JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

The woman in the photograph is Darlene Love. I didn’t know her name or recognize her distinctive voice even though she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. Who is she and why didn’t I know her?

Darlene was primarily a back up singer and she; along with Lisa Fischer, Claudia Lennear, Merry Clayton and Judith Hill are the subjects of 20 Feet From Stardom, a must-see documentary now showing in theaters across the country.

These women are extraordinary and have extraordinary voices. They have all tried solo careers but failed to crack the barrier that separates stars from other talented artists. Merry and Lisa have both worked extensively with the Rolling Stones. Merry sings the duet on Gimme Shelter with Mick Jagger and Lisa, reputed to be the inspiration for Brown Sugar, has been the lead backup singer for every Rolling Stone record and tour since 1989.

These women have also worked with Bruce Springsteen, Luther Vandeross, Phil Spector, Ike and Tina Turner, Michael Jackson and more than once their studio work was misrepresented as the work of the more famous performer whose name was on the album.

This music and these voices are astonishing and I walked out of the theater last weekend thinking I’d like to go back and sit through it again. I might do it this weekend. Except…

Tonight we’re going to see a new documentary about J.D. Salinger, Saturday we’re going to see and hear Twyla Tharp collaborate with R&B legend Allen Toussaint on Air Twyla at PNB, and Sunday we have tickets to see Robert Reich’s documentary Inequality for All. There is so much going on that there isn’t much time to work with.

The personal computer, YouTube, cable TV, smartphones, and tablets have created a sea change in the way content is delivered and received, whether it’s music, film, news, or art. Included in the sea change is the ascendency of the documentary film as a main event in first run theaters. In June I blogged about two documentaries – Venus and Serena about the Williams sisters, and Anita, a film about Anita Hill and the Clarence Thomas nomination fight. Earlier I wrote about Searching for Sugar Man, the surprising story of Rodriquez, the Detroit musician who unknowingly provided the soundtrack for the apartheid struggle in South Africa.

In the past documentary films were shown, if at all, on PBS or weekends on CNN. Rarely were they seen in first run theaters. Now, they are being distributed and marketed by the likes of the Weinstein Company and competing with blockbusters like Iron Man and The Avengers. With documentary films we have an opportunity to see subjects explored in depth as an alternative to a diet of exploding aliens and car chases. These non-fiction films are informative and educational as well as good entertainment, but they can also be propaganda pieces like Dinesh D’Souza’s election cycle film 2016 that purported to show President Obama’s hidden Muslim agenda. In any event, documentary films have become frontline news and entertainment. Their ascendancy and importance reminds me of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I wonder if discerning people who now go there for real news in a satirical format without the mean spirited puffery of Fox or MSNBC wouldn’t rather have mainstream news that they trusted?

I live in a target rich environment for art, music, and film. It’s a great place to be, and now that summer is over local screens, music venues and galleries are filling with new and interesting work. I find myself increasingly drawn to the raft of non-fiction films that is flooding the mainstream. Salinger is getting the most publicity because of its subject’s obsession with privacy but Robert Reich’s film is getting a lot of hype too. There’s also one on the music scene in Muscle Shoals that celebrates Rick Hall the founder of FAME Studios where Aretha, the Stones, the Allman Brothers, Bono, Percy Sledge and others were backed by the remarkable studio musicians who created the famous Muscle Shoals sound.

I could go on and on about documentaries. If you’re interested there is a website devoted to top documentaries where you can watch them in their entirety. It’s a very deep well: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com.

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This is Benny. He is 3 years old. We’re tight.Yes, his boots are on the wrong feet. You got a problem with that?

Last Wednesday was Benny’s first day of “real” school. She’s an old hand.

Benny and I man-up with an afternoon snack once or twice a week.

Sometimes we lift weights and play games

But, occasionally, we both get cranky

And have to take a nap

And then a bath

Before our last story… and bedtime

Tomorrow is another day for Opa and Benny. ♪ ♬ ♩This is a fine bromance ♫ ♬ ♪ Thanks, guy.

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I’m rereading A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s unfinished memoir about the Paris years that was completed by his son, Jack, and published posthumously in 1964. The writing is so easy going and effortless that it doesn’t seem like “literature” at all. The famous Hemingway style – short, simple, declarative sentences – is there, but the tone is relaxed, intimate, and conversational. It feels like he is sharing with the reader on a personal level – his favorite restaurants, the café where he writes, the one where he meets friends (they are different), the wine he drinks, the bookstore with the lending library, his apartment, walks along the river, skiing in the Voralborg, and family life.

The memoir gives us an insider’s view of the Lost Generation’s Paris, but the most personal and interesting sequences, for me, are the descriptions of his father-son interactions with Bumby.

Bumby is what Ernest and Hadley called their son, Jack, and those pieces are personally interesting because Jack and I were friends for 20 years. I can’t say I knew him well, but we shared meals, drank coffee, and played tennis together. I knew his first wife, Puck, his three daughters, and his second wife, Angela. In fact, he and Angela ate dinner at Piccolo, my little Italian restaurant in Ketchum, two nights before they got married. His daughter, Mariel, by then a big time movie star, confided to me that she had a big crush on my son, Brent, in middle school. Unfortunately, she didn’t reveal that to either one of us until 20 years later.

I met Jack in 1973. Everett “Woody” Wood, a mutual friend, introduced us. It was six degrees of separation. Jack and Woody had Dartmouth in common and Woody and I were Pan Am pilots together in Berlin. When Woody retired from Pan Am he moved to Ketchum where Jack and I were both living. The stars were aligned and an introduction was made. Woody loved Jack, but Woody also loved good books and the celebrity connection, once removed, from Ernest. Woody was part of the Greatest Generation and born at a time when officers were gentlemen and it wasn’t unusual to have an Ivy educated Pan Am pilot. He fancied himself a New England aristocrat and affected a courtly and formal style – all bogus as far as I could tell – but he was a charmer, a good story teller, an old school snob, a bit of a drunk – and a friend.

Jack, on the other hand, was anything but a snob. He liked everyone and treated them all with respect. I have rarely met anyone with a more positive and even temperament. When we first met he told me that his first year in Ketchum he fished 365 days and loved every one of them. Ironically, in spite of my interest in contemporary lit, I never talked to him about his father or his growing up as the child of the most famous American author of the 20th century. That wasn’t our connection. I didn’t know until yesterday, that he, himself, had parachuted into France as an OSS operative in 1944 with his fly fishing gear as cover for spying behind the German lines. Nevertheless, in spite of his fluent French he was found out, wounded, and spent the last months of the war as a POW.

In the early ‘80’s I used to see Woody at the library in Ketchum. He told me he was working on his memoirs. At the time I thought he was blowing smoke and imagined he was more interested in being a writer than actually writing anything. I don’t think that anymore. Time has given me a different perspective.

I lost track of Woody for a few years but learned later that he had migrated back to his beloved Dartmouth where he spent his last years as the manager of the Hanover Chamber of Commerce’s tourist booth. It seemed both sad and suitable. Pan Am pilots don’t have a great track record as savvy investors and Woody must have made some bad choices along the way. Nevertheless, I think he was a happy camper in Hanover. His character and self-esteem were tied to the college and I hope he kept working on those memoirs.

It’s ironic that, except for finances, my situation is not much different than Woody’s was post-retirement. I love books and aspire to being an accomplished writer. I think he did too. I spent years thinking about it, but was too lazy to do the heavy lifting. I’m committed now and it feels more important to work at it than it does to get it published. Process versus product. There is great satisfaction in sitting down each day and grinding away at the blog, journal notes, and some short story drafts. I hope Woody felt the same way.

In A Moveable Feast Ernest says, “I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.” But sometimes when he was starting a new story and could not get it going he would stand by the window of his flat looking out over the rooftops of Paris and tell himself, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” And he did. I aspire to the same – one true sentence and then one more…

I can’t write about Hemingway and Paris without at least acknowledging Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris – every writer’s fantasy of inhabiting the same time and space as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Dali, Eliot, Cole Porter, etc. I wasn’t there, but the thread of connection is: my grad school advisor, Kay Boyle, a prolific and highly underrated writer, lived in Paris from 1923 to 1943 and knew them all. If only I could time travel with Gil Pender. Maybe the one true sentence would come more easily.

Ernest Hemingway died in Ketchum in 1961.

Everett “Woody” Wood died in Hanover in 1995.

Jack Hemingway died in New York City in 2000.

R.I.P.

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Lately I’ve been thinking about “date nights.” No, not the creepy, contrived, sentimental, hearts and flowers kind but the nights when the two of you get out and do something interesting together. I started thinking about it when my son-in-law, Jon, told me his babysitter charges $13 an hour. At that rate, even movie night for two is close to a $100 proposition. I don’t need a babysitter but Jon and Heidi do. $13 an hour forces them to be creative in order to make it happen.

Our kids are all doing well, but they have to balance a lot of needs when they think about going out. They want to try new restaurants, see plays, catch a Sounders’ game, or go to a movie. As much as anything it’s about keeping things fresh and having some fun together. Marilynn and I like to hang out with the kids, but we have our own lives and we’re not always available. So how can they make it work? Whether there’s a babysitter in the equation or not going out has gotten to be expensive.

Because I think it’s important to stay engaged I’ve started thinking about how to minimize the cost of going out without diminishing the experience. Not every event is a bargain, but there are ways to keep the costs down. Here are a couple of ways to think about getting out for under $100:

Seattle has a thriving restaurant scene and keeping seats full and turning the tables is a concern for them, especially on slower nights. Happy Hour can help lower the cost but add food to the experience. Most of the good bars and restaurants feature happy hour on their slower nights – Monday through Thursday and Sunday. The hours vary but 4:30 – 6 or 6:30 is normal. I might enjoy a full dinner on a special occasion, but for the most part a drink and a couple of “small plates” is more than enough for a pre-event nosh. Even on weekend nights a drink and something from the bar menu is affordable. It’s a great way to start date night.

Then, as part of the planning process, I check out the Weekend Section of the Seattle Times every Friday to see what’s playing on the local scene – film, theater, and music. With close to 20 theater and dance companies in town, there are usually several quality choices as well as some intriguing, mystery ones. Unless they have a blockbuster success on their hands the local playhouses don’t normally sell out during the week, and most of them offer a discount at the box office on the day of the performance. Some, like Intiman and Seattle Rep, also have a standby rate though you might not know if there are seats or if you’ll be able to sit together until minutes before the performance.

For example, ACT Theater offers the following: On the day of the performance, if there are unsold seats ACT lets the customer decide how much to pay. Last night we paid half price ($20/per) to see the well-reviewed play Rapture, Blister, Burn. When the action started the theater was almost full but we had great seats in the small circle-in-the-round amphitheater. The play was fun, the acting professional, and the audience appreciative – a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Here’s how the entire evening broke down for us financially:
1. Parking at the US Bank garage (1415 Fifth Ave, entrance on Union) – $8 after 5pm
2. Drinks and apps at Sullivan’s: (martini and 2 glasses of Pinot Grigio) plus 2 small plates (skillet chips with blue cheese and tavern steak with spinach and mushrooms) – $50
3. 2 tickets to see Rapture, Blister, Burn – $40
Total for the evening: $98

For Jon and Heidi to keep it below $100 it has to look like this:
1. Babysitter – 5 hours – $65
2. Parking at US Bank garage – free if validated by Palomino Restaurant (upstairs)
3. Pizza and 2 beers at Palomino – $15 plus tip (Happy Hour every day, all hours
4. Theater tickets – $20 (pay what you can/standby at ACT)
Total for the evening: $100

Note: parking at the US Bank garage is free if the ticket is validated at the Palomino Restaurant. Happy Hour never ends in the Palomino bar, and the expansive bar menu includes brick oven pizzas and delicious salads. If we had gone the Palomino route we would have saved about $15 and brought the cost of our evening down to $83.

Other suggestions:

The Crest: The Landmark Theater chain’s bargain movie house. It’s the last stop for all the first run films in Seattle and it’s only $3 to see them before they go to DVD land. I’d much rather watch a film in a theater than on DVD and it’s our good fortune that the Crest is near us in North City.

Zoo Tunes: On the lawn at the Woodland Park Zoo. It’s a great early evening summer venue. Picnic on the grass. $25-40 a ticket. Good entertainers – John Hiatt, Randy Newman, Lee Ann Rimes, Indigo Girls, Todd Snider, Brandy Carlisle – this summer.

Museums: All of the Seattle museums – SAM, Asian Art Museum, Burke, Frye, MOHAI, etc offer free admission on the first Thursday of every month and most of them are open until 9pm.

The Art of Jazz: Free jazz in the lobby of SAM (Seattle Art Museum) on the second Thursday of every month.. Beer and wine for $6-7. Good venue and acoustics. Taste, SAM’s restaurant, has upscale food and a menu of small plates.

Elliott Bay Books: Author readings and events have become a favorite way for us to spend an evening. The readings usually begin at 7pm and there are dozens of trendy bars and restaurants in the neighborhood. Our favorites for a pre-reading nosh are Quinn’s the Scott Staples’ gastropub (sensational steak tartare and an extensive selection of draft beers) or Poquito’s, the big, trendy Mexican place – both on Pike within a block of Elliott Bay. Tonight my friend, Alexander Maksik, is passing through town and reading from his new novel, A Marker to Measure Drift. We’ll be there.

These are just a few suggestions. The Weekend Section of the Times gives a comprehensive view and review of what’s happening for the coming week. I always find things that peak my interest or trigger my curiosity. Sometimes it’s the unknown factor that drives me to the event and adds the element of surprise to date night. Be creative.

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