almost any other play I’ve written. I learned about how writers felt in the past when they were dealing almost constantly with historical material. A dramatist writing history could finish a play Monday and start another Wednesday, and go right on. Because the stories are all prepared for him. Inventing the story is what takes all the time. It takes a year to invent the story. The historical dramatist doesn’t have to invent anything, except his language, and his characterizations . . . . basically if you’ve got the story, you’re a year ahead.
There’s no country I’ve been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, “What do you do?” And, being American, many’s the time I’ve almost asked that question, then realized it’s good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We’re ranking everybody every minute of the day.
This is one in a series that will post on Wednesdays. If you’d like to read more of what people such as Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Joyce Carol Oates and other famous — and not so famous — playwrights have to say about the art and craft of writing for the stage, type “On Playwriting” into the small sidebar window and tap the “Search” button. (Arthur Miller On Playwriting part V will post next Wednesday.)
Leave a Comment » | acting, actors, fiction, film, history, movies, playwriting, poetry, quotes, relationships, theater, writing | Tagged: acting, actor, director, domestic conflict, drama, movies, novels, Olga Carlisle, playwrights, playwriting, poetry, poets, quotes, radio plays, Rose Styron, stage, television, theater, TV, writing | Permalink
Posted by Jim
December 9, 2011
Flag Change V
By Jim Sizemore
(Click images for larger versions.)
The “Hip Shots” series of Doodlemeister.com photographs will feature images that were grabbed “on the fly” with little or no regard for framing and focus. The object of the exercise is to create dynamic pictures, not perfect ones. With this ” shoot-from-the-hip” method, the more frames exposed the better the chances are that you’ll come up with something interesting — a related series that can be arranged as a post. If you’d like additional tips for using the technique, or to submit your own pictures, drop a question or note in the “Leave a Comment” section, below. Meanwhile, click the “Hip Shots” tag above for many more examples. This feature will appear most Fridays.
Copyright © 2011 Jim Sizemore.
3 Comments | Fort McHenry, Hip Shots, history, images, photography | Tagged: Baltimore, Fort McHenry, framing, hip shots, historic site, history, images, Maryland, national monument, National Park Service, photography, pictures, shoot-from-the-hip, tips, travel, U. S. Department of the Interior, vacation, War of 1812 | Permalink
Posted by Jim
November 4, 2011
Natural Bridge
By Jim Sizemore
(Click images for larger views.)
The “Hip Shots” series of Doodlemeister.com photographs will feature images that were grabbed “on the fly” with little or no regard for framing and focus. The object of the exercise is to create dynamic pictures, not perfect ones. With this ” shoot-from-the-hip” method, the more frames exposed the better the chances are that you’ll come up with something interesting — a related series that can be arranged as a post. If you’d like additional tips for using the technique, or to submit your own pictures, drop a question or note in the “Leave a Comment” section, below. Meanwhile, click the “Hip Shots” tag above for many more examples. This feature will appear most Friday’s.
Copyright © 2011 Jim Sizemore.
Leave a Comment » | Hip Shots, history, images, nature, photography, travel, vacation | Tagged: focus, framing, hip shots, historic site, images, national monument, Natural Bridge, photography, pictures, shoot-from-the-hip, travel, vacation, Virginia | Permalink
Posted by Jim
October 28, 2011
Wind
By Jim Sizemore
(Click images for larger views.)
The “Hip Shots” series of Doodlemeister.com photographs will feature images that were grabbed “on the fly” with little or no regard for framing and focus. The object of the exercise is to create dynamic pictures, not perfect ones. With this ” shoot-from-the-hip” method, the more frames exposed the better the chances are that you’ll come up with something interesting — a related series that can be arranged as a post. If you’d like additional tips for using the technique, or to submit your own pictures, drop a question or note in the “Leave a Comment” section, below. Meanwhile, click the “Hip Shots” tag above for many more examples. This feature will appear most Friday’s.
Copyright © 2011 Jim Sizemore.
Leave a Comment » | Fort McHenry, Hip Shots, history, holidays, kids, photography, travel, vacation | Tagged: Baltimore, focus, Fort McHenry, framing, hip shots, historic site, kids, Maryland, national monument, National Park Service, photography, pictures, shoot-from-the-hip, travel, vacation, War of 1812 | Permalink
Posted by Jim
October 21, 2011
Blur V
By Jim Sizemore
(Click images for larger views.)
The “Hip Shots” series of Doodlemeister.com photographs will feature images that were grabbed “on the fly” with little or no regard for framing and focus. The object of the exercise is to create dynamic pictures, not perfect ones. With this ” shoot-from-the-hip” method, the more frames exposed the better the chances are that you’ll come up with something interesting — a related series that can be arranged as a post. If you’d like additional tips for using the technique, or to submit your own pictures, drop a question or note in the “Leave a Comment” section, below. Meanwhile, click the “Hip Shots” tag above for many more examples. This feature will appear most Friday’s.
Copyright © 2011 Jim Sizemore.
Leave a Comment » | Hip Shots, history, images, photography | Tagged: focus, framing, hip shots, images, photography, pictures, shoot-from-the-hip, summer | Permalink
Posted by Jim
October 3, 2011
Or, My Brush With Greatness
Some time back, I agreed to do a cartoon for a guy I knew who was a law enforcement ranger at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. The fort is where I walk most days and many of the rangers there know me pretty well, so it was no surprise when one of them asked for a favor. Almost immediately, though, I had second thoughts. I’m often asked to do a “little cartoon” for some special occasion that turns out to be a time-consuming production, all done for nothing more than a “Thank you,” if that.
So, after giving it more thought, I decided that if I could come up with a cartoon that would somehow be pegged to the Ken Burns’ National Parks documentary series that had aired on PBS, I’d do it. My thinking was that if I’m going to go to all that effort as a favor for Ranger Chad, I should at least get a small return — a royalty of sorts — for the effort. Once I had an idea that would fulfill both his needs and mine, I drew it up and uploaded a digital copy to my London distributor (Cartoonstock.com, see sidebar link). I also posted the image on my blog as a part of my Monday series of Gag Cartoons and forgot about it.
Then, on July 26, 2011, out of the Internet blue so to speak, I got the following email:
Hello, this is Chris Darling of Ken Burns’ office, Florentine Films. Ken would love to own the original of the Ranger Chad cartoon to display in his office, and was wondering if you’d be interested in trading the original for a collection of his films. Is this something you might be interested in?
Christopher Darling
Assistant to Ken Burns
Thinking that the “collection” Mr. Darling mentioned might include Prohibition, the latest documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novik, which I knew was scheduled to air in early October, I quickly agreed. Here’s my email reply:
I’m delighted that your boss would like to have the original of the Ranger Chad cartoon and would happily trade for it, except that no “real” original exists — only a digital version completed by me from a rough draft scanned into my computer. However, if Ken would like to have a high resolution digital copy of the finished art, inscribed to him and signed and dated by me, I’d be more than pleased to oblige.
Sincerely, Jim Sizemore
They agreed, and after I completed the cartoon print (see above) and mailed it, I once again had second thoughts. This time what bugged me was my lame dedication — “For Ken Burns with best wishes.” I thought that Mr. Burns, given his vast accomplishments, deserved much better. Perhaps something along the lines of “For Ken ‘Florentine’ Burns with great respect,” etc., etc. But having rushed to get the cartoon in the mail, I resigned myself to the fact that it was just another missed opportunity. Then, a few days later, I got an email from Mr. Darling saying, in the nicest way possible, that someone on his staff found a misspelling. (Check the above image again if you missed it.)
Long story short, as red-faced as I was for having made the mistake (“setting” instead of “sitting”), I was at least happy for another chance to get the dedication right. I made the correction, rewrote the dedication, signed the cartoon print and sent it back to Mr. Darling at Florentine Films. A few days later my collection of Ken Burns’ DVDs arrived in a large box via UPS. I was impressed with the resulting 21 inch stack (above), which I figured must include every documentary he ever made — except, I noted with dismay, Prohibition. Oh well, I guess it’s all about timing.
Prohibition by Ken Burns and Lynn Novik is currently airing on PBS (October 2, 3 and 4). And I’m sure it’ll be repeated many times in most markets. Don’t miss it, it’s really good.
4 Comments | cartooning, film, Fort McHenry, gag cartoons, gags, history, movies, non-fiction | Tagged: documentary, Florentine Films, Fort McHenry, historic site, history, Ken Burns, Lynn Novik, movies, National Park Service, Prohibition, U. S. Department of the Interior | Permalink
Posted by Jim
(Senator Joseph) McCarthy (was) actually saying certain lines that I recall the witch-hunters saying in Salem . . . . For example, his holding up his hand with cards in it, saying, “I have in my hand the names of so-and-so.” Well, this was a standard tactic of seventeenth-century prosecutors confronting a witness who was reluctant or confused, or an audience in a church which was not quite convinced that this particular individual might be guilty . . . . It was a way of inflicting guilt on everybody, and many people responded genuinely out of guilt; some would come and tell him some fantasy, or something that they had done or thought that was evil in their minds. I had in my play, for example, the old man who comes and reports that when his wife reads certain books, he can’t pray. He figures that the prosecutors would know the reason, that they can see through what to him was an opaque glass. Of course he ends up in a disaster because they prosecuted his wife.
Lusting for Elvis
April 4, 2012By Jo-Ann Pilardi
It’s 1957. A guy holding a newspaper goes into his favorite bar. It’s my Uncle Lando, an ex-boxer in his mid-40s, but still full of vigor and still a performer. As reported to me later, he’s excited about what he found in the paper: a letter by one of his favorite nieces—me. “Hey, guys, my niece is in the paper!” He then proceeds to read my letter, a solid right jab in defense of Elvis against the sucker punch that was landed the week before by Spike Wallace, the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph’s music critic.
(Click images for larger views.)
So what began as an outbreak of teen-aged girls’ lust and hysterics, first infecting myself and my best friend Monica as we watched Elvis on TV that famous Sunday night in 1956, now had a public life. I was officially an Elvis Fan (though my Elvis Complimentary Fan Club Membership Card was in my wallet long before this). My printed defense of Elvis would become my first encounter with printer’s ink, something I love now as much as I loved Elvis then. Elvis + Publication: a match made in heaven.
But it was only Early Elvis I loved. Not Vegas Elvis. Vegas Elvis (1969 – 1976) was a pathetic nightclub singer, sweating in black leather or squeezed into bejeweled white jumpsuits. By the time Vegas Elvis emerged, this Elvis Fan had spent the latter half of the 1960s and all of the 1970s as, first, an anti-Vietnam-war protester, then a Women’s Liberation activist and Philosophy teacher—Area of Specialty: Existentialism. Among the literati, politicati, and philosophicati, Elvis was gauche. My lust for Elvis would have been embarrassing if it hadn’t already disappeared, thanks to Vegas Elvis. (I still love that tender, tremulous voice when I hear it, though; it embodied all that I hoped for in a man. That and his pout.)
Yet an astonishing truth has emerged. While my own Elvis lust vanished long ago, I’ve encountered another Elvis lust, an odd lusting for my Elvis lust: the passion of my family and friends for my legendary (if now non-existent) Elvis lust. And that has not only survived but thrived. Though I beg them to stop, they persist in depositing gaudy Elvis gifts on my English Tudor doorstep.
I deduce, then, that by some as yet unnamed law of the physical or psychological universe, my own Elvis lust has morphed into a troubling addiction to Elvis products by people whom I love and about whose mental health I care deeply (along with my own). So once more I’m sending out a “Stop!” plea—this time with some help from The King: “Don’t be cruel—Love me tender. If not, you ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog. And I swear on Old Shep’s grave, if it continues I’m gonna . . . Return to sender.”
Copyright © 2012 Jo-Ann Pilardi.