To Absent Friends - Cynthia Weil

Cynthia Weil

1940-2023

The Broadway musical "Beautiful" tells the story of singer-songwriter Carole King and her husband and lyricist partner Gerry Goffin, but it also tells a parallel story of another Brill Building husband-wife songwriting team of the 1960's and beyond, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann.  All are in various songwriting Halls of Fame and have won multiple Grammys and other awards.  Cynthia Weil left us earlier this month at the age of  82.

Weil's songwriting credits are too numerous to list, but how about this little sample, in no particular order of greatness.

• You've Lost that Loving Feeling
• On Broadway
• We Gotta Get Outta This Place
• Uptown
• Blame It On The Bossa Nova
• Don't Know Much
• He's Sure The Boy I Love
• I Just Can't Help Believing
• Just A Little Lovin' (Early In The Morning)
• Walking In The Rain
• Saturday Night At The Movies
• Make Your Own Kind of Music

Some of the artists who have recorded Weil songs include The Drifters, The Crystals, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Righteous Brothers, Andy Williams, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, The Monkees, Cass Elliott, and The Vogues.

Are you getting some idea of just what a giant Cynthia Weil was and what a legacy she leaves?  

RIP Cynthia Weil.

 

Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil with Carole King

Weil and Mann

A marriage that lasted 63 years

On Tom Hanks, John Grisham, and Chevy Chase

What, you might ask, could I possibly be writing about three disparate folks listed in the headline? 

Read on....

Tom Hanks

While shopping at Sam's Club a few weeks back, I noticed that actor Tom Hanks had written a novel, and I couldn't resist.

In this rather awkwardly titled novel, Hanks is giving us a fictionalized version of what goes into making a "major motion picture masterpiece."  Sounded intriguing for a movie buff like me and who doesn't love Hanks, right, so I bought the book.  The book is about 400 pages long, and after 200 pages, I threw in the towel.

Why?

First off, it's fiction.  All the names are made up.  For example, the director of the movie being described is named "Bill Johnson."  How's that for a bland and unmemorable character name.  And it goes on from there.  Actors, writers, behind-the-scenes fixers and movers and shakers, agents, production assistants, cinematographers, gophers....there were so many of them that it was hard keeping track of them all.

Next, Hanks used asterisks on almost every page, often times to refer to other fictional movies that these fictional actors, directors, writers et al had previously made.  I found that to be very distracting.

Finally, the "movie" being made in this novel was a comic book/superhero movie, a genre that I just don't care about.  Maybe if the movie was thriller action movie or detective story or even a RomCom, but this one just didn't hold any interest for me.

Libraries and bookstores are filled with books about the "Making of..." actual movies like Casablanca, Wizard of Oz, High Noon, Citizen Kane and any number of others.  I still love Tom Hanks, but read those books instead of this one.

One-half Star from The Grandstander.

John Grisham

John Grisham published his first novel, "A Time To Kill", in 1989.  HIs second novel, "The Firm" (1991), became a #1 best seller, and he has never looked back since.  He has written over 40 books that have sold over 300 million copies, and he continues to churn them out.  I have not read all of his books, but I've read a lot of them, and every one of them has sucked me in from page one until the final sentence.

While shopping at Target two weeks ago (notice that I only shop at upscale  retailers), I spotted his latest novel, "The Boys from Biloxi", which looks good, but instead I bought this newly published paperback.

This was published as a hardback in 2022, and contains three novellas of Grisham's - the longest is 125 pages, the shortest 55 pages - and each one is pure Grisham:  tense, exciting, intriguing, and you don't want to stop reading until the end of the story.  Two of the stories, "Homecoming" and "Sparring Partners" are legal stories involving crime and lawyers, some shady, some honest, and the third, "Strawberry Moon" is about a 29 year old convict on Mississippi's death row, whose execution is scheduled to take place in three hours.  How he spends those hours and one special final request that he has makes for a most haunting tale.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

Chevy Chase

While on our trip to Annapolis last week it came out in the conversation that Linda had never seen one particular classic American comedy from Chevy Chase and the good folks at National Lampoon:

Can you believe that?  Better still, can you believe that this movie is now forty (40!!) years old?  I remember that when this was released, it was at  time when everyone was first getting VCR's, so it was easy to record this off of HBO, or to purchase a VHS copy of the movie, and, as a result, "Vacation" was a movie that was watched again and again and again to the point where you could recite the lines as they were being spoken on the screen.  You know, lines like....

"The family Truckster.  You think you hate it now, but just wait until you drive it", or

"Who wants to see the world's second largest ball of twine", or

"The bank's been on me like flies on a rib roast", or

"Dinkums had the shits last night so we kept her in the garage", or

"See that sign that says 'Rib Tips' up ahead? Well, F--- that" or

"Hey, underpants!", or

"Can I have that sandwich from the gas station.  I'm so hungry I could eat a sandwich from a gas station", or...

Well, you get the idea.

I used to watch this movie every year on the day before we left on our own family vacation to the Outer Banks.  However, it had been many years since I had seen it, and the fact that Linda have never  seen it prompted us to pull it out and watch it again.

The verdict after all of these years:  It holds up great and is still as funny as ever, praise be to Marty Moose!

As we are now into summer and your vacations are upon you or soon will be, grab a copy (streaming for free on HBO Max), and ride along with the Griswold Family.  You'll have so much FUN that you'll be whistling Zip-a-Dee-Do Dah out your, well, you know.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

Oh, and as a special treat, here are the closing credits from the movie as Clark, Ellen Rusty, and Audrey go Dancin' Across the USA on their way to Wally World to the tune of Lindsey Buckingham.

Just How Awful Are The Pirates Right Now?

Consider this post just a general bitch session, the rantings and ravings of a frustrated Pirates fan looking for a place to just get a few random thoughts off of his chest.

Here goes....

From Jason Mackey article in those morning's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"....the latest bit of futility - Ji Hwan Bae, Jack Suwinski, Rudolpho Cstro, and Austin Hedges have combined for one (!) hit in their past 101 at-bats..."

Sit back and try to let that statistic sink in on you.  I can't even wrap my arms around that one.  And, yes, these guys are still playing every day.

What we saw in that weekend series in Miami, where the Bucs somehow managed to win one out of four, boggled the mind in terms of futility with runners in scoring position.   This was best exemplified when at one point late in one for those losses, the Pirates had runners on first and second, no outs, and Connor Joe's bunt attempt on the first pitch was popped up to the pitcher,  no runners advanced, and both of them died on the bases.  The Bucco announcers then informed that in his five year MLB career, Joe had NEVER laid down a successful sacrifice bunt.  Not one.  Where were the Pirates analytics nerds when they sent down that order to Sheltie and his sixteen man coaching staff?

As far as I know, "Pitch framing" was a concept that didn't even exist five years ago.  (Was Johnny Bench, the best catcher that I have ever seen play, ever lauded for his ability to "frame pitches"?)  Yet it is that very concept that is keeping this guy, Austin Hedges, in the every day lineup for this bunch.

 

Going into tonight's game with the Padres, Hedges is batting .160 - that's a one a six and a zero - in 131 AB's.  His On Base percentage is a paltry .231.   If you are a major league team, you don't have to have Johnny Bench or Yogi Berra as your catcher, you don't even have to have a guy like Russell Martin or Jason Kendall, but you absolutely cannot have a guy like Austin Hedges coming to bat 3 or 4 times a game either, no matter how well he "handles the pitching staff" because he stinks with a bat in his hands.

Hedges has become the negative face of the franchise during the Pirates decline in May and June.  Given how unproductive the rest of the team has been (see above), that may not be totally fair, but it's not totally unfair either.

And what about that decline in May and June?  We all know that in April the Pirates were the talk of MLB, they were 20-8 in first place in the NL Central, and only the Rays had a better record  This was right before the Rays convincingly swept a three game series against the Pirates doing the first week of May.  

Today the team is 35-42 (.455) and 5.5 games out of first and in fourth place in the division.  Since that 20-8 start, the team's record is 15-34 (.306), a pace that would produce a 50-112 record over 162 games.  That's not just bad, it is historically bad for this franchise.

Prior to the season, the Over/Under on Pirates wins was set at 67.5.  As I never want to be in a position of rooting for them to lose games, I placed a modest wager on the OVER.  This would represent a six game improvement over the 2022 season, and I figured we wouldn't know the result until the last week of the season.  At 20-8, this bet looked like a sure fire win for the OVER betters,  At 35-42, not so much.  For those betters to cash  awning ticket, the team will need to go 33-52 (.388) the rest of the way, and given how they've been playing the last two months, that is far from a sure thing.

In a team that specializes in public relations disasters, two juicy ones loom ahead, possibly.  

First, the Pirates hold the overall #1 pick in the upcoming amateur draft.  It is gospel among those who know that that pick will be either LSU outfielder Dylan Crews or LSU pitcher Paul Skenes, each of whom are said to be ready NOW to play in the big leagues.  Will the team select one of these sure fire players, or will they avoid Scott Boras and draft yet another high school short stop?  Pirates fans are on the edge of their seats.

Second, and this is probably just sports talk radio bullshit, but it has been reported that other teams have expressed interest in acquiring Andrew McCutchen in a possible deadline deal.  Back in January, when the Pirates re-signed Cutch, I wrote the following:

And don't think that this might not possibly occur.  Let's say that McCutchen discovers the fountain of youth (possibly from one of the new bars the team is putting into PNC Park) and by the All-Star Break has 15 HR, 50 RBI and is hitting in the .270 range.   The team still stinks and is headed for a 90-95 loss season.  Will GMBC then try to trade Andrew McCutchen to a contender in need of a hot bat in exchange for a basket full of prime prospects?  Will the Pirates become the first franchise in history to be pilloried TWICE by its fan base for trading the same player?

Personally, I find it hard to believe that even the Pirates would risk the PR nightmare that this would create, but would I be totally surprised if it did happen?  Nah!

Okay, that's enough for now.  My head is starting to hurt.  

Anchors Aweigh!

We took a two night getaway this past week to Annapolis, MD.  The state capital of Maryland is a delightful and quaint town.  Filled with wonderful little retail shops and great restaurants, many of them overlooking the waterfront.

We had great meals at three different places: Mission BBQ, a barbecue joint, as the name implies, a wonderful brunch at the Iron Rooster, and absolutely fabulous dinner at a linen tablecloth restaurant called Osteria 177.

We saw the Kunta Kinte - Alex Hailey Memorial, the very spot where Kunta Kinte, and thousands of other kidnapped Africans were auctioned into slavery.  We saw the Residence of the Governor of Maryland, where Spiro Agnew once slept and accepted bribes.  However, the most memorable part of our visit was our visit to and tour of the United States Naval Academy.

The Academy was about a ten minute walk from our hotel, and when we took a dry run down to there the night before our tour, I was surprised at how easy it was to walk right onto "the Yard".  It's not a campus.  It's The Yard.  Of course, it wasn't all that easy as it turned out.  To really get onto the grounds the next day, we had to present photo ID, empty our pockets, go through metal detectors, etc etc.  

For our tour we rode in an electric car and rode all around the Academy for a 75 minute tour.  It was fascinating and informative, and I would highly recommend it.  When the Tour ended, we were able to walk into a building that housed much of the Academy's sports administration offices and included a look at all of the athletic trophies and awards from over the years.  The centerpieces of this display were plaques and busts of Navy's two Heisman Trophy winners, Joe Bellino, 1960, and Roger Staubach, 1963.  

Everyone remembers Staubach, of course, due in large part to his Hall of Fame NFL career with the Dallas Cowboys, which included two Super Bowl victories.  However, did you know that Staubach won seven athlete letters at Navy, not only for football, but for baseball and basketball as well?  I didn't.

Less remembered is Joe Bellino.  My memory of him is from among my very early days of following sports.  Bellino fulfilled his five year commitment to the US Navy, serving on a destroyer during the Cuban Missile Crisis and on a minesweeper in Viet Nam.  After a brief three year career in pro football, he became a successful businessman and retired as a Captain after serving 24 years in the Naval Reserve.  He was 81 years old when he died in 2019.

Both Staubach and Bellino had quite different post-Heisman lives than did, say, O.J. Simpson and Johnny Manzel.

Our timing in visiting the Naval Academy was perfect for we were there the week prior to the arrival of the new class of Midshipmen, which will happen this coming Thursday.  (We probably would have been unable to get hotel space during Plebe Week.)   We brought our own prospective plebe with us, but we were told that the Class of 2027 had no further openings, and she also was unable to obtain a Congressional appointment.  

She took the news well though.

To Absent Friends - Stan Savran

Stan Savran

1947-2023

In every city and every town, there are members of the local television and radio media who are so established, so entrenched, and, yes, so well loved, that they become an integral part of the fabric of the communities in which they work and live, and they feel like a member of the family to the viewers and listeners.  Pittsburgh lost one of those people this week with the death of sportscaster and sports talk show host Stan Savran at the age of 76.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio and a graduate of Miami of Ohio University, Stan, like most people in that business, worked at a number of smaller market radio and TV stations at the start of his career.  He was working in Orlando, FL when he answered an ad for a radio gig at station WWSW in Pittsburgh.  He arrived in The Burgh in 1976, and there he stayed, working at two different TV stations and at least four different radio station for the next 47 years.

When I moved back to Pittsburgh in 1978, Stan was doing a one hour sports talk show on KQV, going head-to-head against Myron Cope on WTAE 1250.  Eventually, he moved over to WTAE, working the 8:00 to 9:00 PM hour following Cope's two hour gig from 6:00 to 8:00, Monday through Friday.  These shows, along with Sam Nover's competing show on KQV constituted, in my view, the Golden Age of Sports Talk Radio in Pittsburgh.  Hard as it might be to believe in this day and age, these were the only hours of sports talk radio that existed on the air back in the seventies and into the eighties.  No hipster hosts spouting profanity and hot takes 24/7.  It was civil and knowledgeable sports talk, and we will never see its like again.

After he left the WTAE evening job, he did an afternoon drive time talk show, I honestly can't even remember which station it was on, and listening to that show made my drive home a pleasure every day, and more than once Stan would take a call from "Bob in the car" during those days.  I can remember that he once interviewed Mary Levy, long after Levy retired from the Buff Bills, and it was an absolutely terrific interview.  I emailed Stan at the station telling him just how enjoyable that show was and received a very kind response from him.

Local radio and television has been awash these last two days with tributes to Stan.  About how knowledgeable and well prepared he always was.  Joe Starkey said that he learned early on that when he would be a guest on Stan's show in his role as Penguins beat writer for the Trib, he had better be well prepared because he knew he was going to get hard questions on the state of the Pens.  Stan never served up softballs to his guests.  The tributes also came from the people that he covered for the Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, Pitt, and Penn State (where he did football play-by-play for a number of years).  Hardworking, honest, knowledgable, and always fair in his criticism.  That was Stan Savran.

Perhaps the best stories came from his "Sports Beat" partner of nineteen years, Guy Junker.  You know...."Stan, Guy.  Love the show."  Junker told of a relationship that was closer than brothers.  I'll repeat one story that I heard him tell....

One of Stan's first jobs was reading sports news and selling advertising on some dinky radio station in Lawton, Oklahoma.  One day he came in and excitedly told the station manager that he had just nailed down sponsorships for the station's sports talk show.  "We don't have a sports talk show" said the Suit.  "We do now" said Stan "and I'm hosting it."

Like I said, the kid from Cleveland became as integral a part of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh sports scene as anyone can imagine.  He will be missed.

RIP Stan Savran.  We all loved the show.

Contrary to popular belief, 

this Cup was not named after him.

During one of the Penguins' Stanley cup runs, Stan posed with this fan.  Anyone recognize her?

On the job at a couple of local sports venues...

Finally, just who are the heck are those guys with Stan Savran?  Really, is there anyone in Pittsburgh sports over the last 47 years that Stan didn't talk to?

Getting The Roy Kent Quote Correct

In THIS PIECE that I wrote yesterday about Lionel Messi signing with Miami of the American Major League Soccer league, I quoted the fictional Roy Kent who spoke with disdain about being an over-the-hill European futbol star finishing his career in America. 

Today I would like to thank pal Garrett Roen for providing me with the exact   Roy Kent quote from the TV series "Ted Lasso".  Like Trent Crimm of The Independent, I always want to get the quotes down accurately.

Lionel Messi - Comin' To America

The big news  in Sports today - other than the PGA Tour/LIV Tour merger, which The Grandstander will be writing on in the days ahead - is the news that international futboler  free agent Lionel Messi of Argentina, the hero of last year's World Cup, and, if not now, at least at some point in his career, the greatest soccer futbol player in the world, will be picking up his uniform kit and cleats boots and taking them to Miami of Major League Soccer right here in the U.S. of A.

Whether Messi's presence will elevate MLS to the Number One sport in America remains to be seen (it won't), but he will certainly be an attraction for the league, much like David Beckham was a few years back.  Remember?  I know that I will be checking the TV listings to see some of the Great Messi's games matches on American soil with an American team.

Anyway, this news made me think of a scene from Season 1 of "Ted Lasso."  An injured and washed up Roy Kent, playing out the string for AFC Richmond, was contemplating his future and this was one of his options: 

"I suppose I could go to America (be said with derision), where I would DOMINATE."

On Lasso and De Niro

Some Critical Commentary to begin the week....

TED LASSO (no spoilers)

 

The Apple TV series "Ted Lasso" ended last week after three delightful seasons.  I thought that i was a terrific ending to what has been a great series.  Jason Sudeikis' Ted went home to Kansas, AFC Richmond's season concluded on a high note, and all storylines were wrapped up in a wonderful montage played to the music of Cat Stevens' "Father and Son."  Yes, everyone I know who watched the series thought that Season 3 was, if perhaps not as great as the first two seasons, a delight nonetheless, and were quite charmed by the conclusion of the show.  However, as I alluded to in a post last week, the professional critics who praised the series at the outset, felt it was their obligation to tear it to shreds.  For example, the headline in a piece in Variety  stated "'Ted Lasso' Season 3 Was Unbearable".  Really? This is how the author of that piece, a pseudo-intellectual need Stephen Rodrick, opened his critique:

Now quarantine is long gone, and we are out in the world crammed into middle seats, intent on spending our last disposable dollar on Maui rentals and a down payment on a jet ski we definitely don’t need. “Lasso’s” recently completed third season joined the bacchanal. The show’s 12 episodes ran 650 MINUTES. That is 78 minutes longer than Krzystof Kieslowski’s “Dekalog,” which dealt with all 10 of the commandments.

Now that is a piece of high brow bullshit that really speaks to all of the mass audience to whom "Ted Lasso" appealed, isn't it?  I mean, who didn't think of Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Dekalog" when watching "Ted Lasso", am I right?  And if you search the interwebs, you can find all sorts of similar critical rantings.

However, allow me to refer you to the write up of Jason Fraley.  He is an entertainment editor for WTOP in Washington DC, and I have come to know him through various podcasts and am happy to say that we have come to regularly exchange our views as Facebook Friends.  THIS PIECE by Jason hits the nail squarely on the head when it comes to "Ted Lasso", both in its entirety and in it's finale episode last week.  I think that you will enjoy it.

Here is another good (and favorable) recap that appeared in the New York Times.  Be advised, though that this piece contains spoilers, so if you haven't yet seen the final episode, you might want to delay reading this one.

So farewell, "Ted Lasso".  You will be missed, but  if that spin-off hinted at in the final scenes of the show ever comes about, I will be there, proudly wearing my AFC Richmond scarf.

Four Stars from The Grandstander for both the series and the Final Episode.

ABOUT MY FATHER

When I first saw the trailers for this, I figured that it was going to be one of those movies where the best of it would be what you see in the trailer.  That might be unfair, but it wasn't far off.

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco plays a guy named, can you believe it, Sebastian Maniscalco.  He's the son of Salvo (Robert De Niro), an immigrant from Sicily who came to America after World War II, became a successful hair dresser in Chicago, is now a widower, and who is a guy who has spent his entire life wanting nothing more than to make a better life for his son than he had for himself.  That's the American Dream, right?

Well, Sebastian has fallen in love with a beautiful girl who is the daughter of an ultra wealthy the-ancestors-came-on-the-Mayflower family.  Daddy owns one the largest chains of ritzy hotels in the world, Mom is a US Senator (played by Kim Catrall; first time I've seen her since Sex and The City), and they have invited Sebastian to come to their luxury country club estate in Virginia for the 4th of July weekend.  Through a series of events, Sebastian ends up bringing his Dad with him.

It's the old fish-out-of-water trope, and it unfolds and ends up exactly as you imagine it will.  I'm a big fan of Robert De Niro (who isn't?), and I thought it would be a hoot to see him in a comedy role (think "Midnight Run"), and he delivers just as you thought he would, although I say that he did seem to be playing a guy who was playing "Robert De Niro" in this one.   As I said to someone yesterday, actors like De Niro can make great art in their work, but every once in a while, they're entitled to do something just for a paycheck.

This movie will make no Top Ten lists and will win no awards, but it was a fun bit of summer comedy fluff, and De Niro was De Niro, and that is always worth seeing.

Two and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.