Add Brian Williams to the List

There are a few people who, when they appear on any of the late night talk shows, are must see. When I find out they are to be on Dave or Fallon if I am not able to be up I make sure to set up a Tivo recording.

On that list for me are Bill Murray, Bill Cosby, Micheal J Fox, Regis Philbin and Jungle Jack Hanna. There are others who from time to time become something you must see, these folks are people that no matter what they are promoting, or even not promoting, you must see the show.

Brian Williams now must be added the list. He is intelligent on any subject and is remarkably funny. On tonight's David Letterman show Williams did his Regis impression and it, incredibly, it is dead on. As Dave and he talked about the unfortunate incident that Al Roker has been all over the news discussing recently he made this quip " That hasn't happened in the West Wing since Nixon found out he had to release the tapes." Pretty clever stuff.

One of my favorite people: Brian Williams

The Kennedy Center Honors

Widely touted as the best Awards show each year this seasons Kennedy Center Honors broadcast aired the day after Christmas on CBS. As our family was still in the midst of holiday travel our blessed TIVO allowed me to tape this.

As usual this years broadcast featured an interesting group ranging from legendary guitarist Buddy Guy, actor Dustin Hoffman, ballerina Natalia Makarova, talk show host David Letterman and the legendary rock act Led Zeppelin.

On this awards show the inductees do not perform, they do not even speak. They are spoken to, and about, their work is showcased, and in the case of musicians often performed. This can lead to some moments you will not find on other programs.

The actual event is usually a couple of weeks before airing and consists of about three hours, therefore the broadcast at two hours is an edited version of the show. Trying to respect all honorees but pay attention to the audience viewing our ballerina honoree while getting about fifteen minutes did receive short shrift on the broadcast.

Dustin Hoffman was praised for his immense body of work. Looking at Hoffman in a couple of his early movies like The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy and it is easy to see how this man never allowed himself to be typecast. Over recent years we may have forgotten the brilliance of Hoffman's acting but a review of his past work puts that to rest. His presentation also convinced me that I have to view his performance as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

Buddy Guy is an incredible guitar player. Being one of the artists that is more well known in the music community than in the real world has it's advantages, but still it is a shame someone with his talents never found mass appeal. For those who sing and appreciate the blues however Guy is a legendary. A clip of Guy performing with The Rolling Stones years ago and being presented at the end with Keith Richards guitar as if Richards is saying he cannot compete was special to see. I myself remember watching Guy perform with Jeff Beck at the recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame anniversary concert, the man is amazing. At 76 years old we can all be thankful that this amazing talent has received one of the highest honers a performer can gain while he is still with us to enjoy it.

Anyone who knows me is aware of my fondness for David Letterman. I love the man and his show. For much of the last ten years Dave has consistently come in second to nobody's friend Jay Leno. It does seem odd to me that this man of the Midwest should lose the ratings in the heartland while Jay Leno an East Coast boy living on the West Coast can with his bland style of humor and interviewing win the mass audience. I'm not bitter though and one guesses Dave is not either. He was visibly touched by this award and in being honored by Ray Romano and Jimmy Kimmel along with countless other of today's talent in spirit Dave is firmly entrenched as today's equivalent of Johnny Carson. This is fitting as Dave revered Johnny and still mists up when he talks of the night Johnny called him over to the couch after his performance. This is the " big breakthrough" for a young comedian, Ellen DeGeneres talks about how it happened for her as well, and it is very rare. It sent Dave on his way. When the men speaking tribute to Dave tell him that as much as Johnny meant to him he means to them it is pretty moving.

Ending the show was the induction of the incomparable Led Zeppelin. Jack Black was in his glory as he spoke of the band, it's influence on him and as he attested " everyone here except those who are here for the ballerina lady." Certainly they have had their influence on both me and my teenage son. The music is really timeless and a great joy of mine has been seeing my son go through his Zeppelin phase. I have even written previously about that transfer of loyalties from a father to a son. Zeppelin was formed in the late sixties around former Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page and was met with universal criticism and universal popularity at the same time. It took a long time for music critics to switch sides with Zeppelin, when they were staging the worlds biggest tour in 1975 to support their sixth album, all had been multiple platinum, Physical Graffiti John Paul Jones, their bassist, heard a radio Deejay ripping them and called in to complain. Whether they admitted it or not, as popular as they were, the criticism hurt and wounded. Still the fame, private airplanes, millions, and the attention of countless women will ease the pain of that one supposes. The band ruled the album charts for years and still sells a million of albums a year off its back catalog. When the band, sans drummer Jon Bonham who died in 1980, booked a charity reunion show in 2007 over four million people placed their names in a lottery for tickets. Still it appears they may be the last holdout of the great dinosaur bands of that fruitful period of the late sixties and early seventies, thus far they have resisted all overtures to have one last gobsmacking world tour. The performance that honored the band was a showstopper indeed with Kid Rick and Lenny Kravitz both taking turns fronting a band as Zeppelin songs were performed. Still without a doubt the showstopper, the moment you will remember, was the performance of the legendary song Stairway to Heaven. The song was performed by Ann and Nancy Wilson until about halfway through as small group of about ten to fifteen folks joined them for harmonies as the song sped up. Then about halfway through the song and the curtain went up for an amazing scene, a full orchestra and choir. The performance became spectacle, albeit spectacle in a very not Led Zeppelin kind of way. The camera panned to the band members high above the stage, Page his hair pure white in a ponytail looking like he belongs in a fine wine commercial was thrilled while Jones, still looking youthful was obviously pleased. The reaction that strikes though was Plant's. Ornery probably would be a generous word to describe the bands lead singer, cantankerous might fit better. Plant at his advanced age looks like a character out of The Hobbit, with long curly locks of must be dyed hair, wrinkles and bags around his eyes that if lines are character make him venerable indeed, Plant was stunned silent as the choir appeared. Wiping tears from his eyes and smiling to Page's nods to him one hopes that Mr. Plant found a peace in his popularity that bypassed all the hurtful things said about the band. Finishing up the touches was at the end of the song seeing Jason Bonham, who sat in on drums that performance in 2007 in his fathers stead, and who also played during the Stairway performance here, stand and salute his " uncles" as it were. It would be a harder man than me not to feel the emotion in that room.

So for another year the Kennedy Honors are complete and each year the show keeps getting better. One might assume that the older one gets the more they enjoy the show, which by then will be honoring the heroes of ones youth. It might well be true.

Promised Land

Last evening my wife and I went to the movies and, as I am saving The Hobbit to attend with my very busy teenage son, we attended the new Matt Damon movie Promised Land. My wife says just seeing Matt Damon's smile is worth nine dollars. I am not sure that I would agree with that but I do find Damon very likable.

This movie, straight out of the headlines is about fracking. Fracking is a process of removing natural gas from shale deposits deep under the ground. In recent years we have all heard stories of both landowners gaining untold riches from the deposits under there land as well as horror stories as to the effects this process has on the land and those who use it.

I do not have all the answers. I suspect that the truth probably lays on both sides of this issue. A great deal of money can be made by those fortunate enough to have these deposits underground but there is always a risk in extractions from the Earth.

In the movie Damon plays Steve Butler a mineral rights specialist for the Global company. Steve has been sent into an unnamed small town to gain the mineral rights to peoples land so that his company can start extracting large amounts of the gas believed to be underneath. Steve, as played by Damon, is not a bad guy. Having suffered through the death of his own farming community as a teenager he knows how bad it can get. His town collapsed when the local Caterpillar plant closed and moved overseas. In his mind the chance to earn a million dollars for doing nothing but selling mineral rights is a goldmine to these folks and he fervently believes he is on the side of the angels. He has heard some of the horror stories of the problems with fracking but is told by his company that these are untrue and chooses or wants to believe it. His partner in this process is played by Frances McDormand of Fargo fame. Playing Sue in an understated way she is all common sense and organization to Steve's emotional tent revival kind of salesmanship.

As they make their sales pitch to landowners they find more resistance than is usual. Hal Holbrook plays the town's Science teacher who is very knowledgeable and very concerned about the potential invasion of the gas companies. Soon after this confrontation an unknown man with the unknown of company of Athene Environmental shows up. John Krasinski plays Dustin Noble, a fellow who saw his father's farm and livestock destroyed by the effects of neighboring fracking and tells us the loss of his father's farm. With a receptive audience already concerned as a result of their local townsman's vocal opposition Dustin finds fertile ground for his claims.

Stuck somewhere between anger and disbelief that the locals might well be turning down an opportunity to safeguard their well-being based on untrue claims about the dangers of fracking Steve fights on. Signing folks, some who are more than willing, one gentleman in a trailer makes Steve drink some hooch with him to celebrate their " being partners", to take a chance on making a million dollars.

As the movie comes to the end Frank Yates, Holbrook's teacher, Dustin the environmentalist and of course Damon's Butler work to win votes on the binding town election forthcoming. A sharp twist in the road of the story appears, I saw it coming but not much more than a minute before it occurred, and we are left with a different story. One that is much more definitive on who the bad guy is, but perhaps one that by doing so makes the movie less about looking at an issue that deserves a real airing than defining in a black and white way a problem that might not have a black and white answer.

Still it is a good story, Damon is as he always is, above average though this movie never really takes off. It is as if it is a plane screaming down the runway, you are moving faster than you would driving but you never really take off and soon you run out pavement. When this movie comes to the end of the pavement you never really got off the ground though it was a sort of enjoyable ride.

The Hour Season Two is Superb

Over the last six weeks I have been watching what might be the best television show I have seen in years. In it's second season the BBC America show The Hour is simply amazing. Cramming more storyline into six weeks than most full length series this years story arc centered around the coming of the nuclear age in the late fifties. Contrasted against a crime wave both issues provide the backdrop for the shows characters to move through.

What characters they are. Aggressive young journalist in training returns to the news team from a sojourn in America and France with a young French wife. His long simmering relationship with his producer and friend Belle Rowley must be set aside but by the end of this season we are left to wonder if these two will ever find their way.

Outside of that the character of Hector Madden played by Dominic West goes through a long journey this season. Having been caught in a scandal he sees his relationship with his wife suffer a death blow, is courted by another news network, and in the end suffers a humiliation few men could stand with grace, perhaps in a belief that is the product of his own behavior and something deserved.

Backstories abound. A new news director has joined the show and he too has a secret. Combining these complex characters with a nuanced, fast moving storyline rife with historical connections this show can be challenging.

One must dedicate themselves to paying attention. The first couple of episodes leave you wondering where the show is going, by the time you realize where that is, and how tangled the web is, you are hooked.

Loving Mad Men, enjoying Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, there is no doubt in my mind that this show is far and away the winner for Best Drama of the year.

When We Were the Kennedy's by Monica Wood

In there after Christmas sale Amazon featured this book for a minimal price for the Kindle version. After not a little debate noting the author being from Maine I made the purchase and have to agree that this is a pleasant little story.

Subtitled " A Memoir of Mexico Maine " Wood tells us the story of her childhood and how it all changed around the dividing line of 1963. History tells us that 1963 was a dividing line for almost all Americans but while America was riven by the death of their President Wood's childhood, she was nine in 1963, is torn open in the spring of that year when her father drops dead on his way to work.

We never really get to know Wood's father except in her reminisces and after the fact learned memories of her father's smiling good nature, about his happiness with his lot in life and his love of his former home of Prince Edward Island. Getting up and going to work each day lunch-pail in hand he is a model of a memory that many people my age can certainly relate too. My father too was a simple man with a large family that never complained. He was the salt of the earth, not perfect, but a man with responsibilities he welcomed and honored. This is what we feel about the author's father.

Still to be a widow in 1963 with three young daughters, one of them disabled enough that she will never get past the second grade is no easy thing and young Monica's mother is devastated. Over the course of the next year Monica's mother will struggle, slowly gaining strength and finding a special kind of solace with the kinship she feels with the President's widow just six months earlier.

Longing for father figures her Uncle, her Mother's younger brother provides one until he is stricken with a alcohol induced nervous breakdown. Stronger in that stressful time for her is the father of her best friend. Mr. Vaillencourt worked at the mill with her father and when he takes his daughters and includes Monica in the line " vanilla's for my three girls" she feels both what she has been missing and did not know she needed. The author mentions how nice this whole family was to her but realizes from today that she, as a small fatherless girl simply broke her friend's fathers heart.

Mexico, Maine is dominated by The Oxford. A paper mill that in the early sixties was producing magazine print that dominated the market. It was a time where both labor and the management felt good about what they had. It would soon end. My sister's husband grew up in a neighbor town, his father and family members worked at that same mill. It is an experience many in Maine and many across towns in this country can understand how a mill or a business that dominates a town can feel like the living breathing heart of a town.

Little did young Monica know that this was the high point in her town. As the mill over the next fifty years went through owner after owner, downsizing all the while the towns along the Androscoggin shrunk with every census. It is the story of Maine, and of all the manufacturing cities of the Northeast and Middle West.

The book is good, it is not however great. Certainly for me, growing up in the same general area it is more relatable but I think it could hit a note of recognition for a large group of people.

Wood's writing is a bit clunky at times, it is not revealed as much in a memoir like this and indeed some of her phrase turning is like listening to my own uncles and aunts from my youth. That is the joy of the book. Still I suspect that her actual fiction which is definitely more along the lines of female authors we all know would not be in my interest group.

Still even as a time and place document only this book, outside of the story, has real value. Worth the read but your own life experience might determine how much you enjoy this book.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

For the last couple of months I have been savoring the Tolstoy novel Anna Karenina. Well over a year ago I read War and Peace and was captivated, this masterful novel is often referred to as the greatest novel of all time, as one can easily see Tolstoy was perhaps the greatest writer we have ever seen.

I certainly would make that point. Anna Karenina is another long tome incorporating historical events in Russian history to tell the tales of the characters lives.

Anna Karenina is the title character and she, as the book starts, has a problem. She is married to a man twenty years her Senior and is finding the relationship increasingly to be one in which she is unfulfilled. She feels her husband cold and unfeeling and she admits to herself of a growing loathing of being even in the same room with him much less fulfilling her wifely duties. Her pain is mitigated however by the young son she and her husband have had that is the joy of her life.

At a society dance Anna is asked to dance by Count Alexi Vronsky a gentleman she had recently met at a train station after traveling in the same car with the Count's mother. Vronsky is a rich man of marriageable age who has been courting Anna's young niece Kitty Oblonsky. Immediately Vronsky is captivated by this lady, a woman as opposed to the young girl he had been spending time with. Anna resists her unacknowledged feelings awakening inside her but at the same time looks forward to and places herself in in locations where she is likely to interact with him.

Eventually their relationship develops and as we learn quickly the path of love does not run smooth, certainly not for a society woman who chooses to commit open adultery in nineteenth century Russia. What develops over the course of the book is a character that with every page becomes less and less likable. By the end of the book Anna Karenina is nothing less than a shrew, a shadow of her former confident self and a person that it is not one you can cheer for. This might well be what sets this book apart, a heroine one cannot like and what becomes her destiny some might bemoan and others might call well deserved.

Countering this storyline however is the story of Konstantin Levin a young landowner who seeks the hand of the same Kitty who Vronsky is courting. Feeling the humiliation of rejection in this relationship Levin fills his life with his estate, his agrarian interests, and his questioning of all things. In time Levin finds peace in his past and moves himself forward in ways that are admirable.

This book has multitudes of characters, people move in and out of the storyline frequently, but in the end Levin and of course Anna are the ends of the pendulum. Seemingly neither can be happy at the same time. They only interact once in the book but their circles are in constant interaction. For all the good that develops in Levin nothing positive develops in the life for the title character.

Written in serial form from 1873 to 1877 and published in book form in 1878 Tolstoy intertwined the political questions of the day with these characters in his book. It is interesting to see Levin question everything. In this the age when the lessons of Darwin were only recently espoused and embraced Levin questions religion, God and his place in the universe. Even more so Levin treasures his land, his peasants who work his land and questions the correctness of his position in the world. Questions his gaining wealth while those who work his land live lives of modesty. In many ways the questions in the heart of Levin, and thus Tolstoy were questions that would come to a violent and turbulent answer in the next century.

This is a book beyond description with positive adjectives. It is a book universal in it's appeal and a must for any serious lover of literature. At the beginning of a new year there is no better literary resolution than a commitment to read Tolstoy. This is a great place to start.

The End of the Voice and X Factor

As we sit here on the afternoon of the first day of the year we are in that wonderful respite from singing shows that we will all be enjoying until American Idol returns in two weeks.

We spent a good deal of time viewing these two shows this fall, my wife is big follower of the singing shows.

A final thought on the two shows from this past fall.

The Voice I believe has been the more popular of the two and for good reason. With the exception of Christina Aguilera all of the judges on this show are extremely likable. Blake Shelton wears his crown as the current King of Country Music well and Adam Levine is the most polite man with tattoos you will ever meet. The contestants on this show were consistently good this year and with the judges having more impact on which guests reach the final episodes the show appears to follow a much less strict formula and be less subject to the whims of demographics.

The final three contestants on the show were all talented, in the end I believe that the correct person won. In the beginning of the show I was not a big fan of Cassadee Pope. She was obviously very physically attractive but outside of that I did not think her singing was over and above everyone else. Nicholas David the long haired, long bearded, constantly faux bowing soul singer might well have been the most talented performer on the show but his personality while apparently genuine was almost mawkish. Watching these shows, perhaps we become cynical but at times it seemed his intense devotion and public displays of loyalty and love for his wife and young family became as integral to his act as his singing. Lastly we had Terry McDermott a Scottish immigrant to America who seemed perhaps the most likable of the group. With his elven features and his absolute desire to sing Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, and other giants of eighties rock and roll there was not much to dislike in his performances. For me however he was just good, certainly not special, I am quite sure I could go to a club in anytown America and find someone about as good performing tonight. He was, in effect, to me, our everyman. It was a good group and in terms of potential to make a mark on pop culture the correct person clearly won.

The X Factor for whatever reason just does not seem to measure up to be even as good as the sum of its parts. Simon Cowell is excellent in everything he does and his formula in this show of his creation is that each celebrity judge takes a certain demographic of the contestants and is their advocate and coach. To some extent this works but for me the idea of especially Demi Lovato being a real coach to any young performer is kind of silly.

In a complete opposite to The Voice on the X Factor Simon was the only judge who was even remotely likable. I found Demi Lovato to be the worst I have ever seen on any singing show, LA Reid is pompous in the extreme, and Brittany Spears while sometimes fun to look at seems incapable of putting two words together. Spears also is a sad reminder too often of what lies at the end of the rainbow for many if not all of these performers who strike it big.

The talent on the show was solid but for some reason it just never seems to work for me in a lasting way. The winner this year was a Country Singer named Tate Stevens. Very talented and with a solid chance at a career this man, plucked off a road crew seems to be about as grounded as you would want a person in this position to be. His major competition all season turned out to be a thirteen year old superstar in the making named Carly Rose Sonneclar. This young lady had an incredible voice but again as is so often proven in the pop world a great voice is not often the first prerequisite of success. Let us hope that she gets a large first contract when she signs her record deal because we do not know that she will be successful.


With Idol starting up soon with three new judges one wonders if the era of these shows might soon be fading. When you lose the continuity of the hosts the shows do lose something. Next year's X Factor might well have three new judges beside Simon and even The Voice is giving Christina and C Lo a season off to tend to their careers. In short if continuity is one of the keys to the success of these shows they might soon be in trouble.

Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing. Let's not tell my wife I said that.