Robin Williams, R.I.P.

It's difficult to wake and learn that another someone who has been part of your life for so many decades has passed away. The reverberations are felt broadly because his countless films have repeatedly touched our lives. Many of these films would not have been the same without his "mad genius."

In the age of instant everything, his imdb.com profile has already been updated. His Wikipedia bio, too. Robin Williams is gone. His creative range was remarkable and he wasn't afraid to try new things.

Good Morning, Viet Nam
Dead Poets Society
Jumanji
Patch Adams
Mrs. Doubtfire
Moscow on the Hudson
Awakenings
Hook
Bicentennial Man
and on and on and on...

What would Aladdin have been without Robin Williams as the Genie?

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He used to say his Hollywood hero was the late Jonathan Winters Perhaps like Winters his mind was just too hyper-active for a normal existence. Both men had the privilege of making a living in a career that enabled their electric-eclectic hyper-energy outbursts to run rampant and become streaming entertainment. But both struggled at times with who they were. Williams was open about his struggles with mood-swings and depression.

But Robin Williams was not all comic. He gave us serious and challenging performances that connected. It's hard to believe his role as John Keating in Dead Poets Society was already 25 years ago. This passage spoke volumes to me:

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

And this line was delivered with equal eloquence.

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.

My kids grew up on many of these films. There's no question this was a normal experience for Gen-Y... growing up with Robin Williams as a part of the family experience. In some ways when a person like this passes, it is a family loss. I anticipate talking with my daughter about this as we watched Bicentennial Man together on more than one occasion. As the ever-living robot who is destined never to die, Andrew Martin asks (after the death of Little Miss), "Will every human being that I care for just... leave?"

Yes, we all must leave one day. That's part of the human experience. So is having one's heart broken.

In 2000 I wrote a journal note about Good Will Hunting titled "Heartbreaking Beauty."  Life is complicated because we're complicated. In the midst of all our challenges we try to give back something good. Robin Williams gave us some of that.... moments of forgetfulness where we laughed and forgot our troubles.... or moments we never forgot because they left an impression on our hearts and memories.

May the broken wings of his loved ones find healing, comfort and hope through the outpouring that washes their way in the days and weeks ahead.

Photo by celebrity photographer Eva Rinaldi, used by agreement with Creative Commons and does not imply an endorsement of this blog by the photographer.

Popeye & My First Paid Gig

Today’s libraries contain not only a wealth of literature and magazines, but also movies, videos, audio books, Internet services, and other resources. Libraries are a microcosm of the culture and I love them. I constantly thank the checkout people at the two libraries I frequent, and you should too.

Yesterday I watched a couple Popeye cartoons that were on a DVD I checked out from our Duluth library. Oh the memories. Most of us are familiar with the Popeye character, his bulging forearms with anchor tattoos, corncob pipe and sailor’s cap. And you no doubt remember his adversary Brutus, as well as his tall skinny girl friend, Olive Oyl.

According to Wikipedia, these King Features Syndicate cartoons were created for television in 1960. I was eight at the time and remember them well… or so I thought. Watching the two cartoons yesterday brought back a few forgotten memories. First, I had forgotten how much Popeye muttered to himself. He’s really quite a strange guy. Maybe that’s what sailors become, isolated and disconnected from place and society. His mumblings are seldom to communicate to others. The effect is comical though. And he is no master of pronunciation.

Popeye had first gone to film in 1933, in the golden age of theater when cartoons opened for features and sometimes even double features. The theater versions of the cartoon had Popeye’s adversary as the tough guy Bluto. But King Features was unable to obtain the rights to this name when they started making the cartoons for TV and changed his name. Alas, trademark disputes are nothing new.

One of the favorite characters in Popeye was Wimpy, who famously repeated, “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

Popeye himself had a few signature lines, including, “I y’ams what I y’am, and that’s all that I y’am.” And of course the classic, "I'm strong to the finich when I eats my spinach, I'm Popeye the sailor man."

He was strong for his size, but when it came to a crunch where he needed more strength, he reached for his spinach. It’s funny how I never knew what spinach was because my dad disliked it so much we never had it in the house. Personally, I like spinach, but it does not seem to give me the superpowers it gave Popeye.

In 1980 Robin Williams starred in a feature film about Popeye. I do not recall much enthusiasm for the flick amongst my peers when it came out. At the time, I did not know it was a Robert Altman film or that the music was written by Harry Nilsson (a friend of John Lennon who famously penned the “Everybody’s Talkin’” theme from the movie Midnight Cowboy.) I will probably make an effort to obtain it now, for its historicity if nothing else.

My First Paid Gig
These past two days the Twin Ports has been on the receiving end of two major snow storms. Not a lot of fun to deal with, but if you want to live here there are few alternatives other than to deal with it.

As noted in earlier posts I have been making music with the Elliot Brothers. Despite the risks involved, I managed to get downtown to play harmonicas, percussion and sing with the team of Elliot Silberman and Ted Gay. The roads were not pretty, and the crowds were probably wise to stay home, but we’d made a commitment and had fun making some sweet sounds.

At the end of the night Elliot handed Ted and I each a twenty dollar bill. Whoa! What a nice surprise. I was just there to have fun. But it immediately brought back memories of my first freelance article for which I received payment. It, too, was for twenty dollars, in the form of a check from the Standard Publishing Company, Sept 1983. From that modest beginning unexpected things evolved. Eventually, writing became a career.

Don’t worry, friends. I’m not planning to quit my day job…

My Near Death Experience

This past winter the flu that was going around grabbed hold of me and shook me hard. I went through two forty-eight hour stretches where I couldn’t sleep, had fever and chills, and at one point literally wished I could die.

Then my life flashed before my eyes. The strange part was that half of it was fiction.

In one scene, I was sitting with William Shakespeare. He -- or we I am not sure – was trying to work some humor into the third act of Taming of the Shrew. I told him that the notion of having Petruchio stick an eggplant in his pants and strut around on stage as if it were a codpiece was a bit too lowbrow.

“Bill,” I said, “You can do better.”

He seemed to take great pleasure from imagining this scene, but finally cut the eggplant. I then took a knife and sliced another piece off, and he cut off another slice and in a few minutes we had a plateful of eggplant slices. I suggested we pour tomato sauce and cheeses on it, and bake it. “What would you call something like this?” he inquired. I hesitated, then suggested we call it eggplant parmesan, and he said maybe he could work this into a story he was developing about Venice. He was torn between Death in Venice and The Merchant of Venice as a title. I proposed the latter. (Tom Mann would later be relieved.)

In another scene that flashed before my eyes I was manicuring Charles Dickens’ nails. He was chattering on and on about Great Expectations, how much it just seemed to be flowing right out of him. He had evidently shown me an early draft of the first half, because I told him I thought the scene with the eggplant was quite hilarious. He leaned back in his chair and frowned.

“What?” I asked with my eyebrows tilted upwards.

“I didn’t think the humor was working in that scene at all. Besides, it didn’t tie to anything else in the story,” he said.

“It was an anecdote,” I said leaning forward.

He leaned a little further back, as if I had bad breath, which I may have had because of a bad tooth. He shook his head in a dejected way. And finally said, “I really don’t think there is anything funny that you can do with eggplants. Do you?”

I replied, “Maybe that’s why I am having such a hard time coming up with a punchline for ‘Why did the eggplant cross the road?’”

He gave me a quizzical look, and the next thing I knew I was trembling violently in a sweat on my couch, remembering my flu, grateful for life.

Having survived my ordeal, I have great expectations for the next chapter of my life, whatever it brings.

Eat healthy, stay fit, and you have a good day, too.