Paul LeMay, RIP

Right about now, Hartford could use a guy like Paul LeMay, but it's too late, because he's gone.

Paul died early Saturday morning.

LeMay, the outsized thinker, the forever optimist, the lover of life, music and artists, has died after a lingering set of illnesses that had rendered him bedridden for months.

LeMay started the Peace Train Foundation in Hartford and brought tens of thousands of hippies and rednecks and music lovers and corporate geeks into Bushnell Park each May for an old-fashioned fiddle festival that was one of the biggest events in the city, until the city said it was tired of this big event.

I didn't know Paul then. I knew who he was. Watched him from the distance as one of the horde who would descend on Bushnell Park. I met him many years later, under the Calder Stegausaurus where he hosted noontime concerts as part of a summertime arts grant. We became friends. I helped him resettle some Bulgarian musicians, and he helped me book Billy Bragg into Hartford for a show that had to be cancelled when Bragg got the opportunity to tour with the Smiths.

Paul had a giant heart, and a larger creative spirit. He was part huckster, part genius, part minister to the downtrodden. He could be kind and he could be tyrannical. He was headstrong and heartfelt. He cared about people, and music and life. He respected artists, befriended politicians, poked fun at stuffshirts, hobnobbed with corporate leaders and traded beers with Hartford's most outrageous lowlife.

Paul had his demons, and he had trouble keeping them at bay. He lived life like every greasy hamburger, every unfiltered cigarette, every pint of beer had his name on it. His joie de vivre is likely what brought him down. His joie de vivre was the key to his charisma.

When a friend needed five bucks, he give him ten, but he wasn't afraid to ask for fifty if he himself needed twenty.

Paul brought people together. He introduced me to Lucy. He invited thousands to join him for a party every year in the concrete-dull insurance capitol of the world. He filled silence with music, recognized talent and genius, and knew how to make and spend a buck.

He found joy in simple things, but he was forever complex and inscrutable.

In the past several years, his companion and friend of many years, Cheryl Daniels, cared for him and listened as he continued to dream in his sickbed.

I've never met another man like Paul LeMay. I doubt I ever will. I'll miss him, as a lot of others will. He changed Hartford, and he changed the world around him, and that's the best anyone can expect to do in the short time we're here.

Sunrise, before sunrise

Last night, with Steve and Monica, we had sushi, and sampled the homebrewed beer that I made two months ago with Paul Rousseau. It was finally ready, and it was dark, lightly carbonated, sweet and strong.

Five shared bottles later, I fell asleep well before I should have, and missed the contra dance. At 1:37 a.m. I was wide awake, and turned to Fred Murnau's recently released on DVD, Sunrise (which I ordered through NetFlix) It's a silent film, and I thought, my best bet for beating insomnia.

I haven't seen the film since first semester senior year of college. I had a film professor who taught us film history in two semesters, neatly divided. Semester one was silent. Semester two was talkies. He warned us that watching silents would at first be challenging, but that soon we would fall into the groove, and never realize that sound films had been invented. By the end of the silents period (sound was introduced in 1928) semester, I was beginning to regret the invention of sound films.

Sunrise was made in 1927, and I remembered it fondly. Most of what I remembered remained true. By the end of the silent era, directors were making great visual art. Camera's moved. Lights were used inventively. Sets were a work of genius. And film technique (superimposition, mattes) was at its height. The next year Al Jolson sang "Mammy," and once again cameras were locked in immovable boxes, scripts were nonsense and the rattletrap of sound, and the economic collapse of 1928, destroyed film art for several years.

Sunrise bears some of the frailties of silent film. Oddly composed titles, with lots of dashes. Some histrionic acting. And the distraction of overcrank.

But the story is vivid and wonderful, and is about sex. infidelity, despair, murder, love and finally redemption. George O'Brien is wonderful as the tormented farmer. Janet Gaynor one had some trouble as the naive farm wife (though Gaynor won an Oscar, and O'Brien was not even nominated), but Margaret Livingston is perfect as the city bred seductress.

The film carried me through my sleepiness and reminded me that there are other silent classics that I need to return to for their grandeur, or their comedy.

John Martyn, RIP

A progressive folky who had an improbably FM hit in "Solid Air" in the seventies. His out-of-the-box playing will be remembered, as he will be missed.

Fraud begins at home

God help me, I can't bring myself to avoid local WTIC-AM, hate-radio host, Jim Vicevich, if only to hear how devise (de-vicevich), he's become.

Here's the man who was denying there was a recession through October, suddenly blaming all the financial woes created by George Bush, on Barack Obama. And yes, finally admitting to recession.

Here's the man who believes in free-market capitalism, shocked, I tell you, shocked, at the greed of corporate bankers and Wall Street financiers. But declaring that the economy can heal itself, when the Chicago school of Economics has been roundly derided as a failed policy. Business leaders can't seem to police themselves.

Here's the man who demanded respect for George Bush as commander-in-chief, who demanded respect for the office of the presidency, who insisted that protecting America from terrorism is the most sacred responsibility of the president (though the president swears to uphold the Constitution), now, on a daily basis, tearing down the words and actions of the current president.

Here's the man who excoriated the left for impatience with "the surge" now, talking about the failure of the stimulus package before it's even implemented.

Here's the radio host bragging about his fairness, hustling anyone who disagrees with him off the phone.

So I visited via the web today, and observed his vaunted "chat-room," a veritable circle-jerk of flat-earthers, zealots, conspiracy-theorists, science-deniers, wing-nuts, Hannity-philes and chickenhawks. And there, in the chat room, I found Jim's chat-room profile.

Hmmm? Vicevich claiming to be 43? That would mean he was born in 1965. That would mean when he graduated from Bucknell in 1974, he was 9 years old. And I though his self-proclaimed "genius" was hogwash.

Still, his webcam shows a man who clearly is at least as old as his graduation year would make him out to be, 55 or 56. Or a very haggard 43.

Nothing wrong with being 56. That's how old I am. But I can't imagine ever trying to pass as 43, and Jim, based on this picture, I'd lay off that claim too.

Remembrance of things past

It ain't Proust. But who'd want it to be.

Andy Friedman and the Other Failures.

Touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli

It's only with inauthentic regret that I apologize, in the past few days, for posting on subjects of prurient interest.

But it's hard to ignore a virile video which has created the double-controversy of being banned from the airwaves for the Superbowl broadcast, and angering feminists because it objectifies women while encouraging people to abandon meat as a foodstuff.

I respect vegetarians. Some of my best friends are vegetarians. I am not. I will eat most things that don't move, and some that do.

The ad in question is suggestive, though hardly pornographic. They would have been smart to add a nearly naked handsome young man to the mix.

There's a longer discussion needed. Are any ads which use these tactics worth banning, or should they be protected as free-speech? When does the erotic cross the line into objectification? What's a man to do when he sees an ad like this and his lizard brain is saying, "Well, yes, give me veggies!" Is a vegetarian lifestyle the appropriate lifestyle for all of us? And what's wrong with a little chicken now and again?

BTW, here's the hamster on a piano, referred to in one of the linked articles.

The Jack Bauer of peace and ecology

(One of Susan Forbes Hansen beautiful winter landscapes.)

My friend Susan Forbes Hansen, who often forwards posts that end up here, was name-checked by Colin McEnroe in his column Sunday (yes, I know it's Wednesday).

McEnroe claims to get 11 emails a day from her. I think that's a slight exaggeration, but Susan seems to be connected, as McEnroe indicates, to networks that are determined to make you feel angry, inadequate, guilty and occasionally vindicated. I'm a bit envious that McEnroe receives a few more emails from Susan each day than me.

But mostly I get upset when SF Hansen finds interesting web stories before I do.

I welcome the slightly less than 11 emails I get from Susan each day, if only to be able to answer "read it already."

BTW, I'm plenty interested in the fact that I get the Jack Bauer reference though I've never seen a single minute of a single of 24 or Iron Chef, for that matter. I just know the clock is an important element on each.

You're the cream in my coffee...

(Freeze frame of a drop of cream after it hits the coffee.)

Two (one here, one here) health news items today make me wonder if, finally, I have lived my life correctly.

I admit to nothing, but I remember everything, in spurts.

Rabbit stops running

The New York Times reported 2 minutes ago that great American novelist John Updike has died of lung cancer.

A chronicler of modern American life, urban and suburban, Updike was as prolific as he was on target.

It's just a state job

More than a few of us were shaken into awareness when CT House Speaker Chris Donovan offered former house speaker Jim Amann an advisor's job for $120k.

As we know, Amann thought better of accepting the job.

But it got a lot of people wondering. Do legislative staff really pull down that kind of dough?

I guess the answer is, "Hell, yes."

Colin McEnroe points us to this list, of salaries in the Democratic and Republican caucuses. State salaries paid by you and me.

The next logical question: Does a part-time legislature (and let's not kid ourselves, most legislators are full-time politicians), need a full-time staff of this size? And why do most of the staff make more than the legislators who hire them?

And why aren't any of this staff positions on the line when the state is so far in the hole?