My Turn

In January of 1967, when I was seventeen and a senior in high school, I went with my parents and younger sister to visit my mother’s parents, my Nanny and Poppy, in Queens, in New York City. We lived in suburb of Baltimore, so it was about five hours of driving to get to their house. We were on semester break, a Friday and Monday off from school, and I had an interview set up at Columbia University for Monday. We were going to stop there on the way out of New York.

When we got to my grandparents’ house, we were surprised that my grandfather wasn’t there. He was a teacher in New York City public schools, retired at sixty, and then continued to substitute. The school board told him he could no longer sub when he turned seventy in February. He was furious. A neighbor had been to Florida and suggested to my grandfather that he check out a whitewashed, lakefront condo development, a new thing, north of Miami, and that’s where my grandfather was.

A snowstorm was coming Monday and my parents decided to go back to Baltimore Sunday to beat the weather. My grandmother, who was sixty-nine, not quite five feet tall and didn’t drive, assured my parents that she would get me to the interview at Columbia, and to Penn Station to get a train back to Baltimore.

Monday morning, Nanny and I bundled up. I was sick, but didn’t want to say anything. There were spots of blood in my underwear. We walked up 69th Avenue to Main Street in blowing snow and cold, caught a bus to Flushing, where we took the elevated train to Manhattan, and then a subway north to Columbia. Nanny waited for me while I had the interview.

The interviewer was a skinny guy with glasses and a bad attitude. He showed me the list of “Great Books” everyone had to read, and I said that  it looked interesting. My cousin Eric had gone to Western Reserve in Cleveland the year before, and told me the neighborhood where the school was located was rough, and they didn’t go off campus, leaving him bored at college. When the interviewer asked if I had questions, I asked if there activities on campus. He blinked at me, incredulous, and said “Well, we are in New York City.” The interview was finally over, thankfully. Snow was still coming down when we left Columbia’s all-concrete campus. In my memory, the snow was coming down black, but that was probably just how I felt. We went back to Grand Central, walked the tunnel to Penn Station, and Nanny got me on a train to Baltimore.I slept most of the way.

I stayed home the day after I got back. My Mom told my father about the blood in my underwear. He said “ I bet you thought you had a venereal disease, didn’t you? “ Actually, I was a virgin, still, and did not think that. I figured I had some weird cancer and I was going to die soon. Dad explained that it was my pilonidal cyst, a vestigial tail, common to men in his family. From wiping too hard, it probably got infected. We took a trip to Dr. Checket, the surgeon in Woodmoor Shopping Center near our house, and he lanced it. He suggested that my father shave my butt for me to reduce the possibility of infection. Dad did that twice, but it was too icky for both of us. Even though I went back to school, I felt sick for at least a month after that.

I didn’t get in to Columbia, but I was accepted at Johns Hopkins, an oasis in central Baltimore, where my interview on a warm December day had gone better. The interviewer asked me where I had bought my double-breasted blazer and polka dot tie, and not much else.

Nanny was sick for a month after she got home from Columbia. My grandfather bought the condo, and they sold their house and moved that fall. My mother was glad. She said it had been hard for them to deal with winter in New York the last few years.

I had terrible allergy problems in Baltimore, and they seemed to get worse every year. I would have an asthma attack if I walked from a heated building out into cold weather. At twenty-eight, I moved to Miami, where I became close with Nanny. Poppy had died a few years before I arrived there. I stayed in Miami more than six years. Nanny moved to Baltimore to stay with my mother the last year I was there, and a few months later, I took a job in Los Angeles. After twenty-one years there, I met Joe Hample, a second-career rabbinical student. When we legally married in 2008, I said I would go with him wherever he got a job. After a stint at a prison in far northern California, he was hired at Tree of Life in Morgantown, West Virginia, just over two hundred miles from where I grew up. Luckily, I have better asthma and hay fever medicine than I had in Baltimore forty years ago.

I’m sixty-eight now, and just as my grandmother couldn’t handle the cold weather in New York, I find myself much more fragile than I used to be.This year, it’s often been cold and sometimes snowy. I was elected to Morgantown’s City Council in 2017, and I go to an exhausting number of long meetings in the evenings. I haven’t been well for a month, but I’ve kept going, first with just sniffles, then coughing, which went away, then  came back. Last week, I drove to a City Council meeting in a snowstorm where the highway people had told everyone to stay home, and Thursday, I went to a commission meeting in 11 degree weather.. The cough came back, although I attended services Friday night and a political event before hand. I didn’t sleep Friday night, wracked with coughing. I saw a doctor Saturday morning, who gave me an antibiotic and cough medicine and told me not to go out for four days. People think I am young. I keep going no matter what, and, as a teacher myself in Los Angeles, I sometimes use kid ghetto slang from the 1990s, picked up from my students. I’m not young. I’m just a year younger than my grandmother was on our trip to Columbia. Like her, I want to keep going, but i need to take better care of myself.

Joe and I will probably be in Morgantown a few more years. Tree of Life is likely to  renew his contract next year, and I may run for Council again in 2019. Sooner or later, we will step down. Joe talks about going to Palm Springs, or maybe even Tel Aviv when he retires.I came to Morgantown as a retiree, not expecting to work. What I have to do now is say “No.” I can’t go to a meeting in a snowstorm or when it is bone-chilling cold. It’s hard for me to think of myself as the same age as my grandparents, but there it is. It’s time to accept my frailties and stop pretending that I’m young and healthy.

The S.A.G. Awards 2018

My card says I've been a member of the Screen Actors Guild since 1987, so thirty years. In that time, I probably worked only five times under AFTRA or SAG (the unions merged a few years ago). I haven't worked at all since we left L.A. eight years ago. Still, I give them a hundred dollars twice a year, and for a few weeks, the studios seem interested in me, sending DVDs, allowing me to stream movies and TV shows, offering special screenings (in Los Angeles and New York) and offering a free month of service on Netflix. They want me to vote for their movie or TV show.This is a cheaper version of the dominant awards shows, lots more people can vote, and it only covers actors.

I never get to see everything, so I'm slightly underinformed. Most actors are at least good, a few are great, and my reaction often deals with whether I liked the movie, more than what I thought of the performance. Sometimes there is a political dimension.

So here we go.

Movies:
For Outstanding Male Actor in a Leading Role, I saw Daniel Kaluuya in "Get Out" and Timothée Chalamet in "Call Me By Your Name." Both were excellent. I voted for Chalamet, because he is twenty-one, playing a gay seventeen year old. Could you have done that when you were young? I think not.

For Outstanding Female Actor in a Leading Role, I saw Sally Hawkins in "The Shape of Water," Frances McDormand in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," and Saoirse Ronan in "Lady Bird." Again, they were all great. I voted for Hawkins, because she doesn't get to speak and has to convey a wide range of emotions, and then she dances! I might have voted for Bria Vinaite, had she been nominated for "The Florida Project." She played a different kind of mother, and she was fierce.

For Outstanding Male Actor in A Supporting Role, I saw Willem Dafoe in "The Florida Project," Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell in  "Three Billboards.." and Richard Jenkins in "The Shape of Water." I didn't think Defoe had enough to do in "The Florida Project." I loved Richard Jenkins in "Six Feet Under" and I once saw him pumping gas at the ARCO at La Brea and Olympic. He was good in "The Shape of Water," but I thought the script let him down. I've had a crush on Woody Harrelson since "Cheers," and he was excellent, but I ultimately voted for Sam Rockwell, who was absolutely fearless.

Of the Female Actors in a Supporting Role, I saw Hong Chau in "Downsizing," Holly Hunter in "The Big Sick" and Laurie Metcalf in "Lady Bird." Hunter and Metcalf were terrific as moms in their movies, but I thought Chau made a messy movie interesting. And, no, she was not just "playing herself."

I missed "Mudbound" but I saw the other four nominees for Outstanding Cast: "The Big Sick," "Get Out," "Lady Bird," and "Three Billboards..". I loved all of them, but I voted for "Get Out," mainly because I didn't vote for Daniel Kaluuye for Actor. I also liked Allison Williams, Catherine Keener (who I once met at the optometrist's office in the Farmer's Market), and especially Marcus Henderson, who should have gotten a supporting nomination.

Since Joe and I don't watch television at home, I don't always vote for those awards. This year, I did.
I only watched one episode of "Big Little Lies," but I could see why the center of the country hates the coasts. Very rich people in California, all nasty and overprivileged. I voted for Alexander Skarsgård for Male Actor in A Leading Role in a TV Drama or Miniseries. Laura Dern, Nicole Kidman, and Reese Witherspoon were all nominated for "Big Little Lies." Great cast, too old (sorry) to have kids in elementary school. I voted for Reese, because she seemed more authentic than the others, and wasn't as made up and wigged as Laura and Nicole.

For Male Actor in A Television Drama Series, I only saw Sterling K. Brown in "This Is Us," so I voted for him, and I'm happy with that. I might have voted for Jason Bateman, who is a great underrated actor, but the DVD I was sent for "Ozark" wouldn't play. We watched all of Season 1 of "The Crown" from last year (Netflix sent Season 2, but I haven't watched it yet), so Claire Foy for Female Actor in a Television Drama Series, of course.

I watched an episode of the new "Will and Grace" online, and, I guess I don't like the show, even though one of the producers is a member of the temple I still belong to in Los Angeles.  I  never liked that show. I just don't know people like that. Sean Hayes is a good actor, but, no. Larry David is funny, although I've never been able to sit through an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." I never watched much of "Seinfeld," either. I got a DVD of one episode of "Master of None," and I liked it. I like Aziz Ansari. I had probably not seen him before..The accusations against him don't seem like much, and I laughed and was touched by the show. So, Aziz for Male Actor in a Comedy Series.

Of the Female Actors in a comedy series, I only watched one of the two episodes of "Grace and Frankie" I was sent this week on DVD. I adore Lily Tomlin and love Jane Fonda, but Jane is a better actor. The show was another reason "Middle America" hates us. In the episode I watched, the "girls" are planning to market a special vibrator, and the boys are trying out for a gay community theater production of "1776." Can we talk about casting straight actors as gay? I found the show demeaning to both women and gay men of a certain age. I voted for Jane.

For Outstanding Ensemble,in a Drama, I only saw Season 1 of "The Crown" and four episodes of Season 2 of "This Is Us." Both casts are believable in their roles, but I went with "The Crown." In the Comedy category, I didn't watch any of them, although I have seen some of "Orange Is The New Black," which doesn't seem like it is necessarily a comedy, but the cast is mostly women, multiracial and of different ages and body types. Good enough to get me to vote for them.

I didn't see any of the television series where the stunt ensembles were nominated, but I voted for "The Walking Dead" because I imagine the stunts are cool. For Outstanding Stunt Ensemble in a movie, I only saw "Wonder Woman." I was happy to vote for that because Gal Gadot wasn't nominated for Outstanding Performance, and she should have been. There probably were lots of women stunt people who worked on the movie, at least I hope so.

That's this year's wrap-up, my chance to play film and TV critic for a few weeks. The SAG Awards will be on TBS and TNT Sunday, January 21 at 8 P.M. I think it will also be streamed on Instagram.